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Do you remember when the word “spinning” was descriptive of tops, wheels, the tea cup ride at Disneyland, and little girls whirling around and around to show their fancy petticoats?  It seems like ancient history. 

Of late, “spinning” has taken on some new meanings. For instance, do you remember that stationary bike that you bought to exercise with every morning? The seat was rock hard, and the “trips” you took on it were excruciatingly boring!   Well, now stationary biking has been given a new name – a more attractive name – “spinning.”  Men and women pay big bucks these days to participate in “spinning classes” that tell the world that they are  active, adventuresome, and yes, “beautiful” people.

But there is still another, relatively new definition for the verb “to spin.”  This is the one that concerns me most. It’s the kind of spin that Bill O’Reilly ostensibly doesn’t allow.

Today, we take for granted that politicians and the news media “spin” just about everything that happens or is said in order to make political hay.  Most of us have learned to  “tune out” whatever is not “spun” to our liking, and, as a result, we believe very little of what we read or hear.  This has the effect of leaving most of us angry, confused, and cynical about the news in general, and about most politicians, too. 

But there is an even more troubling consequence of living in a world of “spin-meisters.”  We begin to imagine that everyone is “spinning,” and lose the capacity critically to assess what and what is not true. 

It isn’t only politicians and “news readers,” of course, who engage in spinning.  Think about what’s going on in our denomination.  Those who don’t agree with paragraph G-6.0106b of our Constitution “spin” the statement in a way that gives them the appearance of upholding church law while defying it.  “Fidelity and chastity” become descriptive of committed same-sex partnerships.  Our denominational leaders “spin” a variety of issues in their attempt to hold our institution together.  The gavel does not come down on the final session of any General Assembly before groups and individuals begin to spin the Assembly’s decisions in a way that will be most favorable to the position that they hold.   Pastors stand in pulpits, and “spin” the plain words of Scripture to make them fit their particular theological bias.  The hard words of Jesus are “spun” in a way that makes the folks in the pew more comfortable with their lifestyles and peccadilloes.  And we who are sitting in the pews leave the sanctuary to “spin” the sermon that we have just heard so that it neither challenges nor offends us. 

To some, “spinning” sounds like a “kind and gentle” way to get their “truth” out.  But clearly, to “spin” is to engage – to one degree or another – in deception. 

Scripture offers us a corrective.  “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro, and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ…” 
How different our church would look if each were affirmatively and intentionally to “speak the truth in love” – if we were to say what we mean, and mean what we say – if we were gently to put it all out on the table with integrity and honesty, and without any guile and pretense.  Not offensively; not angrily – but, all the same, clearly and candidly.  Who knows what would happen if we were to do that?  But, it couldn’t be any worse than what we are living through now.

One of the dictionary definitions of “spinning” is “a motion that causes dizziness and disorientation.”  As far as I’m concerned, it’s time for the dizziness and disorientation to stop.