1% on Rotten Tomatoes, 1%! 

The new Netflix docu-drama “Queen Cleopatra” starring black actress Adele James, is not being received well, and according to Rotten Tomatoes reviews, it is being summarily rejected by 99% of the people who have watched it. In case you are wondering, that is not considered a good score.

But not to worry, instead of listening to the critics, the producers have decided to fight back against the naysayers. Director Tina Gharavi in a recent interview snapped, “Why shouldn’t Cleopatra be a melanated sister? And why do some people need Cleopatra to be white?” Maybe, because, history says she was a Greek woman from Macedonia? But no matter, Tina Gharavi and the rest of the production crew are quite proud of their fabrication, or I meant to say, their brave and bold achievement. 

As she says, “We need to realize that Cleopatra’s story is less about her than it is about who we are…We need to liberate our imaginations, and boldly create a world in which we can explore our historical figures without fearing the complexity that comes with their depiction. I am proud to stand with “Queen Cleopatra” — a re-imagined Cleopatra — and with the team that made this. We re-imagined a world over 2,000 years ago where once there was an exceptional woman who ruled.”

Regardless of how you feel about blacks portraying historical whites, the issue for me with this story is much more foundationally frustrating than that. People seem to be so flippant with reality. If the truth gets in the way of someone’s personal agenda, more and more people these days will simply scuttle that undesired truth for lies that get them quickly to what they want. And then after they tell you the lie, they clap back at you if you don’t happily receive it. Their lie becomes your problem.

So to not cause waves, a large proportion of people in our culture will never question the lies and swallow them whole hog. Peace is achieved through ignoring. This is true ethically, politically, and even in personal relationships.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was just starting in the ministry, cultural experts were warning pastors of the rise of post-modern thought. “Soon,” they would caution, “the norm in the culture — which will eventually spill over into the church — is that all truth will become relative. What is true for you may not be true for your neighbor, and if the truth becomes relative, everyone will demand their own truth be accepted as true even if their truth directly opposes your truth. That means, ‘so long’ to preaching, ‘so long’ to teaching, ‘so long’ to having any kind of moral authority, and ‘so long’ to goodness, justice, righteousness, and holiness.” If everything is true, nothing is true.

At the time, people scoffed at this warning. 

But they were right. Post-modernism now rules and lies abound! Sadly, it has gotten so bad, almost everything we are asked to believe is a straight-up, in-your-face lie.  You don’t believe me? Lies are everywhere and people just swallow them like they do Soma pills in the book, “Brave New World.” We like to be lied to, we want to be lied to, and it is morally corrosive to our collective soul. As Isaiah 59:4 says,

“No one pleads a case with integrity.
They rely on empty arguments, they utter lies.”

Let me give you three quick examples:

• Men can give birth, and women can have a penis.
• There is nothing essential about having a father in a child’s life.
• 5-year-olds can adequately and expertly decide their own gender.

Lies abound while lives run aground. Lies are destructive. Lies distort and damage God’s good creation.

But the worst thing about lies is how elastic they are, they can change like the wind. Think about it, when someone lies how do you know they are not just lying to get what they want? Some liars believe the lies they are telling, and some are telling lies to get you to believe them. A recent blog interview is a perfect case in point. A pro-abortion advocate was arguing that a woman has the right to do what they want with the “life” in their womb because it is their own body, even up to the ninth month of pregnancy. So if the pregnant woman wanted to terminate the pregnancy at the ninth month, the person had no problem allowing a mother to make that choice. It was her right.

Then he was asked this question, “What if that same mom was addicted to meth, would you be okay with that?” The person said, “No, I would probably call CPS on them.” “Why?” The interviewer asked. Here is his answer, “Because they may be harming the baby.” So in this person’s mind, a baby is not a baby in the mother’s womb if the mother doesn’t want it, but if that same mother would be acting irresponsibly where the child may be harmed, the child needs protection. The baby is a baby when he wants it to be, but it is just a clump of cells when the mother wants it to be. So is it a baby or isn’t it? It doesn’t matter. What matters is what the culture determines to be the truth at the time. But no one knows because conditions always change. Again, lies are elastic.

But if people were honest, lies don’t make life easier, they only compound problems. So what is the point of this post? Stop putting up lies and confront liars. Stand up for truth. If you don’t, soon nothing will matter.

There is a belief that if a Christian tells the truth and it offends the hearer, they are being judgmental. This isn’t being judgmental, it is truth-telling. In John 12:48 Jesus tells his disciples that at the end of all things, all people are going to be judged by one thing, and one thing only, “There is a judge for the one who rejects me and does not accept my words; the very words I have spoken will condemn them at the last day.”

If you notice, every person on earth is going to be evaluated by the words of Jesus. That is the standard and the measuring stick. Not the opinion of the popular groups, not the news media, and not even your college and high school teachers, but the words of Scripture. And if you are a Christian, it is your responsibility to know them and to share them.

I think a 1% rating is a great triumph for the cause of truth because that means people are getting tired of America’s slide into post-modernism. And what else is hilarious is that Egypt isn’t standing for the vandalization of its history. Someone’s lie is often another’s offense.

Stop allowing yourself to be lied to.