Sometimes No Comment is Best

You know, the internet is a pretty nifty invention. At no other time in history have we been able to send and receive information so quickly. E-mail makes staying in touch with people so easy – don’t even need a stamp! Without the internet, I wouldn’t be writing on this blog right now. I had an e-mail from a blog friend recently who mentioned how neat our little blogging community is. And it is! Blogging really makes the world a smaller place in a sense. I’ve ‘met’ many people through blogging who I really wish I could live next door to and sit on the front porch with a cup of tea and chat. And just think, for those of us who belong to Christ, we will get to meet for real one day, even if we never do this side of Heaven. That’s a very cool thought. But it is nice to have the medium of blogs to connect with each other in the interim.

However, there is a real downside to the internet and e-mail and blogging. For one thing, for every site that has good information, there are tons that are inaccurate or even downright dangerous. You can't trust everything you read. For another thing, I’m very thankful I have a good filter on my e-mail. It is unbelievable the creepy, nasty, disgusting things that come EVERY DAY that my filter catches before they hit the inbox. UGH. And tons of irritating and annoying and stupid and heretical things that make it through, too. So, though e-mail is a great way to stay in touch with friends and family, it has a huge downside, too. Anyone else hate, hate, hate inane forwards that are usually superstitious and usually full of wrong information? Sitemeter tells me I still get lots of hits about this one, so once a stupid e-mail is on the chain mail route, it never dies, apparently.

Now to the reason for this little rant of a post. Having done absolutely zero research, I’m making a big assumption here, but I think one of the fallouts of the popularity of blogging is that we are seeing a lot of newspapers’ online versions add the comment feature to their stories to kind of capitalize on the blogging phenomenon. I don’t guess I really know that this is why online newspapers are doing this, but it makes sense. I think this is not a good thing. I read the newspaper to get the facts, distorted though they may be by the reporters’ biases, but, I don’t really want to hear what every dingledork brain with a computer and a modem has to say about the news stories. I say this because, with the recent news that the pastor at my old church was killed in a plane crash, friends sent me links to the local paper and the articles concerning the accident. As I read, and wept for his family and my friends and fellow Christians there, I saw that people were leaving comments under the article. I was stunned at some of the breathtakingly vicious comments that were being written. There was some of the ugliest, most hateful stuff on there it broke my heart. There’s just no need for that. I know that a lot of people do not like Christians and have animosity towards us, but really it was awful what some were saying. I really think it is just not helpful to have comments for every news story. Some things just don’t need to be said. Yeah, I know, free speech, blah, blah, blah. Start your own blog and ooze away, but why put nastiness out there for all to see when a real family of real people is grieving and hurting? The people who do not have enough to do who spend all their time commenting like that (you see it all over the blogosphere, too) seem to somehow forget that we are real people behind these keyboards and screen names. They also seem to forget that the people in the news story are real people who are in need of much compassion today.

So, what I’m saying is, one of the things that is a super drawback to the internet is, on one hand a false intimacy – you feel like you know the people you’re interacting with on blogs and in comment threads, but unless you’ve really met them face to face, you don’t. Then, on the other hand, there is the impersonal nature of typing out a comment under a screen name and addressing a screen name that leads people to say things I am pretty sure they would never say in person to a ‘real’ person. I hate reading those comment exchanges, so I’m not doing it anymore.

And another thing that I find disturbing is that a lot of times we Christians get involved in those news comment threads and what we’re really doing is casting pearls before swine. I know we are to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is in us, and I know that people who are not believers will not understand where we are coming from unless their eyes are opened by the Holy Spirit, so I’m not saying we should never comment. Don’t hear me saying that. But a lot of times Christians get involved in stupid arguments with people who are obviously not interested in the truth and are just trying to tweak them. Those kinds of comments really should just be ignored. Not to mention the self-identified Christians who pipe up with colossally bad theology, which only adds fuel to the fires already blazing. It is sad to see how threads go sometimes when people keep on feeding the trolls. They aren’t convincing anyone, just giving ammunition for mockery, and it’s sickening to read.

Okay, I’m climbing off the soapbox now and I'm going to pick up the boys from school and go walk on the treadmill at the YMCA to burn off steam while oldest son participates in his swimming practice.

Happy Wednesday.