As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“Gallagher, 80, and his Gallagher Financial Group advertised on Christian radio with the tagline, ‘See you in church on Sunday.’ He promoted his investment business in books… and on Christian radio broadcasts.” - RNS
“The people I have especially in view are those who are not vaccinated because of fear of being out of step with people they respect, and in step with people they don’t admire. My message to them is simple: You are free.” - Desiring God
“As writers like Maryanne Wolf worry, our daily deluge of ‘eye-byte-sized information’ creates the illusion we are well-informed and, at the same time, strangles our critical thinking capacities.” - TGC
“MIT Technology Review recently showed that troll farms had reached over 140 million users on Facebook before the 2020 election. A troll farm is an organized group of users (or even bots) who intentionally craft content to exploit division and sow discord in society.” - C.Leaders
I’ve written previously about the role of good sources in the exercise of discernment. To flesh them out, I’ve also offered some practical tips: closest is best, deprioritize opinion, and look past headlines.
Here we consider three more tips for better use of sources.
“If your ‘news’ sources know what you believe and like (and they do) and you believe what you like to hear, then it should be no surprise that you are presented with more of it, magnified and deepened.” - Ken Brown
“…many Christians have blasted past rightful skepticism into nonsensical fear-mongering. They assume the worst of others, and they see conspiracies and evil under every bush.” - P&D
“Discernment” is shorthand for the skill of identifying what’s good, right, true and most important from among inferior alternatives. The fact that discernment requires a maturing process through “training” (Heb. 5:14) tells us that these inferior alternatives often seem superior. It also tells us we can get better at it.
Good thing! People have instant access to more claims and counter-claims than at any time in human history. Christians need discernment more than ever before.
“When platforms make their livings by harvesting and selling our attention, they achieve that by shoving unsolicited junk into our minds, while we obediently scroll down and down and down.” - Chris Best
Discussion