Don’t Forget to Check Your Primary Source

by Victor Chen

In this current “stay at home” season, people are consuming social media, internet news outlets and streaming media more than ever.

With opinions regarding COVID-19 being disseminated, dissected and dismantled in a divisive political climate, we need to be careful. Information is being thrown our way in bite-sized, hourly updated portions that we don’t have time to digest the content we’ve consumed before more is thrown our way. 

To top it off, this is election year. We should not be naive in thinking the messages we see aren’t meant to sway us one way over the other.

If your head is spinning, you’re not alone. What are we to do?

A journalistic principle rings true during this time: Don’t forget to check your primary sources. 

Take the time to investigate and check your primary sources. Don’t take secondary sources at face value. Beware of any claims made without any cited sources.

For Christians, we need to constantly check our primary source. I’m not talking about public health reports, scientific journals or statistical research data.

I’m talking about the Word of God.

God’s Word is our primary source. How often do we refer to it throughout the day? Is it the dominant voice in a sea of voices occupying our mind? Do we give it more attention than the latest clickbait headline that pops up on our feed? Is it the lens through which we filter everything we take in?

Brothers and sisters, more than ever we need to ensure that we are not swayed to and fro by every wind of doctrine that comes our way (Ephesians 4:14). Let the Word of God be the rock upon which we build our lives (Matthew 7:24-27). We, the people of God, should be steadfast in our trust and unwavering in our faith.

Will you check everything against your primary source — the Word of God?

 “… until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.” (Ephesians 4:13-14 ESV)