I hadn’t quite finished my first cup of coffee before Facebook gave me plenty to be angry about. Churches accused of discriminating against people in same-sex marriages. More shootings in Cape. Posts and pictures of political signs warning that schools are secretly luring children away for gender reassignment surgery, something that can’t happen in Missouri, where that surgery has been banned for anyone under 18 since 2023. That last one made my jaw tighten. I could feel myself reacting before I bothered to slow down and think. By the time I reached the bottom of the cup, I’d picked a side for each story, decided who the bad guys were, and written a response to each one in my head that I’d never send, much less say out loud. That’s what anger does. It doesn’t ask many questions. It hands you a club, preps you to take a swing, and waits for you to bludgeon your perceived enemy. I stopped doom scrolling and opened my Bible, landing in Jeremiah. That’s where the leopard was waiting.

Jeremiah asks a question with an obvious answer. Can a leopard change its spots? Of course not. Then he lands the punch: people who have practiced evil so long can’t suddenly start doing good. It’s an easy verse to read with your Facebook feed open. I could think of a dozen people it fit that morning. But Jeremiah wasn’t talking to outsiders. He was talking to Judah, God’s chosen people, the ones who went to temple to worship and present sacrifices. These folks knew all the songs and memorized chapters of scripture. Jeremiah wasn’t handing them ammunition. He was handing them a mirror.

So the question we need to ask isn’t who out there has practiced evil. The question is, what have I practiced so long that it feels natural?

We become what we practice. Practice suspicion long enough, and suspicion becomes instinct. Practice fear long enough, and a claim doesn’t have to be true anymore. It only has to confirm what we’ve already trained ourselves to believe. Practice outrage long enough, and every story is already interpreted. Practice contempt long enough, and another human being stops being a person and becomes a category. And Cape is just what it looks like now when that process reaches the end of the road. Somebody stops seeing a neighbor and starts seeing a threat. Then the trigger is pulled, and someone loses their life.

Because of disrespect.

I’d like to think faith protects me from all that. Paul doesn’t let me off that easy. In Colossians, he warns Christians about religious people who get so wrapped up in rules and spiritual claims that they lose touch with Christ himself. He calls them hot air. His measure of spiritual health isn’t how loudly someone defends the boundary. It’s whether they stay connected to the Head, the one who holds the body together.

Ouch!

That cuts through the church debate in a way neither side likes. A church can hold a traditional Christian view of marriage. Doctrine doesn’t settle the harder question, though: how do you treat the people who don’t share it or live by it? A belief written on a website doesn’t excuse contempt for the same-sex married couple reading it.

And it cuts through the transgender surgery rumor too. My first response as a Christian shouldn’t be outrage. It should be a simpler question: is this true? Truth must matter more, even if the false version is supporting something I already believe, namely that all children should stick with their assigned birth gender. Maybe especially then.

Paul uses the word healthy. We grow up healthy, he says, only as Christ nourishes us. Nourishment is slow. It happens the way breakfast happens, every day, mostly without anyone noticing. Maybe for me it looks like this: checking before I share, putting the phone face down before the coffee’s done, praying for the person I was about to write that reply to.

Because if I practice anger every morning and tell myself I’m connected to Christ, eventually those two things will collide. One will win. The one I practice.

So maybe the question we need to ask is, what are we becoming good at?

Whatever we practice long enough starts looking like spots.