Latest / Beliefs, Ballots, And BullDawgs / Wednesday 4/29/26
Transcript
- Greg: Hey, what's up and good morning guys. It's Wednesday, April 29th, 2026. I'm your host, Greg Miller. And this is the latest episode of beliefs, ballots and bets. Brief and faithful steps for wiser choices. Today's theme is guarding truth when media noise feels stacked against you. The scripture verses for the day comes from Proverbs again. Proverbs chapter 18 verses 12 and 13. This is one most of us have heard before. says, before a downfall, the heart is haughty, but humility comes before honor. To answer before listening, that is folly and shame. These lines form kind of a corrective pair, so to speak. The first verse, verse 12 warns us about arrogance, and this is one we've all heard. Pride comes before a fall is the most common version. But arrogance often precedes ruin and a proud posture can make us vulnerable to error because we simply assume that we already know everything and we're right and there's no reason for any of that to be questioned. And oftentimes that is the mentality we have right before we are corrected and that downfall comes. And then verse 13 gives us kind of a practical flip side and this is when I think we really all encounter a lot today. Answering before hearing is a shameful folly according to the Bible. And, you know, we can all think about examples of how many times we've been in communication with somebody and you absolutely know they're not listening to a word you said. They are already formulating their response. They are simply not hearing anything you say. And together, these two require us to input some habits, you know, a humble posture and disciplined listening. Neither of these comes naturally in our society these days. These take work and you can apply this to media. Humility resists the instinct to take the fastest and loudest narrative as the truth. And that's so much of what we see these days is what gets amplified is rarely accurate and correct. But it's what gets emotions and it's what gets clicks and that's a dangerous, dangerous thing. you know, discipline listening, kind of means taking us back to, you know, when you hear something, go back to the original source, hearing the full context and verifying something before you make a public judgment. You know, too many times we judge something, critique something, or in some cases, we just share something before we've ever actually done the work to verify if it's true or if the source is even credible. You know, the danger we deal with today, and again, we're all guilty of this, is all of the social media platforms and everything rewards us for hot takes and catchy frames and how we present things and very little on credibility and accuracy. We reward speed and attention over accuracy. you know, Scripture pushes us to try to slow this spiral. You humility keeps us teachable. and careful hearing will protect us from allowing these things to just cascade and spiral out of control. Too many times in today's society, but because of the way these things spread, truth kind of becomes truth by repetition rather than verification, and that's a dangerous, dangerous slope. The truth is, it's such an important thing. It is so much more formative than I think we all realize. you know, knowing truth, being able to anchor in truth. helps discipline the heart. It helps shape our communities. And in long term, know, knowing and anchoring in the truth, it preserves honor and then humility. Humility protects honor. Being humble allows you to continue to grow closer to God and work on those things that God's calling you to work on. And as we move through the world and so much of it is influenced by social media, you know, the themes for what we can do to protect ourselves from spiraling out of control and becoming a part of this cesspool is, one of them I have is kind of a two sentence rule. If I come across something that irks me or makes me ponder things, I ask myself, first of all, can I explain this post or this article in two fairly simple sentences? And then can I name and would I defend the primary source? If I can't explain what the article or the post is really trying to convey, and I don't know or trust the source, well, maybe I shouldn't share that. You know, that sounds like common sense, but that is something that I think all of us could really take in and ⁓ apply these days. And then the second one is, you know, kind of own your mistakes. You know, it is something that is so hard for us to do. We see it all the time. know, something will be posted in big, bold headline print. And then 10 days later, when the truth comes out, the retractions on page six somewhere that you barely see. People don't like to apologize. People don't like to admit they were wrong. But I think that's something that on a small scale, if we can all commit to doing that and have some, kind of public correctional moments where we come out and say, Hey, maybe I shared something that I hadn't verified and it turns out I wasn't correct. think taking that stance will, will start to, to spread a little bit and allow maybe other folks to do that as well. You know, we all. And this is kind of a practical application because it gets so much of what we deal with these days is, is we're just consumed with social media and we all see people and we see posts from people that we know. And you know, somewhere deep down in the core, we, just know they're sharing bad information. We know that, that what they are being fed and what they are believing and in turn, what they are then then spewing out isn't correct. isn't the correct story. It isn't the truth. And it isn't reality. And I think we're dealing with a situation of how do we handle these things? And I think one of the things we need to do is focus on trying to make it a conversation, not a confrontation. And that sounds very cheesy, but ask more questions. Hey, where did you see that? Why do you think that? What's the source? Try to slow down and understand where are they getting this information from? Because I see people share stuff all the time, and sometimes instead of arguing with them and trying to them just ask them some questions and get them to really start thinking and identifying the fact that you know maybe they shared it or maybe they don't really know what it says or where it came from or if it's even true and then you know if if if you can help them find something and if you you know some of these people that are online constantly and posting stuff constantly and sharing stuff constantly take a couple opportunities where you know them to be incorrect and and again quietly privately courteously kindly you know, try to show them where their mistakes were. Try to show them the other side of the story. Try to show them the other facts that maybe they didn't include. You know, include a fact check. know, invite them to a short verification. Say, hey, look, you want to read through this together. You know, it at least gives you an opportunity to see if this person is really open to trying to get to the truth or if they're just so committed to pushing their narrative. And then if a person continues to repeat falsehoods and make false claims and post things that you know are not accurate, well then you just got to limit your interaction with these people because at the end of the day, you can't continue to consume non-truths or you will start to believe them. And so if you'll try to help somebody correct themselves, again, kindly, politely and privately, and then if they don't correct themselves, then it lets you know that they're not based in truth. They're not looking to operate in reality. And at that point then, then you just move on to other relationships and try to limit your interaction. That sort of thing can help protect the truth and keeps things from spiraling out of control over time. Three plays for today. ⁓ Got a reverse of the normal situation. We've had a good run usually of two baseball plays and a basketball play. Today the model's giving us two basketball plays and one baseball play. We're going with the Orlando Magic plus nine and a half at Detroit. Simply hoping to keep this as a low storing game. I don't expect Orlando to win, but I'm hoping they can keep it to nine and a half under to under double digits. Second basketball game going to Houston at LA. I hate backing LeBron. I'm an MJ as the goat all day every day. Don't come at me with anything else. Give me the Lakers minus four and a half. I think they get the series done at home. Katie's so so questionable. I don't think he's going to play Lakers minus four and a half at home. I think closes the series. And the baseball player, we're giving the Washington Nationals and the New York Mets over seven and a half. ⁓ it's just a low total. I think these two teams can get there. So we're going over the number there as we wrap up today. Let's, let's remember to, to focus on the two main points of today's scripture, humble your posture and listen before answering, slow down, verify sources, you know, correct things privately and kindly when possible. And then if things get out of control, channel, try to channel that frustration and those, those emotions into something positive, something precise, something actionable, ⁓ rather than just continuing to spew the outrage. So, all right, guys, that's going to wrap it up today. You know, the theme of the day is, is guard your truth like a virtue, get in your Bible, say your prayers, love each other and tell the truth. God bless.