The Living Church of God reviews Christianity as taught and practice by Jesus and the original apostles. In the following article, the Living Church of God examines the intricacies of the current credibility crisis in America.
The credibility crisis has been building for decades, evolving over time, to its current state. A functioning human civilization relies on having some level of trust in others, but that trust has slowly been eroding. The Living Church of God reviews that trust in government, education, media, and science seems to be at an all-time low, with many people having more faith in online “experts” than in political leaders, scientists, or professors.
The Living Church of God defines in the following article, the credibility crisis, looks at recent events that have highlighted and even fueled the ongoing crisis, and presents a way to move forward from this place of confusion.
The Credibility Crisis Defined
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, credibility is defined as “the quality or power of inspiring belief.” In order to serve their intended function, the Living Church of God reviews that our institutions must inspire the belief among the majority of people that they are rooted in truth. While there was a time when most Americans believed the words of politicians and public health experts, those days are long gone.
Without trust in our most vital institutions, such as the government, the media, and the education system, there is a sense of chaos in the world. If the experts can’t be believed, if science can’t be trusted, how can anyone know what is real? That is the crux of the crisis.
The Role of Technology
The Living Church of God reviews that although the credibility crisis began before the days of the Internet, technology has exacerbated the issue. Everyone who wants a public platform now has one in the form of a website, a blog, or a podcast, and there are no standard requirements to consider oneself an expert. Any opinion or poorly researched belief can be sold as truth.
When there are self-proclaimed experts with differing points of view on every imaginable topic, it becomes difficult to discern what is real and people start to question everything. The Living Church of God reviews that this is not always a bad thing. Questioning commonly held beliefs can at times be a way to move closer to truth, but it also fuels the institutional distrust that is the foundation of the current crisis.
The Role of the Pandemic
The Living Church of God reviews that the credibility crisis reached a tipping point during the Covid pandemic. All of the distrust that had been building up under the surface began to boil over as everyone grappled with the science and the public health policies that the experts touted as the only way to get past the worst of the pandemic.
Where many people had once placed great trust in science and in the nation’s leading scientific experts, there was now a general distrust. The Living Church of God reviews that whether that is because the science was faulty or because it went against ingrained personal beliefs can be debated endlessly. What we do know is that the experts sometimes backtracked their original statements and this only amplified the distrust in their credibility.
The Problem with Science
While the pandemic brought the problems with science to the general public, science’s role in the credibility crisis was apparent to a many even before the pandemic. For so long, it was believed that science could answer all questions and it was often seen as infallible due to the rigorous standards that were applied in the field.
The Living Church of God reviews that once it came to light that may scientific studies are under-researched, biased, or profit-driven, as it did in 2013 with The Economist’s cover story, “How Science Goes Wrong,” all scientific data began to come under scrutiny. And if we can’t trust the science, where can we turn for answers?
A Way Forward
The Living Church of God reviews that when the institutions created by humans have all become uncredible and the people appear to be adrift in a chaotic world, one must turn to the one source of truth that never changes. God and His laws provide the only sure path to freedom from confusion, lies, and uncertainty.
Human leaders and experts will always fall short and man-made laws will never provide all the answers we seek. God in His wisdom is the only source of truth that will never fail us. While the world suffers from the credibility crisis, His followers take the narrow gate to God’s truth and find life free of all deception (Matthew 7:13-14).
