Scripture says we are to "Love one another!" What does that look like when we are disputing with one another in the Christian blogosphere? This is the subject of my post today.
When I first became a Christian I was attending Granville Chapel in
Over the years Granville has had its share of challenges. I remember one time when I was critical of church leadership over some issue that affected me as a young person. I can't really remember what it was but what I remember I had a dream about it.
In this dream I was sitting in a tree that was full of chestnuts. These are the kind that have a prickly green husk. I saw some of the elders of Granville chapel sitting around the bottom of the tree. So I decided to pick some of these chestnuts and throw them at the elders. To my surprise they caught them and threw them back at me. I didn't like that so I threw some more at them!
After I had this dream I was convicted that I was being unfairly critical of my church leadership. I was judging them and in turn they were judging me. So I met with some of the elders and we were reconciled.
The reason I share this dream is that I have been having a "chestnut" throwing contest with Surphing posting at Emergent No. You can read the results here and here .
This contest has precipitated a question in me about how Christian bloggers ought to relate to one another when it comes to this kind of situation.
Should our words be like prickly chestnuts or perhaps more like bread buns, as in kids throwing bread buns at each other in the school mess hall? Chestnuts can hurt when they hit you, buns don't! For a definition of the saying "bun-fight" visit here.
My antagonist, Surphing at Emergent No has asked repeatedly, "What does Scripture say?"
So lets explore this question in Scripture. I don't think I can find a doctrine of bun fighting but Scripture does have something to say about this question. This is about how Christian bloggers ought to relate to one another when writing about each other.
I think the passage that best sums it up for me is Colossians 3:12-14
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."
This passage is part of
It is because we are both concerned for the Gospel that we have these debates about what scripture has to say about church, work, culture, etc. It is out of this concern that I believe we have an obligation to BE the message we intend to communicate.
So what does that look like when we get into a bun fight with one another?
I think as a base line, our dialogue must reflect the fact that our Christian witness requires that we love one another unconditionally.
So the question is, given this base line commitment, what does loving one another look like in our blogging about one another?
At a minimum, I think it means we abide by certain virtues that illustrate love such as "compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearance and forgiveness."
Having these virtues in our conversation will civilize it considerably. It will soften our tone. It will make us work hard to understand one another's position. It will force us to be considerate in our words, patience in our replies and forgiving when offended.
So I would like to make this challenge to Surphing at Emergent No. What does civil discourse look like to you? How ought Christian bloggers to look and sound differently than political bloggers, etc? What is in bounds? What is out of bounds? What happens when someone goes out of bounds? How do we respond? What does Scripture say?
These are questions I would like answered by some of you reading this blog and others who have an interest in the integrity of our Christian witness in the blogosphere.
Simply put, we need to prove the gospel by demonstrating it in the way we blog about one another, so that, we can present that gospel with integrity!
Jolly Blogger has a great piece on this subject: Some thoughts on Godly disputation, or "How to Have a Christ-like Argument."
One of the commentors at Theology and Biblical Studies equates the debate at Emergent No to that of a theological Bar Room Brawl.
Some thoughts has more thoughts on John Newton's article - Godly Disputation
NOTE: I will leave the Comments section at this blog open for the weekend to allow posting. After that I need to shut it down because Blog spammers have been hitting me hard.
