Friends,

Now is the time to put your doubting skills and tendencies to work, and I’m not talking about God. I’m talking about information.

When you receive information that just doesn’t sound like something a particular person/organization/source would say, don’t default to the-whole-world-has-gone-crazy-why-not-them way of thinking. Put on your doubting caps.

Recently churches all over a Texas town got a mailer that was ostensibly from a local Presbyterian church urging them to to vote for a particular candidate. Never mind that such things are totally against Presbyterian polity(or rules). Never mind that the postmark on the mailer was from Minneapolis. People were incensed that this congregation would do something so outrageous–which, of course, they hadn’t.

An employee of a small business had his FB hacked by someone spreading Nazi propaganda. The hack-ee is not a white supremacist . The owner of the business he works for is not a white supremacist, and yet the business has been besieged by angry and awful reviews on Yelp and Google.

The politician makes a firm and definitive statement about something that happened in the past that doesn’t jive with your memory of the event. Check it out before deciding that you must be mistaken. Just because someone says something with confidence does not make it true.

Skeptics and seekers of the truth are imperative not only to the well-being of our faith, but to society as a whole.  Those who question the truth and call out those spread falsehoods are needed now more than ever.

Keep doubting, my friends. Keep doubting.

Rev. Anne Russ