How does one distinguish between what is true and what is fake news? It is a good question with a very unsatisfactory answer: with great difficulty. The old “gut feel” method is not working anymore. The world is too complex. You can ask 10 people in Syria about the situation in the country. You may very well get 10 different answers. And all of them may be true. The answer depends on whole sets of information that may be available or not. We need the Word of God to teach us, the Holy Spirit to guide us and more than just a healthy measure of good common sense.
My friend Jannie de Villiers is presently the CEO of Grain SA. He gave me this write-up on the modern-day process of separating the wheat from the chaff.
The picture that comes to mind is somebody throwing the wheat in the air and wait for the wind to do some separation. Today in the modern era, it is a very sophisticated process to separate the wheat from the chaff and to get it ready to produce the perfect loaf that you and I enjoy every day.
The farmer buys certified seed to ensure the purity and then use chemicals to kill all weeds. All combine harvesters have sieves to separate the wheat from other foreign objects and similarly, at the silos, all wheat is sieved and fumigated to keep it healthy and clean. However, the real cleaning happens at the mill. It is properly graded and carefully blended to ensure the right quality for the bakers. A modern mill uses gravity tables to remove all heavy objects like stones from the wheat. Next in the mill flow is an aspirator – using wind to remove all the lighter objects from the wheat. The mill stream also has magnets in to “catch” all possible metal and in some mills, you might find high technology cameras to seek for possible insect legs and other impurities. Lastly, before milling the wheat it is conditioned to get it to the right moisture level for the milling.
Some things look very simple but are more complicated than at first sight: like discerning the truth and separating the wheat from the chaff.
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