A Life Worth Living

First, church screws up website tagline. Then bloggers pass the story on. Then an unconfirmed rumour about the website starts that bloggers also pass on. Finally, everything is clarified by a simple phonecall to the church that sorted everything out.

My head is current whirling by all the implications and lessons learnt from just this one incident.

"...this all could have been avoided if the original blogger who noticed the wrong quote had just let them know instead of broadcasting to the world. He compared it to seeing pie on a friend's face and telling the whole room before you tell your friend. Sometimes we'd rather point and laugh than actually help somebody fix something...."

Isn't it amazing how little it takes for something to explode? The whole tagline incident happened within a day, and yet it must have been a very long day for all those involved.

But this is not a post about how amazing the technology of the Internet is. I'm sure we all know that. What I have to say is that I feel like I've had a pie thrown in my face.

How many times, especially as a blogger, have I fallen guilty of the very same thing? How many times have I noticed something wrong and decided to tell the world instead of trying to help fix it?

But as a blogger, a writer and a sometime journalist, where do I draw the line of writing about something because it needs to be told and writing about something because it's interesting but unnecessary? How do I tell the difference?

Writers needs stories to write. If we end up fixing the situation, do we not end up with no stories to tell?

Almost three years of blogging has taught me a few things, one of which is the fact that even in freedom comes limits. I may be free to say whatever I want, but I should limit myself to what I actually say. I guess it's called responsibility, as well as a moral obligation to God.

I'm not saying I haven't made mistakes. I've deleted posts and I'm sure I've got archived posts that should have been better left unpublished.

But I guess as bloggers, especially Christian bloggers, we really ought to watch what we say and ensure that we do it in a manner that helps others and makes Jesus proud.

After all, who knows who's reading your blog and whether whatever you say would come back and haunt you?