I have always envied some of my friends who seem to have a knack for maintaining their cool when they deal with comments on blogs. I watch men like Bart Barber and David Rogers continue to gracefully engage even the most belligerent responses.
I do not have that knack. Comments get under my skin. I try to be careful about what I write – most of the time. If you think my articles are harsh, you ought to see the first, second, and third drafts – the ones I didn’t publish, the ones I toned down and smoothed over before I arrived at the ones I published. I make a sincere effort to honor Christ with what I write, an effort I am sure fails often, but one that is genuine. And then the comments start and my blood pressure begins to rise.
Complaint time: I have come to dislike interacting with blog comments.
I have been doing this for about 10 years and I’ve interacted with tens of thousands of comments. I am tired of it. Many (most?) of you are gracious, informative, adding perspective to the posts. But there are those who needle and gnaw and whine and twist – and that is just the comments that we publish. You ought to see the stuff we flush into our trash compactor. Vile stuff at times. I have been called names I had to look up on google. My integrity, decency, honesty, and even my salvation is regularly called into question. I have gotten used to this but it wears on me. I am tired of it.
A friend who is also a well-known Christian leader gave me some advice years ago. When Voices was beginning to build its audience we were more of a forum. We published articles to start a discussion, which would often go 300, 400 or more comments. Several went over 1000 comments. I engaged comment after comment, spending hours of time and much frustration doing so. He gave me this remonstrance. “Dave, write more and engage comments less.” He may have told me to ignore the comments completely. I haven’t ignored comments entirely, but if you look in our archives, my involvement in the comment streams is less than a tithe of what it used to be.
Confession time: I have lost my patience with many commenters.
I decided some time ago that I don’t care if everyone likes me and that there were people who were wrong in both their views and their attitudes. Coddling them was aiding and abetting their ill-effects on the SBC. When I started blogging I wanted to unite everyone into a gigantic group hug, but I’ve come to realize that there are people who simply are not going to join in our cooperative mission. There are Calvinists with divisive spirits who love to eviscerate anyone who doesn’t agree with them, calling them heretics or SJWs or charismatics or whatever other term presents. This last SBC presidential election showed that there is a dark underbelly within the SBC old guard that is hardhearted and mean-spirited. JD Greear is a man of character, a conservative who loves Jesus, the Gospel, the SBC, and our Cooperative Mission. But one state paper, several blogs, and many SBC leaders engaged in a campaign of deceit and personal destruction to attempt to defeat him. It was an evil act and those who joined in needed to be called to repent before they were invited to unite.
But what I found as I became bolder in calling sin as sin is that my spirit became poisoned by anger. There is a passage in James 1 that troubles me.
My dear brothers and sisters, understand this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness. James 1:20-21
As I became more convictional and convinced I also found myself angrier and quick to deal out verbal smackdowns. Man’s anger – my anger – does not accomplish God’s righteous purposes. That is why blogs like Pulpit and Pen, many discernment blogs and bloggers, and others go astray. Maybe, at one point, they had an honorable purpose. But once you let anger take hold you become destructive and you serve the interests of the enemy whose purpose is to tear down Christians, sow discord, and destroy the church. Anger is demonic. Look at Ephesians 4:26-27.
Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the devil an opportunity.
When we allow ourselves to be gripped by anger we give the devil an opportunity to use us for his destructive purposes in the church. Anger is explosive. Yes, there is a way to “be angry and sin not” but it is easier to ski down Mount Everest. We justify our anger as “righteous” but how often is that really true? As I became less concerned with everyone liking me and more concerned with speaking truth, my anger grew at those who were recalcitrant, petty, whiny, or belligerent. Anger is a poison that floods the soul and I have felt it. Even righteous anger, not dealt with properly, becomes a sickness of the heart..
My tendency is to blame YOU for MY sin. Commenters do this and commenters do that so I am justified in my anger. But nothing anyone else ever does justifies my sin. I should speak the truth but I am called to do it in love. As I have spoken the truth I have failed to do it in love far too often.
If I have displayed anger to you, I apologize. I repent of that. I do not apologize for my convictions or for expressing those. But I do not like where my heart is sometimes – that rising tide of anger I feel inside as I fight these blogging battles. I have to own that and confess that to God and to you.
Commitment time: I am not going to engage comments for a while.
First, story time. I have always joked during my sermons – it is who I am. But about 20 years ago I came under deep conviction that my humor at the time was unholy. I was preaching hard truths and then telling jokes to “lighten the mood.” What I was doing was joking to make people like me even if they were mad about what God said. The Spirit showed me how unholy my humor had become so, for a time (turned out to be several months), I shelved humor in my messages until I learned to use it in a less self-centered way. I realize some of you think humor has no place in the pulpit, but that’s you. God bless you. I believe God uses me as I am as long as what I am is devoted to who HE is.
Right now, I find myself unable to engage comments without anger and frustration. It would be easy to simply blame that on the commenters and say, “they are jerks.” But even if I am the innocent party provoked by the sinful commenter (and that is not always the case, to be sure) my anger is not justified, does not accomplish God’s work, and is sin. If I am walking in the fullness of the Spirit I should be able to exhibit love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness no matter how I am provoked.
So, while I work on this I am going to write, but not comment. Sorry. It is not that I see myself as above engaging comments, but until I am able to do it without anger and with the grace of God, it is better that I don’t.
I have been part of the blogging world for 12 years now and I’ve seen a lot of guys come and go. Those that burn out are often those who fail to check their spirits frequently, who justify their anger as righteous. They burn out, they blow up, they fade away. Blogging does two things very well.
- It gives voice to every Baptist. It is the most democratic thing we’ve seen.
- It shows off publicly any character flaw we have. What is in your heart comes out of your fingers as you type posts and comments.
I want to be a positive and godly force in the SBC and right now, I am struggling with how to do that while I engage comments. So, for the forseeable future, I will not be active in the comments (except perhaps as a moderator).
Hopefully, this will be quicker than some other aspects of my sancification. I turn 61 next month. I want to be commenting again before I’m 75.
Since I don’t intend to engage comments here, I am not sure how productive it will be to leave them open.
I may close them, depending on how things go.
(And yes, I realize the irony of commenting on a post about NOT commenting. But as I said, I may still comment on MODERATION topics as needed).
Dave, I know over the years I have been a jerk to people many times on this blog. I’ve been a jerk toward you a could of times, and Debbie Kaufman, and Ryan Abernathy, and Bart Barber, and at least once toward William Thornton, and toward several others. I am truly sorry. I ask your forgiveness.
I think you did that years ago, John. I don’t remember. You don’t owe me anything, bro.
OK Dave. I understand. However, since I may not interact with you for a while, let me go ahead and say this now.
This coming Saturday, September 1, the Crimson Tide will destroy the Louisville Cardinals in our opening game down in T’town.
So, if you would be so kind to me, would you just type “ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!!!” as your last comment until you return?
That would mean so much to me at this particular time in my life. That’s not asking too much is it?
cb, I think that you are asking way too much of Dave to make that level of sacrifice, but not for me. “ROLL TIDE ROLL!!!!!”
You are a scholar and a gentleman.
Oh brother – not this load of crimson elephant dung again….
You are. . . well, you are a Tarheel. Enough said!
Lol.
Moderation? I don’t understand. If you’re taking a break why are you only going to comment on your stance on alcohol?
If we keep reading the comments, then moderation would be the least amount of alcohol consumed. He’d have to go full….well, never mind. Dave would never go that far.
Dave, Your humility speaks to us all. We all need to have a more gracious spirit toward one another. Thank you so much for your Christ like spirit and your transparency. You have helped us all.
Dave,
We don’t always agree, but I would give you a good grade.
God bless you.
Thanks for your friendship and witness.
Wait! You and Miller disagree? Who knew? So you’re the one he has gotten angry at?
I’ll have to consider one day letting you in on the secret of *always* being on his good side and never provoking his wrath.
😉
Good words and thoughts, Mr. Miller.
Enjoy your time away.
I comment less and less for the same reasons. Paying for you Dave.
And John Wylie, I forgive you and ask you to forgive me. I am sure, I have not always been as kind and gracious to you as I should have been.
Thank you brother. I forgive you too, and I am making a public commitment to conduct myself with grace and love.
That scripture changed my life.
I decided 10-12 years ago that Jesus was sitting at my computer desk with me, that human anger accomplishes nothing good, that I will account for every word I speak/write, and that I would write nothing that I wouldn’t say to someone in person, or they I wouldn’t mind them overhearing in the next room.
By these convictions the Lord delivered me from much online sin. I can’t imagine the temptation involved in monitoring and engaging commenters.
For years I served as the leader of a team of IMB missionaries. Our team was scattered around East Asia, and we had to communicate by email most of the time. My wife reminded me from time to time that emails are often misunderstood. They cannot communicate tone of voice or body language, which are major aspects of communication. We could say the same of blog comments. How often do commenters protest that their comment was misunderstood? We should all remember the verses from James, and we should all remember Murphy’s Law of Writing: anything that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood. Dr. Leon McBeth, longtime professor at SWBTS, often said, “Good papers are not written; they are rewritten.” That holds true for our Voices posts and Voices comments. Reconsideration and rewriting will help us all avoid confusion and offense.
Mark, exactly. Things that are clear and non-confrontational are often perceived as confrontational when written in an email. Blog posts are even worse. People often are entrenched and will not consider any other position charitably.
And also remember that we ourselves are capable of being on the misunderstanding side. Nothing prevents having my own misunderstandings corrected quite like my own conviction that I cannot have misunderstood.
LIstening well (or accurately, as in what I hear actually bears some semblance to what the speaker intended to convey) has been a focus of mine for awhile. I’m not sure how well I’ve done at it, but I’m convinced that step 1 towards listening well is acknowledging that one is quite capable of listening poorly. You don’t get too far along that road without humility.
More recently, I’ve become convinced that humility, more than we normally acknowledge, is a primary virtue. To the degree that one fails to have it, one’s pride will poison whatever other virtues one has.
Thanks for this. My hacker and plodder thinking on this is that more moderation is necessary these days, else any popular blog will degenerate into a gripe site full of cheapshot comments by people who don’t want to identify themselves.
My hat is wonderful. You’ve promised not to interact with the comments.
Your hat is ugly. I can make exceptions when necessary.
And Alabama is evil too. Now, back to original programming.