My Heart is Sometimes Sad

I started this blog about a month and a half ago. I know not everyone will agree with my thoughts or come from the same Christian thinking that I seek to utilize. And that's ok. My purpose for writing is largely to get people to think for themselves. It's ok for someone to disagree with me. However, I would hope that productive dialogue could take place from a place of mutual respect for differing points of view. I would hope that inflammatory or mean-spirited language wouldn't be necessary.

Why is my heart sad? Because I see such strong division in our country. I think we are living in a highly stressful time and many people are struggling to make sense of what COVID and racial tensions mean. But I also think words carry power. So many Facebook posts, Instagram posts, tweets on twitter can be published without a second thought, without fact-checking, or without even knowing the source of information if such a post claims to be factual.

I took one class in journalism in high school and one of the key things I learned was the need to know your source. The one major exception was "Deep Throat" who helped the Washington Post break the Watergate story. (And yes, I did just fact check myself to be sure my memory was accurate). What a shock in 2005 (yes, I fact checked that year too) when "Deep Throat" was revealed to be Mark Felt. But the principle stuck with me, if you are claiming a fact or something as truth - you need to know your source is a credible source.

Sadly, I think the internet and 24/7 news cycle changed the rules of what constitutes good journalism a while ago. Instead of being sure you knew your source and believed them to be credible and you could name your source in your published piece, the new rules are "be the first to break the story, you can use anonymous sources, mistakes can be corrected later."

Think of how many violent crimes such as a school shooting make headlines and then mistakes in reporting need to be corrected. Such a violent situation creates enough chaos as it is for the people living the unfortunate experience and directly affected. But then it seems news media outlets want to break the story first so headlines immediately start flying. But then a few hours later, corrected reports are issued. This is just one example of how misinformation can spread.

And how many articles to do you read or news stories that you hear on the radio or TV quote someone in a position to speak on the matter but the name of the person can't be shared because they don't really have permission to speak to the topic on hand. I'm sure current day news reporters are doing the best they can - but I personally doubt whenever I read or hear news quoting a source from someone who knows but whose name can't be revealed because they don't have permission to speak on the given topic. But speak they did and in my mind it leads to more speculation instead of stronger factual news reporting. I guess I'm just old school.

If anyone takes anything from this post - I hope it is that there is a place to differing opinions. But I wish that such opinion could be expressed in a respectful way, in non-inflammatory ways. Give thought to your words, the information you pass on, inflammatory or hate language really doesn't have a place for productive discourse.

This does bring to mind a Bible passage: "9 Be careful, however, that the exercise of your rights does not become a stumbling block to the weak.10 For if someone with a weak conscience sees you, with all your knowledge, eating in an idol’s temple, won’t that person be emboldened to eat what is sacrificed to idols?11 So this weak brother or sister, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.12 When you sin against them in this way and wound their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.13 Therefore, if what I eat causes my brother or sister to fall into sin, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause them to fall (I Corinthian 8 - NIV)".

We don't think too much about food sacrificed to idols in our culture today, but we do think a lot about rights and freedoms. I think a guiding principle or application could be that if the exercise of your rights or freedoms harms another - you need to exercise those rights or freedoms with gentleness and care. But then I do think that the exercise of rights or freedoms isn't always black and white. I think many times it comes down to a question of wisdom. May God have mercy on our God and culture.