Over the past several months we have seen many high profile movements come about in our country. Some examples would include “Black Lives Matter”, “Me too” and “Students Against Gun Violence”. Most recently we have seen the “Red for Ed” movement in Arizona as public school teachers protested low pay and poor conditions in classrooms.

What I find in seeing comments on Face Book is the lack of facts that people post regarding these and other movements. The issue is not whether one agrees with the positions or not, but whether the comments are based on actual facts and not just one’s feelings.

As a committed Christian, I have seen over the years our “tribe” look very foolish publishing and commenting on things that turned out to be untrue, but yet shared as gospel. In other words the facts were either not researched accurately or Christians just parroted what others reported as truth, when in fact it was just rumor.

Some examples: in the 1970’s it was reported that the famous atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair was trying to get religious programming off the airwaves. Now Ms. O’Hair would have loved for that to happen, but she was not behind any movement to the FCC to get religious broadcasting banned. Some Christian thought she had done something, shared that with others and then the rumor spread like wildfire. When the facts came out the Christian community looked ridiculous.

I also remember that some Christians felt that former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was the Anti-Christ. This was based on the theological belief that Jesus would return within 40 years after Israel became a country again in 1948. So everyone began looking for someone who would fit the description of the Anti-Christ. Somehow Kissinger fit the bill due to some numerical understanding of his name adding up to 666.

So now we come back to all these high profile movements. Are we talking to knowledgeable people in those movements to understand their position? Are we checking on statements posted to see if they are accurate? Even if we love someone posting those statements, we all can get caught up in monkey see, monkey do proclamation and just pass on comments without doing our research.

It is so easy to let bias and opinion cloud our judgment. We believers need to be the most responsible people armed with facts and truth before we go around proclaiming anything publicly. When we consistently do that, then our message of the gospel will be more readily accepted and non believers can see something authentic in us that they would want. Get the facts, get the truth, and then we will be set free.