To piggyback yesterday’s post of crowdsourcing, I’m sharing a brief thread of interactions I had a while back. An online friend posted a caution to grabbing social media content and sharing without really processing what they were sharing (i.e., the source, content deeper in the article than the first two paragraphs, misleading but attractive statistics). The post included a reference to this practice being something “important to remember every now and then.”

Over lunch with an in-person friend the next day, we talked about the post. My friend responded, “It’s like taking Scripture out of context. We can insert it into another context to give it pretty much any meaning we want.” She added, “and that’s something important to remember more than every now and then.”

Indeed.

A lot of damage has been done by mis-contextualizing Scripture. Misapplying truth makes it no less true but it can tear down instead of build up. It’s similar to taking a characteristic and molding it into what we want it to portray in a specific situation, usually to our benefit and often to someone else’s detriment.

For those who know Scripture well, can we say Pharisee?

And for all of us, can we please say, Just stop it! Let’s watch our context, whether it’s how we’re applying Scripture or how we’re sharing online content. What we do with the details of our lives matter. That includes how we interact with others, whether online or in person. It includes what we say, share, and like. It includes how we approach truth and how we handle it once we grasp it.