So often we hear of major problems in our society ranging from robbery to shootings, home invasions to child abductions. I fear for our society not just in the fact that these situations happen, but that when they happen, how they are fed. Here is a scenario; a father finds his daughters phone and see’s a photo of an adult male on her Facebook page being sent from her best friends phone. The father asks his daughter who this man was, and she tells her father that the man hacked her friends Facebook page and was soliciting sex from the girls. The father contacts the local police and then follows up with posting the photo on a local crimes in progress Facebook page where a multitude of other locals who follow the page begin to comment. The comments that are left are harsh, some stating that the man was a “pig and should be killed”, others said they “hope he gets what he deserves in jail”. Most of the responses were of this caliber or worse.

Here is my question; with only the fathers statement and a photo, people became jury, prosecutor and judge and labeled the man a pedophile and shared his photo with thousands of people across the nation. Is this ethical? Imagine this one potential missing link, what if the man in the photo was someone who owed the father money and refused to pay him? What if the father was in fact a teenager playing a prank on a teacher they didn’t like? What if someone wanted custody of their children, and by making the man (their ex-husband) look bad would, by default, be able to keep their children for safety reasons?

These scenarios may not be the facts in this case, but I empower you to go a little farther down the root and see what is feeding it. When the tree is unhealthy we say the roots are bad, and they may be, but they became bad because of what they are being fed. In our communities, our society, we all need to slow down and not be so quick to label others. If in fact these people are guilty, that is what court is for, not Facebook. The teens who play pranks on their friends and call S.W.A.T. (being swatted), think it is funny when they see the actual S.W.A.T. show up at the friends house and thrown them to the ground on camera. This turned bad one day when the S.W.A.T. showed up at a teenagers house and the father ran out to see what all the commotion was and then was shot by officers who thought he was brandishing a gun. That swatting ruined that teenagers life, as he lost his father.

Come from love, give more than you take and don’t feed others negatives, or you will become part of the product that is poisoning the roots of our society.