But Would You Say it to My Face?

My pastor has been doing a series on some of the hot issues of our nation for the last few weeks, and this past Sunday he talked about bullying.  In the context of the message, he talked about cyber bullying and how people use Facebook and Twitter, among other sites, to post pics and comments that are hurtful and damaging.  He made the great point that most of these people are saying things online that they would never say to a person's face.  Today, I was online reading some different things and looking at Facebook and saw two great examples of what he was saying, and I must admit I had a visceral reaction.  

The first encounter was a picture posted on Facebook of a somewhat overweight girl in an unflattering dress.  It was obviously a self-portrait she took in the bathroom mirror, but it had been turned into the punchline of a joke that was making fun of her appearance.  All I could see, was the face of a very young woman, and I found myself imagining how she felt seeing this post, which I'm sure she has.  The self-esteem of a teenage girl is a delicate thing, that when damaged can have far reaching repercussions.  I was horrified that anyone would pass this post along as a joke or comment on it with "LOL" and "BAHAHAHA".  If that young girl was standing in front of any of those adults, yes they were adults, I can't imagine that they would treat her so unkindly, yet the imaginary wall of Facebook somehow removed compassion and common decency from people that I would guess are generally decent people.  

The second thing I saw was an article on Glamour.com written by Bethenny Frankel as she shared the pain and heartache of her miscarriage earlier this year.  Having walked through two miscarriages recently, I was drawn to the article as I could relate to her pain and admire her courage to share her experience, with the hope of encouraging other women who have been down that road.  I was scrolling down to leave a comment of "thanks for sharing" when I was shocked to see negative comments.  Women who had experienced their own losses telling her to get over it because she was only seven weeks along in her pregnancy and they had been over twenty weeks, or women who were criticizing her for mourning her loss when she already has a child and they don't have any children.  As if one child is a replacement for another.  As if one person's loss is more valuable than another's based on time.   I don't agree with everything Bethenny says as she does not share my faith and basis for decision making, but I can completely relate to her pain.  To know that women out there would read about her pain and then choose to add to it by belittling her loss, made me sick to my stomach. I've seen her talk about this in interviews and each time she has been moved to tears, by her own pain, but still bravely  went on to share her story.  I would bet none of those women who had such harsh things to say, would think to speak those words to her face if they could stand in front of her as she cried out her hurt. 

So here's the deal, people: words hurt, spoken or written.  We should apply the same filter to our online voice as we do to our face to face voice.  Beating people up with your words is wrong.  Callously mocking people is wrong. Now, I'm all for a good joke between friends.  I have some hilarious friends, and we make fun of ourselves and each other when we're together, but it is in love, in fun, and with limits.  We know each other well, and we never cross the line into hurtful.  Seeing what I saw today makes me want to go back on my own social media pages and see if I have said hurtful words just for the joke and delete them and apologize to anyone I have hurt. It is not worth the laugh if the laugh causes someone else's tears.   I will for sure be very careful about what I post and say in the future.  I was thinking about the words in James 3:6:

"And the tongue is a flame of fire. It is a whole world of wickedness, corrupting your entire body. It can set your whole life on fire, for it is set on fire by hell itself."

Don't take this verse so literally that you miss the principle.  Now that we do a lot of our talking online, we need to include the fingers that are typing and texting in this verse, because they are being used like the tongue in this virtual world in which we all spend a lot of our time.  Let your words encourage someone rather than tear someone down. If you can't do that, go back to the basic rules of Thumper's mom: "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothin' at all"!  I'm just sayin'!