In 2007, in the early days of blogging there was an article from the International Mission Board(IMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention that provides a good lesson about what we should and should not write in our personal blogs. Now, in 2016, in our highly political atmosphere, these same lessons must be relearned in order that Christians do not lose focus of our mission to reach our world for Christ.
The article, which has been removed from the site, explained the IMB trustees’ decision to censure a fellow trustee for what was posted on his blog. The stated purpose of the censure was:
“(a) Making public private communications with fellow trustees;
(b) Speaking in a way that reflected poorly on fellow trustees; and
(c) Publicly criticizing board approved actions instead of speaking in positive and supportive terms as he interpreted and reported on actions of the Board of Trustees, regardless of whether he personally supported those actions.”
The conflict of this trustee’s behavior was the fact that the code of conduct for trustees at the time stated that:
“Individual IMB trustees must refrain from public criticism of Board approved actions.”
I think that common courtesy and Pastoral confidence require that we keep private conversations private. While I also feel that the trustees have plenty of legal ground for the censure through their code of conduct.
But, the issue of the censure is not the point of this writing. In the world of ideas, we must actively share our voice respectfully. Freedom from dissent is ok–just don’t do it in public where you agreed not to. This original article was written in 2007, at a time when Facebook was still in its infancy. Now, increasingly, we live in a world where we have easy access to millions of readers. We often hear of someone who’s post goes viral, before the person knows what is happening, their Facebook profile photo is on the evening news. This is my point. We must be very careful about what we put out in social media. Everyone may see it and we must blog, tweet, post, photograph with respect and with wisdom. We must keep private what must be private. Expose only what you are allowed to expose. If you signed a document saying that you will not discuss certain things–don’t discuss them. This is a good lesson for all of us to remember. We in the social media must take note and be careful what we say.
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Photo from Unsplash.com
This post is a fresh rewrite of a post titled Improper Dissent written in November 2007.