Intellectuelle

Lexie,
It's interesting that you to Keith's post on the day your friend, Rappin' Ron, posts:
"The volume of your walk will always be louder than your talk."

Danger lurks in the blogosphere, where one's walk is not so visible to readers. As Keith warns in the post to which you refer:

"The online fellowship of bloggers is of course an artificial community, for it allows us to pontificate about "truths", without the accountability of relationships in the body, and without any cost of the cross. It is an easy way for us into hypocrisy, and for lyrical and opinionated people to hold sway."

I didn't even make the connection between the two posts...good catch, Julana.

Even face to face, people know varying degrees of your walk. If I'm talking it's my responsibility to do the walking. If I'm listening to someone else, it's my responsibility to use discernment.

It's also important to be grounded in off line relationships for accountability. For example, I'm sure my husband would step in if I decided to start a "no skin allowed" campaign at church as a result of the recent modest dress discussion.

Virtual communities do lend themselves to pontificating and hypocrisy, though I wonder if people who tend toward that on line do it off line as well.

Simliarly, lyrical and opinionated people can tend to dominate conversations off line if they don't excercise consideration during conversations. In both cases it's my job to discern.

Ultimately, blogs are like other communication mediums...neutral venues used for by many people for many reasons.

I love finding people in the blogosphere who, if I met them offline, I would probably expect to disagree with or dislike because of my own prejudices. Encountering people via blogs and comment threads has led me to find common cause with people who are unlike me, for instance from different church backgrounds or different countries. There's great potential for squabbles too, but where there's a willingness to discuss with 'grace, gentleness and humility' there's much to be learned.

PWF,
Good point--in "real"life, I might have a harder time getting past a name like Pigwotflies.
:-)

Tee hee! It is a little odd, but I think I'm stuck with it now. But then I kinda like it. :-)