My recent problems with blogging voiced in the last two posts before this one brought this comment from Brenda:
“Hi Susan, I believe that whatever we have been given to share brings glory to the Lord, and I usually state this if people say nice things about what I might have shared on my blog. There is no way I could claim credit for what I have written, as even the poems and songs that I have shared just dropped into my head after I became born again of God's Spirit. I believe absolutely that it is God that speaks through us, and that is His way of bringing all to Himself. All glory goes to God the Father and His wonderful Son Jesus, we have nothing to boast of. I always like to know who I am interacting with though. God bless.”
The first portion is for me a “no brainer”...absolutely it is for the Lord’s glory that I live at all, and if I do share anything truly good, wholesome, and true, it is because His truth resides in me.
The last thought in that comment, wanting to know who we are interacting with in comments, is an interesting and important facet to this “internet world” puzzle. Yes it is Jesus who inspires anything truly good and truly True or truthful of course, yet we want to ascribe a name or personality to a person who is conveying words to us in our online conversations....and there are some things about this that I want to consider.
The first is that aside from what people reveal about themselves in their blogs and comments, unless we know them personally in real life, as a close friend or family member, we still do not REALLY know them. We get a feeling of knowing them, or knowing about them, and yet how well do we really? Often we do not really even know people we are in some physical contact with such as work situations or the other interactions that we have with people on a regular basis. The contacts with online personalities are even more disconnected in some ways. This fact has led people to unfortunate situations in online relationships, as I was recently reminded of in a situation that occurred in a Facebook group in which I have contributed posting and some moderator functions.
How much do we truly know except the perhaps half truths or even outright lies the other person might be telling...Facebook and other online groups can only do so much to police these things, and those who are telling the whole truth (hopefully that is the case for the majority of online posters? Maybe, but who really knows?) can be looked at with suspicion and possibly be blocked or removed by Facebook or Google or Twitter, etc, because of suspicions caused by similar actions, seemingly anyway, that puts everyone in a bad light.
I don’t know if perhaps my little blog is somehow a casualty of the trouble caused by the somewhat anonymity of blogging. Or perhaps I have somehow been hacked and that being the reason for the problems I am now experiencing. These possibilities makes me uncertain of how much longer I can even post here at all, I have the feeling of being removed from Blogger bit by bit, and don’t really know why. These online platforms seem to be disintegrating into who knows what? Or maybe I’m reading too much into this?
But if you, like me, have been paying attention to what is happening to computing, and online scamming, and the desire for greater “online security”, in light of many other things going on today, it just makes me a little bit uneasy to consider the many possibilities of the direction this all can go.
In the meantime I shall continue to try to plug along here as long as I can, and answer comments as much as I can, given my current restrictions. AND I must not forget to also say that I am very grateful for my identity in Christ. Having that anchor when all of these other means of identifying myself are becoming so skewed, it is a blessing to have that anchor and solid foundation which cannot be moved nor removed.
