Fact or Fiction/Truth or Perception

[dizzyde]

Well, this thread is the result of something that I have seen in several threads recently, and I wanted some feedback.

Am I "persnickety" as one poster put it, to expect people to qualify and differentiate between something they have been told or something that they have an opinion about and something I like to call "the truth". Even that is troublesome, because outside of the Word of God, even truth can be subjective. Each persons version of the truth about a situation is based on their perception.

I have no problem with someone saying that they feel a certain way, or that they heard something that sounded bad, but were not sure about. But when these things are presented as absolutes, it bothers me.

In my own life, I tend to most always question and filter everything I hear, until I have all the information available. A humorous slant on this topic is the many times I will tell my mother something, only to have her repeat it back to me a few days later as something someone told her, only she usually has some of the facts wrong. I will say, "Mom, I told you that, and that is not what I said."

It is just sad/funny to me, kind of like the e-mail that I got earlier in the week about things that were supposedly going on at WD Camp Meeting which had a little to do with my family. When I got the e-mail, my eyes rolled back in my head, because it was all just so ridiculous and completely untrue.

I ignored the e-mail and went to bed. By the time I got to work the next morning, I had another e-mail, in which the person said that they had got their facts wrong, and that it was just bits and pieces of an older story (which was also mostly wrong), spliced together.

This kind of thing happens all the time, I have seen saints sit in a service and misinterpret something a pastor said, and leave the service and tell all their friends what the pastor had taught during church! And they were there, so it is a fact!! By the time the poor saint realizes that they were wrong, even going back to all the people they have already told the story to can't fix it, because it has spread through half of Pentecost at this point.

Why are we so quick to believe the unbelievable,and assume the worst, with out (most of the time) first stopping to question what the real story is??

I was told one time about something negative that had been said from the pulpit at an event, about the group that my daughter sings in. I was flabbergasted, and furious. The more that I thought about it, the more unlikely it seemed, even though I wasn't a big fan of the person who supposedly said it.

So, I called around and asked some questions of other people that I knew had been there as well. (Oh, my daughter was also actually there, but she had arrived late, so I thought she might have missed it). After getting a few more details, the actual story is that there was a brief mention about a situation that involved members of another group from the church I attend (and what was said wasn't entirely off base).

The person just assumed it was about my daughters group, and presented it to me that way. I'm really glad I didn't go off of my initial reaction, that would have been embarrassing.

Thoughts?