“There’s a war out there.
It’s not about who has the most bullets.
It’s about who controls the information.”
Watch this week’s Truth in Two video to find out why
Ray Bradbury agrees with Proverbs.
#9 in our Summer 2024 series, “With What Will You Replace It When It’s Gone?”
Dr. Mark Eckel is Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University. Support MarkEckel.com (here). Find the MarkEckel.com YouTube Channel (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website) and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video).
Pictures: Josh Collingwood, Snappy Goat
FULL TEXT
Fahrenheit 451 still sends shudders through its readers. Ray Bradbury’s famous science fiction novel is a statement for all freedom loving people, to beware the government that wants to destroy knowledge and censor information. Bradbury’s novel is the story of literal book burning. An authoritarian government wants to destroy the written word by fire; 451 degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature at which paper burns. In a 1994 interview, Bradbury said that political correctness and thought control concerned him, the reason he spoke out for freedom of speech.
Controlling what people hear in media is a constant concern for freedom loving people. One of the key themes about control in Proverbs is the comparison between “integrity” and “crookedness.” The word “integrity” suggests not perfection but a wholehearted commitment to God, including the dedication to truthfulness, honesty, trustworthiness, and reliability. In contrast, the word “crooked” describes that which as been twisted from its original or intended design. The original has been tweaked or altered from its fundamental integrity.* Perverse people distort reality, but the righteous person is careful to guard himself from truth-twisting, according to Proverbs 22:5.
Our summer series, “What will you replace it with when it’s gone?” applies to who controls the information we consume. In the 1992 movie Sneakers, Ben Kingsley’s character summarizes the concern, as he preaches to Robert Redford’s character,
“There’s a war out there, a world war, it’s not about who has the most bullets, it’s about who controls the information. What we see and hear, how we work, what we think, it’s all about the information!”
The science fiction novel Fahrenheit 451, the movie Sneakers, and the book of Proverbs agree: beware those who control information so that they can twist the truth. For the Comenius Institute, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, Executive Director of the Center for Biblical Integration at Liberty University, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.
Links
Bradbury’s interview: Bradbury Talk Likely to Feature the Unexpected Archived July 10, 2019, at the Wayback Machine, Dayton Daily News, 1 October 1994, City Edition, Lifestyle/Weekendlife Section, p. 1C.
*John A. Kitchen Proverbs: A Mentor Commentary. Christian Focus Publication, 2006: 640