Is this for real?

There was something about the photo from Ukraine on my social media feed that didn’t seem quite right. It inspired feelings of courage and made my heart swell. But in my head a little question mark hovered over it; I wasn’t convinced it was real.

A few minutes of sleuthing later (Thanks, reverse image search!) and it was clear that my intuition had been right. The photo was legit, but the way it was labeled was false. It was a photo from the past that had been marked as though it were from the present. “Classic misinformation,” someone posted after the truth was exposed.

You don’t have to be a spiritual thinker to be alert to misinformation, but this brief experience highlights how spirituality equips us in a powerful way to be warriors for the truth.

The photo was legit, but the way it was labeled was false. 

Spirituality can feel like a really vague word, because it’s used in so many ways. So let’s define it. In this case, spirituality refers to a perception of things that isn’t based on the five senses, our own opinions or perspective, or anything we’ve been educated to believe. Spirituality is about our faithfulness to the divine—to God, who is Spirit and Truth. It’s about letting our thoughts flow out from Spirit. It’s about getting our information from Truth, rather than from all the other sources of input around us.

Jesus is a great example of spirituality in action. He was so attuned to God, so committed to Truth, so sure that good is the only power and reality, that he couldn’t be fooled by anything that appeared to be an opposite to truth or goodness. He wasn’t thrown by the lies people told about him. He was even able to sense what people were thinking—especially when it was inaccurate—and then to call it out and correct it. He was a spiritual fact-checker, and when what people said or did or how things appeared didn’t add up, he was the first to see what was true, which helped him revise the untrue and heal it.

We may not feel much like Jesus as we scroll TikTok and Instagram. But we can each be a powerful influence for good by letting a more spiritual sense of things guide us. This spiritual intuition is an inner compass that helps us tell truth from fiction. Sometimes it may come as words or a thought telling us to pause and look more closely. Or sometimes it may be a feeling that we need to stop and listen more deeply to Truth to know what’s real. The more we practice identifying this spiritual sense nudge, the easier it will be for us to recognize it—and the more we’ll find ourselves relying on spiritual sense to guide us correctly.

Spiritual intuition is an inner compass that helps us tell truth from fiction.

Something healing happens when we do. First, we begin to approach social media’s swirling mixture of information and misinformation with divine discernment. And this helps us help others separate what’s true from what isn’t. It can also keep us calm when we’re confronted by videos or images that would try to frighten us. Before we react or respond, we can pause, feel within ourselves that current of spiritual sense guiding us in the right direction, and then know whether what we’re seeing is legitimate information or something designed to manipulate our emotions. We can even allow that current to lift us into a more spiritual perception of reality, so that even if what we’re seeing is troubling, we can feel reassured by the Divine that good is still real, still on the scene.

Spiritual discernment may seem like some kind of special power that’s challenging to wield. But it’s actually already within each of us because we are Truth expressed. Truth’s representatives. Knowing this helps us cut through misinformation and empowers us to stand up for what’s real and right—yes, even as we’re scrolling.