ice vs nice

We had an ice storm recently. Everything was covered with ice. The trees were especially mesmerizing as they drew from streetlights to produce their own radiant glory.

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[click to enlarge]

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There is a time to be cold and indifferent. I really believe that. But is it the exception or the rule? I don't believe it should be our Standard Operating Procedure.

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A friend of mine intercepted an email. The letter was inappropriately hostile, so this friend brought it to my attention. (It's a game we play. We get a bizarre kick out of intercepting the most freaky exchanges.) The letter writer ended his venomous spewing with a tag. You know, those quotes at the bottom of someone's email. It said:

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"It is a poor sermon that gives no offense; that neither makes the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher."

-George Whitefield

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Somehow, I don't think that Whitefield was suggesting that we behave like a grinch. No, it's more like this: When you go to the doctor, he shouldn't say "everything's fine" if it's really not. The preacher must dispense medicine for the soul, not politics. That's what I think it means, anyway.

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I told my friend to send a nice response, but their tag line should quote Ephesians 4:29, in which the Apostle Paul says,

Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.

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We laughed, but didn't send that as a reply. After all, such a jab would have been a contradiction.

roll call

Shhh... I'm thinking.

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I'm trying to determine which is worse, people who load the toilet paper the wrong way, or people who don't care.

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Image by: Kipin

Anonymous

Does anyone else think “Anonymous” is misused and overdone?

Years ago, as I ran a meeting, I presented a letter to those assembled, but did not read it aloud. I simply announced that someone sent this letter, (holding it high in my left hand for all to see) but since the author did not put his or her name to it, I crumpled it up (as if I had not read it), then I just tossed it in the garbage.

I wanted to make a statement. My message was that in that group, no member would be permitted to commit a hit and run. I did in fact read the letter before bringing it to the meeting, and it was a hurtful criticism of one of the hardest working contributors of our group. I felt that its author was gutless and the cheap shot deserved a public challenge. Now, I didn’t preach on the evils of such slithery slander, instead, I acted uninterested as I tossed it aside and moved on to the next order of business. No one ever owned up to it, but we never got an anonymous letter again.

But do all anonymous letters fall in the same category? Probably not. Just last week, I came across a letter from someone who used anonymity to take a first step in confessing a sin they were struggling with. They used their letter to test the waters, to see how the church would react to their confession of sin. I can’t blame this person for the way they went about it. I mean, would you go in for surgery if you were not confident that they would anesthetize you to reduce unnecessary pain?

Does there seem to be an upsurge of anonymous comments in the blogosphere right now? …Especially as it relates to the public humiliation of a Christian leader? I found other anonymous comments from opposite sides of political agendas. What kind of guidelines should we use as pertains to anonymous writings? Certainly not all anonymity is to be despised, right? What shall we do about all those people talking through a paper-bag mask?