Have you ever been wrongly accused of something? Have you ever had people gossip behind your back with false accusations or perceptions about your integrity or character? Have you ever confronted a friend or family member in sin and been ostracized for the loving honesty? Have you ever stood for Christ in the work place and it cost you in reputation or promotion in a job? Even in the common ordinary day of our lives, it’s easy to become offended over trivial things, isn't it?. What’s worse, when we do get offended we end up savoring the bitterness, promoting ill will out of revenge to sooth our sagging pride or hurt feelings, conjuring up ways to “get even” with those who have wronged us, or possibly have spoken to others about it with no other motive or intent than to undermine the one who wounded us. However, the subtle quintessential way that we as Christians gossip about others behind their back is through... prayer. I call it the “gracevine."
I know I have a tough time keeping my mouth shut when somebody does me the dirty. Out in the blogosphere it's an even worse situation; it's awfully easy to shoot your mouth off knowing you'll probably never actually have to face somebody you've just laid into. And because you don't actually see their faces, it's easy to pretend that somebody on the other side of a comment box is like a TV character; you can hear them speak but they're not real, flesh-and-blood people. We speak and act in ways online that we would never dream of in real life, but at the same time we get our undies in a twist over being treated the same way. My nose is out of joint; O cursed spite!
Steve's reference to the "gracevine" is a good one as well. When we want to vent our nastiness at a fellow Christian, it's somehow more comfortable to do it in a "more in sorrow than in anger" way to third parties. We don't hate the dirty-eared fundamongoloid or the fetus-loathing apostate. Oh no, we love him; that's why we link to him, snark as though we just couldn't help ourselves, and pray loudly for his conversion (while privately hoping he doesn't really convert and take away our source of vicious amusement).
As much as I hate to do it and give up the pleasure of being snide about Steve, Rand, and other brothers (particularly Protestants with a chip about the Church), I apologize to anybody whom I've treated as though he were an embarrassment to the Body of Christ. These people are my Christian siblings, and I imagine it annoys God when his children bicker as much as it does me when mine do. I don't have a right to be acknowledged as right, even if I think I am. (And everybody thinks their opinions are right; otherwise they wouldn't hold them.) I only have the right to let you believe I'm wrong. If you think I'm stupid, or blind, or a brainwashed minion of Rome, it's not my place to snipe about it. God will set us all straight in the end. It's just my job to shut up and love.
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