Tag Archives: mistruth

To tell the truth

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oathThe post from the other day offering a clarification about the erroneous e-mail that was circulating alleging that Muslims had attacked a church is getting read a lot. The church in Lubbock that was connected to the original message has posted a clarification as well, but apparently a lot of people are looking at what I wrote the other day. I think it’s already the most read post I’ve written; that’s almost sad in a way.

Still, I think that every time one of these mistruths gets clarified, some people learn to be careful before passing on something they’ve received. For years, a rumor would raise its ugly head from time to time, something about Madalyn Murray O’Hair trying to limit religious broadcasting in some way. (The exact form varied according to the time the rumor was being circulated) Apparently the rumor began in 1975 (if not earlier) and circulated in its various incarnations for over 20 years. I even heard it in a sermon; when I pointed out to the preacher that the story was a hoax, his reply was, “So?”

And that’s the response I hear so often when these things are shown to be false. One of the commenters on this blog even said basically the same thing about my post the other day. I know one brother that constantly circulates e-mails that he’s received, primarily about politics. A few of them are even true. When I’ve pointed out the falsehoods he’s distributed, he always basically says that since the person he is attacking is evil, it doesn’t matter if what he spreads is true or not.

Yes, it does matter. We must be known as people who speak the truth. People who are careful to speak the truth. If we win a victory by telling lies, that victory is nothing but a defeat.

We must not be mongers of rumors and half-truths, speculation and accusation. We have a message for the world, a divine one, one that will not tolerate being packaged with a lie. If we hold on to the lie, we will lose the truth. It will not remain with us. It cannot remain with us. Just as holiness cannot abide with sin, truth cannot and will not reside where lies are at home. We will speak nothing but the truth or we will come to speak nothing but lies.

Let us spread truth. If we accidentally share something that isn’t true, let us not rest until we’ve done everything in our power to rectify that.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help us God.

When mistruths go viral…

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featherThe story was making the rounds of the Internet. Probably still is. One of the latest versions carried the subject line “MUSLIMS ATTACK CHURCH OF CHRIST IN LUBBOCK.” That’s the kind of story that will get people’s attention. Images of robed Middle Easterners bursting into a church building in the heart of the Bible Belt. Religious persecution. A hint of what is sure to come with all that is going on in the U.S. today.

There were three minor problems with the account of this incident:

  1. The attack didn’t happen in Lubbock.
  2. It wasn’t a church of Christ that was attacked.
  3. The attackers weren’t Muslim.

What actually happened was three convicts decided to disrupt a church service in a prison. It wasn’t a religious act, nor a political one. It was the act of a few prison malcontents; hardly an unusual happening. It scared some of the Christians and they jumped to conclusions about those that interfered with the assembly.

There is an e-mail going around written by Wayne Horton with an accurate account of what happened. It reads, in part:

I got this email last week. The prison about which they speak is the Price Daniel Unit in Snyder. I was there in the late 90s as their Chaplain. I am the one who recruited the men who go there form Greenlawn. They are good men. But they made a mistake.  The guys who did that were NOT MUSLIM. They were three guys from medium custody and they just came to cause trouble.  It frightened the Green Lawn guys  because they’d never seen that behavior before.
The Greenlawn elder who wrote the email has apologized to the prison officials and the Muslim prison community. I repeat these guys were not Muslims.
There is so much fear among Christians of the Muslims, this is not going to help. Please contact everyone you’ve sent this to and tell them the truth. Call Greenlawn and speak to Jack Cummings. He will tell you it was NOT muslims.
A Volunteer is the safest person on a prison compound. This was just a bad-acting medium custody trouble-maker. Every other inmate in that Chapel would have protected Jack and the other volunteers.
Now, in case anybody wants to accuse me of trying to protect Muslims, I’m not.  I believe – same as you – that it is by the name of Jesus ONLY that men are saved and no muslim has trusted Jesus so no Muslim is saved.
We just don’t need any more animosity between us.  We need to be able to talk and study honestly with them.

My guess is that it won’t be passed around nearly as much as the inaccurate story. People rarely put the same effort into spreading the truth as they do in spreading mistruth.

So here’s my suggestion. If you received this story or if you receive it in the next few days, contact the person who sent it and ask them if they’ve read the corrected version. If not, share it with them and ask them to send it to whomever sent them the misleading one. And ask them to send the correction to everyone they sent the false story to.

I don’t have any illusions of actually stopping this story. It will probably show up in sermons and blogs for years to come. But maybe, just maybe, we can remind people to be responsible with what they forward. If you discover its not true, I think you have a moral obligation to send out a retraction/correction. As Christians, we need to stand for truth.