Love one another

In a recent post on the Church Times blog , http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=74344 the Rev Canon Giles Fraser expresses concern about Christian bloggers who write vicious things about Christians with different views from their own. I must be very naive, because I thought that the reason for writing a Christian blog was to be - how can I put? Oh yes! - "Christian". That doesn't mean that we should always be bland and uncontroversial, but I don't see why we can't disagree in a civilised way.

Surely the whole point of writing a blog from a Christian perspective (or any other perspective come to that) is to give people reading it an impression of what we are about. I often think of things that would make entertaining blog posts, but which would be a kind of "Grumpy Old Women" style rant. This would normally be against a large and faceless "them" rather than an individual, so no-one would be hurt, but even that does not seem to give an edifying picture of Christianity and the people who profess it. All my friends and parishioners know that I like a good moan occasionally (who doesn't!) but, hopefully, that is not all they see. The people who write vitriolic things on their blogs may be very kind, caring people, but that is not the impression that someone who stumbles across their blog will get of them. Much more importantly, readers will get a very strange impression of what Christianity is about.

Jesus told his disciples to love one another, and the letters from St Paul and others to the emerging churches make it clear that this was seen as one of the most important ways of spreading the Gospel message. People would see loving, caring communities and want to know more about the faith that brought them together. If Christian bloggers cannot even be civil to one another, how can they possibly hope to spread the Good News of God's love for all people.

Giles Fraser suggests that part of the problem is that people will say in print what they would not say to someone face-to-face. This is undoubtedly true in general terms, but I really would have thought that anyone of any intelligence, going to the trouble of posting their thoughts on the Internet, would consider the impact of what they are writing - not just on the people they are insulting but on their readers, and on the Christian message. But then, as I said, I'm obviously very naive.