I was recently privileged to deliver a version of the below remarks at the first New York Yearly Meeting Quaker Exploration and Discourse (QuED) Day. QuED is a day of talks, fellowship and discussion taking place once a month aimed at connecting young adult Friends with Friends of diverse experiences from around the yearly meeting. You can watch the morning’s talks, including Q+A, here.  Objectivity has had a bad run recently. University professors are being criticized for encouraging debate rather than comforting their students. Great Britain is exiting the EU based largely on a campaign of xenophobic fear-mongering. Our recent presidential election was marked by lies, half-truths and exaggerations which, even when debunked, had no discernible negative impact on those spreading them. Oxford Dictionaries’ Word of the Year was “post-truth,” an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” In this environment, it is important to stand for facts, accuracy and fairness and against the swell of emotion that can blind us …

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’ You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see. I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered …