I write every day either for a social media posting or for a writing project that might end up becoming a book. I have noticed something that we all do from time-to-time. We read something through the lens of our bias, and it ticks us off or runs contrary to what we perceive as truth. It’s human nature and we are all guilty. In our shared guilt, we do have an option. We can draw upon patience and wisdom and do a second read-through to make sure our biased comment is valid and something we really need to post.

A few years ago, I had someone leave a negative comment on Amazon about one of my books. The person labeled the content of my book as false teaching and left a one-star rating. I’m a big boy and can handle honest criticism, but for the life of me, the object of the criticism was written nowhere in the book. It was a head-scratcher. In other instances, I’ve had people fire off critical comments on my social media accounts that made me wonder if they actually read what I wrote. In some cases, the article addressed their actual concern, but they could not see it because either they were having a bad day, or they wanted to use my public platform as a place for their voice to be heard by a wider audience. Who knows?

We owe each other a second read. These second reads are not to search for verification and affirmation of our bias, but to see if what we are commenting/complaining about is really there. This is not limited to our comments on someone’s social media account. It applies to all our human interactions where it is always better to believe the best before we assume the worst.