As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“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
“These tips can be used when evaluating the flood of information and misinformation flowing into your life every day” - C.Post
“Today the Soviet Union is gone but newspeak and a thousand forms of disinformation thrive. I can do frontline reporting … and a reader will email to say I didn’t see what I saw because it doesn’t conform to a political narrative. She and the rest of us can fall prey to platform algorithms and manipulated content disgorged from a news cycle that never sleeps.
“So, if pointing out the lack of logic behind a conspiracy theory won’t work, what will? By God’s grace, what can we do? Here are a few thoughts that have emerged from wise friends who I have discussed this with” - Eric Geiger
“This is not to say that truth is relative or that reason doesn’t work or that persuasion isn’t possible. It’s just that, in the real world, believing and not believing are complicated.” - Veith
Discussion