I was watching a video when for whatever reason my eyes were drawn to the next video of a doctor accusing someone of being a quack which at first, I thought was a parody as he, although white, spoke excellent Filipino but I didn’t even finish it as my curiosity was aroused about his target who professes to be the world's leader in the effective treatment of cancer.

As I am no medical expert, I will leave it to the proper authorities to conclude if her claims have any validity but before I left her Facebook page, I was a bit perturbed upon seeing names of friends in the list of her followers. Are they believers? I hope they’re just the type who follow pages only because they want to see what is being posted.

People follow pages for different reasons. Some are sincere while others are purposely trolls enjoying bashing so much that they have earned the “top fan” badge while some are friends and families forced to hit the like button. And then others might be courtesy of an app that provides fake followers. This reminds me of how we often automatically and dangerously regard attending church as synonymous to being a follower of Christ.

Just like FB followers, people have different reasons for being in church which are not often easily discerned when we are all singing the same songs, praying the same prayer, and spewing out Christianese. Remember, trolls have that “top fan” badge so even the most active members can have their heart misaligned from the cause of Christ. But the operational phrase is “not often easily” which means it is not impossible especially since Jesus taught us how. “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them.” (Matthew 7:16-20, NIV) We are called to be fruit inspectors.

When buying fruits, we look, smell, and touch them. It’s the same way when we look at people’s deeds or misdeeds, see if we smell something fresh or rotten in their teaching, and see if they have touched lives for the glory of God or themselves (cf. 1 John 4:1-6). But before we do that, let us start with ourselves. Let us inspect our own fruits. Do we have any in the first place? Matthew 7:1-5 caution us against being judgmental and hypocritical rebuking others when we’re doing the same thing ourselves. We need to have some ascendancy of integrity otherwise let us first be spiritual plantitos and plantitas of our lives by allowing the Great Gardener to cultivate them so when people inspect our fruits, we won’t be called out but instead, souls will call on the Name of the Lord.