Bearing False Witness In The 21st Century

Ed Stetzer (click here for a bio) from Christianity Today has written a simple but very important article that we religiously conservative Christians need to read. The article is about bearing false witness on, a.k.a., lying about, our neighbor by spreading fake news (click here for the article).

Not much will be said here about the article because it speaks for itself. When we spread fake news about others, we are often breaking the 8th commandment which prohibits bearing false witness against our neighbors. We are also harming our witness for Christ. We should note that it didn't take a pandemic to get us religiously conservative Christians for to spread fake news, we have been doing that for a while. Stetzer's message is that we should repent of that and use reliable news sources to get our stories.

All of that is simple and true. But how do we know what is a reliable news source. This is something that Stetzer really does not adequately address. For Stetzer doesn't really mention any tools or principles that would help us determine what is a reliable news source and what isn't except that he warns us against being suckers for conspiracy theories.

Many of us religiously conservative Christians are afraid to trust any secular news sources. In fact, we often have trouble trusting any secular sources of information whether they report on general news or other information. This insularity makes us vulnerable to Christians and others who wish to become followers of their ideologies or agenda. And that especially occurs when one closely associates one's political views with their Christian faith. Such association often lead to misplaced loyalties, deep loyalties to things and ideas that go against the Gospel. And that leads to tribalism. And before we know it, our loyalties, rather than research and questioning, determine what is real news and what is fake news.

The religiously conservative Christian response to climate change, for example, has often rejected what is reported by climate change scientists. Why? It is because the implications of climate change science flies in the face of what we have been taught about America and its way of life. Thus, we often exclude scientific sources of information about climate change to focus on what those who believe the same about America and its way of life as we do.

It isn't that science is infallible. But it is that Church history tells us that we should be very careful in disputing carefully researched scientific positions. For example, both Protestant and Roman Church leaders once sharply condemned those who promoted heliocentrism. And yet, those who claimed that the sun was the center of our solar system were proven right and that is despite how many religiously conservative Christian leaders used passages from the Bible to argue their case.

The above is partly behind why we religiously conservative Christians fall for spreading fake news. And that was not covered by Stetzer.

Other than that, Stetzer's article, though simple, provides a very good appeal for us and others to stop believing and spreading fake news. One thing I use to help me reduce the spreading of fake news is to use a website that reports on the factual reliability rating of most of the news sources out there. One can also use reliable fact check websites to test individual stories. One of my favorite fact check websites to use is factcheck.org.