Someone makes a comment on social media and the Internet cracks under the weight of how-dare-yous. Verbal riots ensue, with no one bothering to find out what the person meant or why they think as they do.

If I might wax Biblical for a moment, this modern phenomenon reminds me of an incident in the New Testament.

The book of Acts tells about a fellow named Saul—a strict-believing, Moses-following, orthodox Jew—who spent his time rounding up and arresting Christians. Why? Because at that time, all Christian converts were Jewish. And though they continued to live as orthodox Jews, they believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah, and worshiped and followed him.

As Saul is going about arresting those he believes to be heretics, he has a miraculous experience and becomes what? The very sort of person he’s been going around arresting. (Oops.)

Fast forward a bit. Saul changes his name to Paul and becomes a missionary, preaching Christianity not just to Jews, but to non-Jews as well. And Jerusalem is ablaze with how-dare-yous.

Hoping to calm things down, the apostles tell Paul to demonstrate his orthodoxy by taking four devout Jewish fellows with him and spending a week fasting and worshiping in the temple.

The plan, however, does not go well. Paul and his fellows are yanked out of the temple, and a riot ensues. Accusers, who want to kill Paul, are yelling that he brought four Greeks into the temple and defiled it. (Not true.) And that he is teaching people to be against the Jews, against the law of Moses, and against temple worship. (Again, not true.)

Roman soldiers break up the riot. They figure Paul must be a criminal because everyone is so angry at him. (Nope.)

Paul asks the captain of the Roman guard to be allowed to speak to the mob. The crowd expects him to speak in Greek. (Wrong.) He begins speaking to them, not in Greek, but Aramaic. They are stunned that he speaks their language. Paul tells his conversion story and that he is preaching not just to Jews, but also to non-Jews. The crowd explodes and the uproar is even greater than before.

The Romans, convinced that Paul must be a bad guy, decide to do what they do best—beat the truth out of him. They tie him up and are about to start flogging him, when Paul casually mentions the fact that he is a Roman citizen. (Wait. What?)

The captain of the guard is horrified. It would be a huge breach of Roman law to whip a Roman citizen who has not been tried and condemned. In fact, the captain could get in trouble simply for tying Paul up. (Oops.)

The sad comedy of errors continues, but I’ll stop here. This is not meant as a Sunday School lesson, but rather to illustrate that the more things change, the more they remain the same. Whatever the topic—then or now—angry words and actions take root in the soil of misinformation and misunderstanding.