Have you ever noticed how quickly we get up in arms over something? Media reports come out about some event, and we rush to judgement. Usually, we form our opininon on the issue with only a 30 second sound byte as the basis of our information. Too often, it results in having “egg on our face.”
For instance, I was as shocked and alarmed as anyone else over the news of a “pregnancy pact” among teenage girls in Massachusets. You can read cbc.ca’s article here. I wanted to write an entire post about it, asking the question, “What is wrong with our youth?” However, it turns out the may not have been a pact afterall. In fact, yesterday, the cbc posted an updated article that you can read here.
Now, it is still alarming to me that so many teens (many under the age of 16) are getting pregnant. I think it does say something about society in general. But, the point is, we rush to judgement based on a short news report that clearly didn’t have all the facts.
The same could be true regarding the story of a Quebec judge who overruled a father’s grounding of his daughter. Here’s the Globe and Mail’s article on that story. Once again, blogs everywhere jumped in to criticize the judge in this story. Facebook groups were formed. Even I couldn’t believe it. Well, once again, it turns out there might be more to the story that we first realized.
The beauty of today’s technology is that we have no excuse to rush to judgement on issues. A few choice searches, a couple of clicks, and you can usually get a well-rounded view on any issue or story making it’s rounds today.
Perhaps we need to slow down a little when the media reports things. Maybe we need to take a little time to see if all the facts will come out before we say too much.
Maybe James 1:19–20 makes sense in this context: “Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires”
