The Hidden Sin

There is a new hidden sin in this new age we are in. Christians are falling for it every day. Its easy to excuse this sin, because no one has to know. You can hide it so easily. It can be rationalized so easily. Its a nice hidden sweet sin. What is this new hidden sin? The lack of integrity on the internet. The lack of honesty on the internet. It is the Christian Internet Community. Its so easy. You can go to any message board that claims to be a christian internet community pick a name, and we can make our net persona be or do anything. It doesn't matter what our persona does its "just the net", no one knows who we are as our persona. So we slowly start reasoning our behavior. Get in a flame war, no need to apologize or take responsibility, "its just the net", say horrible things about a brother or sister in Christ, doesn't matter "its just the internet", lie about behavior, it doesn't matter "its just the internet". And we start thinking to ourselves, "hey what I do on the internet as ________(enter your net name) doesn't matter. no one knows its me and hey, it doesn't reflect who I REALLY am!"

Aw, but my friend it does. This is the new hidden sin for christians. We can come to the internet lack any kindof integrity and reason it off as "its just the internet" or "hey, that is how it is. people do crazy things that aren't like themselves on the net." I recently had someone say that to me and it floored me. So our christian life only should be played out in "real life". Christian life should be played out in all parts of our life. We should hold ourselves up to the highest integrity even on the internet. The internet is not a place to excuse away bad behavior, it is just another place to act your faith.

I wonder how many of us think of it this way when we are at Christian Internet Communities? I know of one person who does not think of it at all. Their internet life is something completely different from their real life. Is this wrong? For me I say it is and it is not worth the double standard. All I know is what you do on the internet speaks loud and clear of who you are outside of here. How you treat people on the internet speaks loud and clear how you would treat people outside of it. In Christian Internet Community even more it matters. In most of these communities you are acting out your faith or working out your faith (for OOZERS) these people are people you will be in heaven with, these people are your family, they are part of the body. You abuse them, their trust, their personhood you are abusing God's son or daughter and your brother or sister. This is so frustrating and disheartening. I guess Satan has given us one more thing to be able to compromise in our head and justify. I pray we wake up to this new hidden sin.