“Spouting off before listening to the facts is both shameful and foolish.”

Everyone loves a good story.  Most stories, even fiction, are rooted in some experience or set of events that someone experienced.  The greatest science fiction writers take what they know of today and then build upon that with their imagination that can then be void of facts.  But, somewhere there were facts that might have started the ideas.  And there are stories that are supposed to be true, but because that truth gets stretched or distorted the story becomes something that can’t be counted on or trusted.  We see it all around us now and we wonder what we can do to rid our society of this prevalence.  Well, we are the antidote. Yes, us.  We tell the stories, we repeat the stories, we spread the stories.  And if we tell, repeat or spread stories that we know to be not true, or we doubt their truth, then we become not part of the problem, we are the problem!

So how do we stay grounded in our search for truth.  Terry Looper in his book, Sacred Pace, posits that it starts with what is going on inside of us.  When we are spiritually and emotionally healthy we have a much better chance of recognizing our “biases and blind spots”.  He says, “the more dysfunctional a person is, the more filters they’ll have for interpreting perceived facts to fit their paradigm.  Everybody likes their story; not everybody likes the facts.” This resonates with me as there are times in my life when I allow stress, pressure, or conflicts to distract me from the facts, allowing my unhealthy emotions to conjure up my own set of facts to fit the story I want to tell.  When we do this, we are in dangerous territory of hurting our witness and being perceived as ones who don’t respect or won’t listen to the truth. As in any other vulnerable areas of our lives, we must return to the Lord for setting us straight.  If we ask, He will send us through His Word, Spirit and others to open our eyes to what is the truth we need to accept. And, that truth is what we need to carry forward.

Reference:  Proverbs 18:13 (New Living Translation)