Tricked by "Truthiness"

It is bad enough that author James Frey’s best-selling and Oprah-propelled “memoir,” A Million Little Pieces as been outed as largely fictional by Smoking Gun's piece, "A Million Little Lies." (No one I’ve read is denying that Frey’s book is riddled with fiction posing as fact.) Oprah now says she still stands by the book. Frey has issued no real apologies. Rather, “truthiness” (it would be nice if it were true) is good enough, so long as it inspires people. One benighted blogger even defended Frey by saying that memoirs in postmodern times don’t have to be truthful. (To his credit, he later recanted and pulled the post.)

What we don’t find in Frey or Oprah is repentance: the humble stance that admits wrong, apologizes, and promises to do better. Instead, we get spin and the redefinition of terms (shades of Clinton and “is”). Oprah says it was the publisher’s responsibility to label the genre; but it doesn’t matter since it has helped people with addictions. But it has been pointed out in The New York Times that Frey’s book would not likely have become a best-seller as a novel. The lie of authenticity was essential to its illicit ascent. And one spunky reader is suing the publisher for fraud. She bought a “memoir” and she got a novel. Good for her.

Amidst all the dizzying spin and excuse-making, Christians should rejoice the ultimate story of redemption—the life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and session of Jesus Christ—is factual, verifiable, authentic, and incomparable. As Os Guinness wrote years ago, “Christianity isn’t true because it works. It works because it’s true.”