I wonder about our online relationships and how they impact the body of Christ. I have developed some great relationships online with people I would never have met otherwise. I have learned a great deal from blogging, reading, writing and sharing online ideas. I think blogging has a lot of validity, but is online community authentic? Can we have true fellowship online?
BarnesThe most popular social network, of course, is Facebook. I have great friends on Facebook, and we use it to interact and communicate, keep updated and share pictures. However, the biggest destroyer of community is the Facebook status line. In it, we have created the equivalent of the online drive-by shooting. You have seen them, things like: “Some people need to act like Christians,” or, “I can’t believe they just did that, they are so bad.” These posts don’t name anyone specifically, but they throw out ideas and create suspicion. It’s online gossip at its best. On Facebook, we can create superficial relationships and then destroy them with the click of the mouse. If we are not slandering people in our status, we can write notes about them, or we can even click the dreaded “unfriend” button.
Facebook also gives us the chance to address problems without really addressing the problem. We have done this for years, but Facebook has made it faster and easier. If someone does something you don’t like, simply post a verse on Facebook addressing the issue, then you are done. If it’s really serious, we might post to someone’s wall or send a message to them and take care of the problem. (When Jesus said to “go to the person,” he wasn’t referring to their Facebook page.)
It’s also easy to speak without thinking. I am pretty sure many of the posts and comments I have seen at [the blogging site] SBCImpact wouldn’t happen in face-to-face conversation. We have become crass and careless with our words, not focusing on words that build up and edify, but taking cuts, slinging mud and being cruel. We begin to address the person – and not the issue – as the problem. Instead of saying, “I don’t agree with this statement,” we reply with, “You’re an idiot.”
The online relationships we have built are so fragile that it doesn’t take much to break them. If the Facebook and blogging community can really be seen as the church, we have taken the body of Christ and made it so fragile that it will never be able to stand up in the world. We have created fragile connections, and so often we are not encouraging or supporting each other. We are not iron sharpening iron, but stone chipping away at stone.
Why do we continue to devour each other? Because it’s easy to do online, and we have such a fragile structure that we break it because we can. Never do people become so carnal as they do online.
So what is the solution? We should take time to get to know our fellow bloggers. After all, aren’t we all here for the same reason? Is not the goal to expand the kingdom, to glorify God and to grow in our faith? If we are working together toward the same end, can we reform the online community to be used as a place to bring glory to God?
– Barnes is pastor of Heartland Community Baptist Church is Sioux City, Iowa. This article was adapted from a post at his blog, http://jdanbarnes.blogspot.com.