Even as fools walk along the road, they lack sense and show everyone how stupid they are. - Ecclesiastes 10:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (October 5, 2016): Ecclesiastes 10

Theologian James Burton Coffman remembers a sign positioned at a very dangerous blind corner on an old Tennessee Road. The sign read - "Slow Down! You Might Meet Another Fool." There are certain circumstances that somehow the warning would seem to be unnecessary, and it surprises us that we still need to be told what to do. Slowing down as you approach a sharp blind corner would seem to be one of those situations. You would think that the act of slowing down would be automatic. But we know that that just isn’t true.

Maybe a more current example are the fake news sites that seem to dominate social media accounts. It sometimes seems that anyone can see through the lie, and yet the lie is transmitted from account to account, reposted on various homepages and media sites with an alarming frequency. In this election cycle, it had become readily apparent that one of the deciding factors might be the predominance of news that just isn’t real. It is the Barak Obama birther scandal taken to even more absurd heights. Often it contains an element of truth, but most is an outright lie. This isn’t about satirical outlets like “The Onion” that make up news on a regular basis, although apparently even “The Onion” has had people believing their satirical fiction. It is about someone trying to pass off lies as if it is genuine and real and part of the news cycle. And Social Media users seem to be extremely vulnerable to believe the lie and pass it on to their followers. It is part of the danger of the release of news through the internet - Truth begins to be fluid and changing.

Some years ago I made the decision that I was not going to pass on anything unless I trusted the message and felt that it was important enough to give to those who are connected to me. If the email or post contains the words; “Pass this on to seven of your friends in the next seven minutes, and I guarantee that God will bless you,” or anything even remotely similar, it is automatically rejected no matter how good the message. Because Solomon is right; people will know our intelligence level by the way we walk down the road. And we really don’t need to give people we barely know even more evidence of our own stupidity.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:  Ecclesiastes 11