When is skepticism a Christian virtue?

A very good friend recently forwarded me an email lamenting the fact that President Obama this year cancelled the National Day of Prayer, choosing instead to attend Muslim prayers at the White House, an activity which the email shows a photograph of him doing. The only problem with the email is that it’s totally false.

As he has done every year in office, Obama again this year did issue a proclamation for the National Day of Prayer. Moreover, the picture in the email was taken during the President’s visit to Turkey…in 2009…and not at the White House, a fact easily verified by the visible Islamic arches in the background of the photo, architecture difficult to find in the White House.

But my friend’s very first line was quite telling. He introduced the email by asking, “Have you seen or read this before? Hard to believe, isn’t it.” In my reply to him, I answered that when something is this hard to believe, you probably just shouldn’t believe it. But such email hoaxes serve at least two purposes.

First, they remind us that we must always verify what we hear through gossip, especially the 21^st Century’s favorite form of gossip: the forwarded email. Luckily, this is easy enough to do at Snopes.com.

Second, we must always be on guard lest our biases render us gullible to attacks on people we dislike. Part of loving our enemies is giving critiques of them the same level of scrutiny as we would for our friends and “loved ones.” Eagerness to believe the worst about our enemies is a tendency far too carnal for any Christian to indulge.