We have been programmed to cherry-pick our enemies. If you have not yet discovered, our news media has become the official mouthpiece for a variety of agendas each attempting to form our interpretation of reality. Internet pundits offer garish and overstated opinions for people who are willing to believe anything they broadcast. This programming can even come from pulpits that are filled with more enthusiasm about expressing their ill-formed opinion than they are about discovering the truth of a matter.

As we listen to these lop-sided representations of reality we form our opinions of what is right or wrong. These opinions are formed not because we have firsthand evidence of what is true, but because we digested what was offered without discerning the ingredients that formed the menu.

Take, for example, police officers. There are approximately 2.5 million police-citizen contacts per day in the United States. That is 75 million contacts per month and 900 million contacts per year. Less than one percent of all police interactions with the public involve the use of any kind of force to effect an arrest. A minuscule percentage of that one percent involves the use of deadly force. Yet a single incident of the misuse of deadly force by a police officer is put on an endless news cycle loop running 24 hours a day giving the impression that all cops are violent Neanderthals looking for a chance to kill or injure anyone they meet. There are some bad apples for sure, but they are the extreme minority. Most cops are there to protect and serve. 

This cherry-picking can apply to pastors, attorneys, politicians, teachers, straight white men, gay people, or whomever you have been programmed to distrust, dislike or even hate.

How are followers of Jesus to rightly respond in this cesspool of social ignorance? We should walk in Spirit-led wisdom and discernment before we open our mouths, write a comment on social media, or align with a group shouting words of protest supporting an ill-informed cause.  As the volume of hate rises our voices should be louder still calling for truth and reason. 

We should never allow ourselves to be lured into a place where we take everything we hear or see at face value without a deeper inquiry. We should resist broad brushing an entire group of people defining them as our enemies just because we were told by someone they are our enemies. Someday that premature judgment will become a boomerang that will return and strike us.