Today’s Daily Lesson

Today’s Lectionary to Life reflection, “FakeBook,” is drawn from 2 Peter 2:1-3 and comes from Ryon Price.

The Ministers of Misinformation have been hard at work. This week Facebook  announced 126 million users saw adds purchased by the Russians and intended to sway the 2016 U.S. elections.  And they only paid for 29 million.  We “shared” the rest.

Fake news is and its consequences are real. 2 Peter says, the way of truth has fallen into disrepute and we’ve been exploited “with fabricated stories”.

We didn’t know we were being exploited. We didn’t know we were vulnerable. We didn’t know the Russians were preying on our fears about law and order, race and religion. We didn’t know we could be had so easily.

We never thought how hitting the “Share” button we were actually breaking one of the Ten Commandments — the one about not bearing false witness. How could we have known that it was a lie? It was the internet; it had to be true. We were only passing along what we’d received. It sounded so good — because it confirmed what we thought. It tickled our ears and all the prejudice bones in our bodies also.

Now we wonder if any of it was true.

Let’s covenant not to share stories on social media that we haven’t tried to verify as facts. That’s a small step in the right direction when we’re talking about something as serious as one of Ten Commandments, not to mention the future of our democracy.

We should schedule a workshop or two in our Church on implicit bias, so we can understand just how susceptible we are to all manner of topics ripe for Russian exploitation – like Race.

Peter’s letter says those who sow deception into the community have condemnation “hanging over them”.

I take that as a warning – and not just to the Russians.

Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. You can read his Daily Lessons blog at ryonprice.blogspot.com.