(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

The whole online world also can lend itself to allow for this group think and mob mentality. And all of these things play together. And forgive me, I'm struggling a little bit with my words this morning, just because this is such a massive topic and there's so many things at play that you just need to be aware of. And everything I'm saying right now, I see a lot of heads nodding. It's not like this is brand new information to you. I'm sure you've all probably thought about these things before, but we need to keep ourselves reminded of these, especially if you are on social media. Which, you know, there's a lot of benefit that can be had. We as a church use social media to get the message out, the sermons, the preaching, things like that, to stay in communication with one another. You know, we can coordinate events and there's a lot of great uses for these things. And I'm not saying that the tool itself is evil. That's like saying that a computer is evil because people can go and look at pornography online. The tool isn't evil, but it's how you use a tool that is what really matters. And there are a lot of ways that, and there's things like, I don't think Facebook or YouTube or whatever are inherently evil pieces of software. Now, maybe some of the people behind them are evil, but their actual tool that they have created isn't, there's nothing wrong with that. Like if you, depending on how you use it, it's completely fine. I mean, I think it's great to be able to see pictures and videos of other family members that live in other parts of the country and be able to kind of communicate easier and feel like you're a little bit more involved and see more what's going on. I think that's great. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But there's so many other things that present themselves to be problems. And especially when it comes to interactions and your communication with other people. And obviously the big thing is when it comes to religion, that's what oftentimes a lot of people will bring up. But just in general, there seems to be a lack of respect for people and people can get real quick to get hot on some issues and start mouthing off and spouting off their mouth in areas that if you had been standing face to face with that same exact person, you would never act that way or say those things. And we need to make sure that you don't fall into that same trap just because you might see those types of things happening around you or other people making these comments. Now, another thing that you have to be aware of is that you lose a lot of nonverbal communication sometimes when it comes to comments and writing things. That's actually very important. It's really easy to misconstrue intentions. And oftentimes, there's drama and fightings and strivings that happen for no reason really. It's just because people read something wrong or you miss a word or when you're speaking, your intonation and your voice, and there's so many cues that come across to help express what it is you're trying to express. And when it's all just typed out, and especially in shorthand and you're using all these shortcuts, the whole meaning doesn't get there. So we gotta be aware of that. But this group think or mob mentality that we need to be aware of, look at Exodus chapter 23, verse number one, the Bible says, thou shalt not raise a false report. Put not thine hand with the wicked to be an unrighteous witness. Now, first of all, we see over and over again, the Bible tells us not to bear false witness and not to raise a false report. One of the problems in social media is that there is a lot of fake news out there, a lot of fake information, information that's just lies or just simply not true. And what happens with social media, and this is a new phenomenon also, is that there's people out there that put out false information, and the love of money is the root of all evil, and there's websites and there's people that will put out fake information just to make money. Because the whole point, if you can make some type of a juicy headline, something that's gonna be clickbait or something that you think people are gonna wanna get into, there's actually a means of making money off of that. So if you could get a certain amount of traffic and visitors to a website, there's paid advertising on those sites, so these people get paid just by putting up whatever, and there's a lot of people that don't care about being honest and truthful. All they care about is making more money. So they don't have the morality to say, hey, I'm not gonna bear a false report or a false witness. I don't care who it hurts. I don't care about the truth. I just care about making money. There's plenty of people out there like that, so they insert these lies into the social media, and you just may be unsuspecting, and you see some friend that you know, oh, wow, I know this person. They posted this. You read it, and then you share it, and this is how this stuff spreads, right? Because oftentimes, too, so many people don't even wanna do any research on their own, and if something just kind of fits their worldview or if they already come to a conclusion, oh, well, that makes sense. I'm just gonna share this, and you don't even know what you're posting, and you're kind of becoming complicit with these false reports and false witnesses.