Healthy or Unhealthy?

Oct 27, 2005 Print This Post

//MOOD: Healthy…I think

//ITUNES: Drive from the album “Automatic For The People” by R.E.M.

It seems that with every great positive is a great negative. It’s like the Newtonian law of life. Spiritual gifts are that way, personalities are that way, etc etc etc.

I was thinking about this as I was surfing around today. There are big sweeping positives and negatives with this here internet.

With the internet, we have this great ability to express our opinions about everything, both positive and negative. This can lead to healthy discourse on a lot of issues. There are people who we would never have occasion to meet that we have opinions about. We get this weird / outside / imbalanced view of their politics or faith or lifestyle or whatever. And now we have a forum to speak into and about the lives of these people whom we haven’t met.

Again, potential good.

The sweeping negative is that with the anonymity of the net, we can be arrogant and insensitive in how we talk about people, especially those whom we have not met. It is a temptation I feel all the time. I read an article / blog entry from someone and for some reason I find myself feeling I am an authority on all they stand for.

Not so.

So as you type, here’s my advice. Ask yourself this question, “would I say this the same way if I was sitting across the table from this person?”

It’s gonna get really interesting if this World Wide Web thing really takes off.

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Facebook comments:

Growing up in the Lansing area, I wanted nothing more than to get out. My exit strategy included a complex mixture of schemes for an urban church plant, iProducts, and an elaborate Bollywood car chase scene with zombies and catchy techno music.

As a 40 year old man, I find myself entrenched in the Lansing area at a church I love (Riverview), with 4 kids I love more (a high schooler, a junior higher, a middle schooler, and an elementary schooler), and a wife I love the most (Grace).

Instead of planting one church, I dream of helping hundreds get started without ever leaving my home base. I still love my iProducts and use them as tools to help lead and teach the thousands who attend Riverview. And when no one is looking, I blare the techno music and send my unimpressive resume to casting agents for Bollywood zombie films.

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