“Can you believe that church has a waterslide baptismal?
“The NFL is going to ban the National Anthem before football games!”
“Copy and paste the following if you don’t want your pictures and posts used for advertising…”
“Like this post and Facebook will donate money to…”
“The atheist professor dared God to stop a piece of chalk from breaking…”
“Einstein humiliated an atheist professor…”
Many Christians see things on the internet that either enrage or excite them. They then often post or share them on social media. Unfortunately, they rarely fact-check the stories they share or react to. The result is that Christians look naïve, reactionary, and foolish.
I like a rule I learned from Greg Koukl: “Never read a Bible verse.” In other words, never read a verse in isolation. However, I think one verse, though out of context, contains a principle that it would be wise to apply more generally: “examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good.” The first item above is actually referring to a story posted on a satire website, the Babylon Bee. The folks at the Babylon Bee post hilarious parodies of the Christian subculture. But they are writing satire, not news. It is important that when you see a story that gets you riled up, check the source. If you follow a link to a website and you are not sure, look for a link that says “about” or something like that. At the bottom of every page on the Babylon Bee, you can see “The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.” A list of satire sites from around the world can be found here.
As for the rest of the items above, a simple look at websites like snopes.com. or factcheck.org will save you from looking stupid when you share the latest internet myth.
As Christians, we are called to be salt and light. We are to display the “peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11) not to look like religious nuts.
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The Apologetics Minion 
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