THE CASE AGAINST FUNDAMENTALIST BLOGGERS WHO INTENTIONALLY MISQUOTE THEIR OPPONENTS

One of the three ethical issues I have increasing problems with, is the way Christians propagate inaccurate information by spreading mass emails and text messages as if it is the truth. While it is fairly good to include your friends in a prayer request or emails concerning religious issues, it is another matter to forward messages that aren't conclusively true. I wrote about this previously, see here.

There also is a second, even more serious, ethical issue: Christians who misquote writers or speakers and then using these misquotations to attack their integrity. While a person should be willing to accept responsibility for his/her remarks, it is a quite different story to be quoted by somebody else - intentionally out of its original context - to convey a different impression of what was actually said. A point in case is the uproar in America about pres Obama's Supreme Court nominee, who apparently implied she has more wisdom than a white man because she is a Hispanic woman. In the mean time, she said she understand the issues of Hispanic people better than white men as she herself is Hispanic in the same way they, as white men, will understand white people's issues better than herself.

A more serious concern than quotation in American politics is the sudden proliferation of so-called Christian apologetic bloggers that attack fellow Christians who hold other views than their own. It seems the amount of hate speech construed under the guise of defending biblical truth - by showing how the church gets infiltrated by the devil through viewpoints held by Christian authors and speakers - is exploding on the internet. This movement gets its energy from attacking public figures and pastors and quoting them in such a way that it sounds as if they said a certain subversive thing - almost demonical, while as a matter of fact they actually said something quite different.

Let me provide you with an example: On the blog "Waak en Bid" (Watch and Pray) this now infamous blogger wrote a critique on an article published by Hennie Stander – editor of the Afrikaans magazine Maksiman and lecturer at the University of Pretoria, that was published here. He quoted Stander to show how Stander propagated accepting a worldly approach to peace. Apparently Stander said we should accept the reaction of a worker, who burned down his employer's house in an act of revenge, as normal and acceptable. Said Blogger even quoted from the blog that Stander said this is normal behavior, to make his dismay more clearly.

On the surface it would indeed seem that Hennie Stander said people should take revenge on other people. The Blogger, Thomas Lessing, is therefore quite correct in admonishing him.

Now, let us read what Stander wrote:

"Dit is nogal iets wat ’n mens moet onthou, naamlik dat vrede nie maklik of goedkoop is nie. Dit vra altyd groot opoffering en ’n duur prys. Die rede is doodgewoon omdat vrede ’n onnatuurlike reaksie is. Dit is meer gewoon of natuurlik om byvoorbeeld wraak te neem. Ek sien juis dat ’n werker in Johannesburg hierdie week sy werkgewer se huis (wat in ’n goeie buurt gestaan het) afgebrand het omdat hy gereken het dat hy benadeel is. Dit is ’n natuurlike reaksie om so op te tree."

Translated into English it reads:

"It is something that we should always remember, and that is peace does not come easily or cheap. It always asks a huge sacrifice and an expensive price. The reason is actually becaus peace is an unnatural reaction. It is more ordinary or natural for example to take revenge. I saw this week that a worker in Johannesburg burned down his employer's house (in a nice neighbourhood) becaused he felt wronged. This is a natural reaction to act in this way."

Stander actually never said revenge is the standard with which a person should act. It is quite clear that he propagates striving for peace as something that is hard work as it doesn't come naturally to people. Revenge, by contrast, is a more natural human reaction.

Stander's remarks are theologically quite correct, as the Bible teaches we naturally tend to adhere to the urges of our sinful nature and as new creation in Christ we should do the things that stand in opposition to our old being.

Now enters a blog writer who makes his living by continuously attacking the integrity of public South African theologians, by reacting on every possible publication as the newest evidence of the writer's new-age heresy. By intentionally misconstruing the remarks made by prof Stander, he succeeds in making it sound that it said something quite different in order to fit the argument which he is putting forth: Hennie Stander is promoting ideas that stand in contrast with Biblical teaching.

This amounts to slander.

This is also contrary to what the Bible teaches about Christians speaking the truth in love.

And it causes people who could have been reached for Christ, to cringe away from a loveless, hate-spewing religion as the message being communicated by these intentional misquoting of other Christians in order to attack their integrity, is that all Christians are like this. In my humble opinion this is to play with rules that were set by the devil himself: spread half-truths by destroying character and good intentions and you will never reach the unsaved for Christ!

Well, not all Christians are like this.

We don't hate people who differ from us in Scripture interpretation. We don't kill off other Christians' integrity by intentionally and constantly attacking their views while implying their views are heretical or demonic. We don't purposefully take brothers and sisters in Christ's remarks from its original context to make it sound different so we can conclusively prove they are subverting the faith and leading other Christians astray. And we don't make it our mission to commit character murder by spreading slanderous half-truths about our fellow Christian leaders, mentors, establishments or thinkers.

If I were a nonbeliever, searching for God, and I started my quest by reading these emails, blogs or even comments on other bloggers' sites, I would run away very far and very fast from anything Christian.