Critique theology

“Critique theology. Critique movements. Critique culture. Question leadership. Disagree. Push back on someone’s ideas. But we as Christians should not be straight up mean or insulting to individuals. Even on the internet. If you are regularly mean on this, this is a subtweet of you.”

@tishharrisonwarren on twitter

I’ve had a screenshot of this tweet for a while and it’s really helped how I handle comments and DM’s will being a Christian citizen on the internet.

I kinda goes without saying but you can’t insult your way to changing someones mind. I can’t think of a single time where I’ve been dunked on with a quip or a meme and thought, “Oh I’m actually wrong here, let me rethink my assumptions.” Usually my first thought is to ESCALATE. But that ultimately doesn’t serve any helpful purpose at all.

Facebook and instagram showed us this week that we can garner the most engagement by tapping into people’s anger. I’m going to take the side of grace here and say I don’t think any human intentionally set out to exploit anger specifically - but a computer can very efficiently evaluate the tone and intent of a message and the results from it and exploit that to create a system of maximum engagement. A lot of money comes out of the machine but the by-product is messy and difficult to dispose of. I mean, it’s almost a self-written twilight zone episode.

I appreciate the comments and engagement I get here. Honestly, you all have saved me quite a few times from keeping a post that was either not helpful or worse, actually harmful. Although I read the comments I don’t always engage because sometimes the engagement would not be an exchange of ideas but an escalation. I’m finding empathy and grace makes a lot of difference in absorbing the comments and for maintaining my own sanity.