Walking Therein

Posted By Jacque on September 14, 2009

July 23, 2009

I have blogged many times about the benefits of blogging and online relationships. There are many wonderful benefits to getting to know others of like beliefs, faith, and interests online. The world wide super highway of the internet is an invaluable asset to our society and also to home schoolers, many who prefer to stay home and study from there.

Benefits of Online Relationships and Blogging
I have a category devoted to Blogging To Learn, a set of blog articles dedicated to encouraging and writing about our experiences as a family of bloggers and how we have used blogging in our home and schooling. We have many family sites that we use as a part of our learning and ministries. I love the flexibility we can use with our children in their writing and research through blogging, as well as forming who they are in what Yehovah has for them.

We have had the opportunity to meet many home schoolers from all over the world through our family blogs and also many in person here at our home and in theirs. We have been very blessed in the past 4 years, getting to know so many of you. It is amazing how relationships can become strong with someone you have never met but know personally on a daily blog and/or email. I have online friends I have known for several years now, with whom I email frequently and get to speak with on the phone occasionally. I have had friends online with whom I just seemed to click and others I knew right away we wouldn’t hit it off.

Online relationships really aren’t much different than the real-life ones.

We have written with blog teams, created our own websites of blog teams, and expanded our social network through FaceBook and Twitter. I love to spend time reading the posts at the CMOMB Forum (though I am not very good at posting there!), and I knew so many moms already when The Homeschool Lounge opened over a year ago. I have found true and loving friends through Cindy Rushton’s seminars and Group who seem like our very own Church body, and learned a lot about goats and people I never would have met in home school circles through the Yahoo Goat Group. There are really so many opportunities to meet and get to know people and build relationships online.
These are the wonderful benefits of online relationships.

When Things Go Wrong
We have also learned of the other side to online relationships and how they can become out of control, misunderstood, and sometimes downright harmful to you spiritually, emotionally and even possibly putting you in physical danger.
Fortunately, though, our first experience of someone stalking of one of our daughters did not scare us away, and Adonai has protected us and drawn us closer and closer to him with each conflict that arises.

Conflicts are inevitable in relationships, whether they last for a few minutes and are just an exchange of a few words or if they last for several years and become completely out of hand. I am, believe it or not, the kind of person who doesn’t want to say or write something that will offend anyone. I want to help people. I want to give good advice, discern and speak properly about the WORD, and help my friends and acquaintances in their problems or ministries. I try hard to not say things I don’t feel will be accepted until I know someone better. But, I have also learned that that kind of worrying about offending someone at every turn will make one very sick indeed. Violating your own convictions will make your heart, your spirit and your emotions a twisted mess. I don’t like not approving dissenting comments or having to respond to defend my faith or opinion, but that is life, and it is necessary.
It does not mean we cannot be friends.

I am going to let you down.
A friend of mine said to me recently, “I was just thinking about how people will almost always let us down in some way at some time. I am sure that I will let you down at some time. Maybe there’s something that we don’t agree on. Nevertheless, Jesus will never let us down.” This is something we must know about all relationships. This is the bottom line. She calls it “keeping the main thing the main thing”.

She’s right. I have known her for a couple of years online. I read her blog, and we have emailed and chatted a bit. I know we do not agree on everything. I know we agree on a lot. I know I respect her and look up to her and her family. Honestly, I don’t want to put her on a pedestal and even give her the chance to let me down. I pray that the Father and His Love will always stay between us, and He will be on the pedestal, not my high ideals or expectations of her.

I know myself much better than any of my online friends, and I let myself down daily. It is a part of human nature – whether we admit it or not. It is also a part of human nature to have higher ideals for people we admire and look up to. This can lead to disappointment and emotional or spiritual struggles when the person disagrees with you or does not behave in a way the you deem appropriate.

The point is that we cannot know anyone online. We don’t even know the people we see every day or every week of our lives in real life! Should we then give up relationships completely? No! Relationships are designed by our Father to not only fill our lives with him, but also to draw us closer to depend on him and not our own judgments and understandings. When things go awry in relationships, we are forced to go to him and check our attitudes and seek him and learn to walk in him and his ways.

The problems arise when disagreements become sinful. We bloggers obviously have our own opinions to share. We have a ready audience, and sometimes that is a dangerous thing when “we know we are right and a former friend or acquaintance is wrong”. It is not, however, always the case that people find an audience through blogging to share their grievances with someone about another person or family who has disagreed with them, their ministry, etc and they have felt hurt over it. Sometimes they can spread the conflict with the click of an email, forwarding personal correspondence that was never intended to be read by the world.

We have also, believe it or not, dealt with illegalities online stemming from conflicts that were not laid to rest, but got completely out of control. Things from having our personal blog sites on our own server hacked by previous friends who helped us set them up, to having people we know and those don’t email and call us and let us know they were praying for us because they have heard things that are just plain hateful, or have evaluated “evidence” and found the perpetrator to be at fault, without us even having knowledge we were being slandered. We have openly been named and slandered and our faith called into question as a family repeatedly, daily, in a live and in your face manner. This is just all the ‘way to play the game’.

Is it unloving? Yes.

It is the Scriptural way to handle things? No.

Does it hurt? Of course it does.

“Gossip needn’t be false to be evil – there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around.” ~ Frank A Clark

All of this goes back to one thing: I am going to disappoint. Members of our family will disappoint. There will be future friends we help with their businesses, blogs, writings, home school information, Scriptural applications, and all manner of who knows what that we will likely disappoint in some way or another. Any of these online friends could be the next ones the Dixon family disappoints with what we believe and how we live and standing by our own values and guidelines, not moving to bend to theirs.

Is a break in fellowship the answer?
No. And yes. It honestly depends. It obviously depends on where both parties are in the conflict – or even how far in either direction they are willing to go, good or bad. The first thing to do is to evaluate the situation. Is it really a conflict or just something you can agree to disagree on? When Amanda, Jocelyn, and I wrote on The Homeschool Post, all of the ladies freely shared their opinions about matters on the Group Forum, and though it sometimes got heated, we all walked away loving each other, even if we disagreed. It was nothing to break the bonds of fellowship over, and we didn’t. It surely could have become a battle of the rights and wrongs, because we each wanted to discuss, but each had strong opinions. And there were a LOT of hard issues to tackle in the two years we were a team there! We all wanted the best, and we all were respectful of each other, even if we didn’t like each others’ opinions. I still respect those ladies today.

The next thing to do, if it is going to be a conflict and not something one or both parties can love through and allow to be something in their relationship they just disagree on, it to try to work it out. A good online friend thought she had offended me a couple of years ago and immediately called me from 2000 miles away to make sure she could hear my voice and judge for herself the tone of what I was saying. I know that is not always going to be possible, but, in that case, I was able to convey my heart to her and let her know that there is nothing that cannot be worked out or through in love, and no offense is worth going on and on in a sinful manner, losing a good sister in the faith. Unfortunately, sometimes working it out becomes impossible. Neither I as an individual, nor we, as a family, can bend to what others believe for our own families or writings or websites. We take what the Father is teaching us very seriously, and rely on Him, not our friends and their opinions. That is our prerogative and obviously, friends would never expect us to violate our own Biblical convictions, even to agree with what they are learning.

But How Then?
Matthew 18 gives guidelines on why and how to mend a rift in a relationship where sin is involved. It is a very clear-cut and defined passage given for our benefit and the healing of the body. It is NOT the answer to proving that your side is right and the others’ side is wrong. In that case, Matthew 18 won’t work. It is specifically for Conflicts Among Believers. It is also near impossible to apply online. There is no “church” to bring the accused in front of once the accuser has gone to them in love and humility and presented his case to him and then brought two others to witness it. It is also difficult to take two other Believers with you to be a witness to every word spoken when everyone is all over the country or world. Because of this, there are many many other Scriptures that we, as online friends can apply to situations of dissension and conflict in lieu of the necessity of Matthew 18. The WORD is sufficient in conflict resolution before it gets to this point.

The Law of Love 1John 4:7-8 gives intentional instruction on loving other Believers. It does not qualify that love by their actions, but just says to do it, because if you are His, then you will love as He does. If that means that you love fiercely, letting them go if they don’t walk righteously, then do it. Love as He does.

The Golden Rule It doesn’t feel good to be treated badly, and you will likely know it if you have to apply these Scriptures to conflict. Pray for them and do to them as you would like them to do to you.

Ephesians 4
Encourage one another.

Walk in peace as much as you are able. This is a hairy Scripture to apply. In light of all of these others, we are to try and try and try. That does not mean we will succeed. Sometimes we cannot be in peace unless we comply with another’s demands, and if that would cause us to sin, well, then peace is to let them go.  Try all you can to win a brother and be at peace with him, but do whatever you do in peace.

Forgive One Another. Forgive whether they ask or not. You don’t have to, but it will free you up to walk in Adonai and His Ways without the bondage of the sin of unforgiveness.

Repent of your sins. Conflict is not one-sided. Confess your sins and ask forgiveness. when you do this and turn from it, you can stand blameless and right before Yehovah.

Do not return evil for evil. It is tempting to let your flesh rule when someone is intentionally and maliciously spreading lies about you or tampering with your property. It is tempting to shout it out to the world that you just want so-n-so to drop it and leave you alone. Don’t.

Do not appoint yourself the judge and jury. Our ways are not Yehovah God’s ways. We may think we have all the answers, but we rarely do. It is better to let it go and let Him be the judge and jury than to place ourself in that position and walk in pride and sin.

Do not demand that your voice be heard, therefore preventing gossip and slander. We all want our side to be heard. We don’t want others to get away with their sin. David had this happen to him a lot in his life. Lies and vain imaginations were at the root of a bitter soul in Saul and his treatment of David. David cried out to Yehovah. He trusted in His Adonai and walked in Torah, meditating on it to know how to walk. Knowing his Torah, His Ways, better than our own, wlaking in them and meditating in them will keep us from gossiping and delivering spite in areas of conflict.

Do not intentionally lie about the other party to gain sympathy and make them look incredulous or assume that you know things you don’t and pass it along as fact. (This is not only wrong, but a pending lawsuit could be in order.)

Sometimes, you can do all you can to walk the straight and narrow, and you are still going to come out looking like you are wrong, if you keep your mouth shut and choose to not spread all the juicy details, swaying people to your “side”. OUCH! That is HARD! It is just something you will have to walk through and lean on the Father, Yeshua and the Holy Spirit to lead you through and comfort you in. It is especially hard when it is not you, but your children whose blogs disappear or whose name you find in a post on the worldwide web.

The Father’s Hand in All of It
It would seem that if there is going to be all of this conflict that perhaps we just shouldn’t be online at all. To me, that is like saying, perhaps we should hole ourselves up in a mountain and live away from all others, just in case of conflict. As I stated before, conflict is inevitable in relationships. The Bible speaks a lot to relationships, which leads us to the fact that relationships are not only important to Yehovah God, but also that we need to live through and walk in them and learn to be more like Him as we experience the love, joy, fun and conflict and heartaches in those relationships. We must learn to decrease and prefer one another first and allow Him to increase. We cannot just run from the relationships, delete and ignore everyone we disagree with and create our own little world. As a last resort, maybe that is the answer to avoid strife, but it is not a good first answer. If you both allow Him to, Yehovah will lead and guide you to His Shalom.

I can attest to the fact that God the Father WILL protect and keep you through all of it. He WILL send others in your defense to testify to the WORD and the truth, even if they know absolutely nothing about what is going on. Even if you have no idea they are involved by the other party. And that is what you desire. Let the Father work it out. Let the Holy Spirit show the truth to others. Do not spread the details. Let the Holy Spirit work on your behalf, leading others to see the truth and to act in Him and speak up at just the right times to testify to your love of Him and the truth of Love in His WORD.

When I step in and take control of things and let the flesh rule, which it so desperately wants to do, His will and good cannot prevail. That is not to sa that He will not give me discernment or right words to say. However, words in emails or even blog posts are not always taken as they are given, especially in conflict, when there is a tendency to have the discussion become passionate and heated. As much as you may try, someone who desperately wants you to see his side of the issue may not really hear you. It may become a futile attempt at reconciliation that you all just need a break from. A real break, not a break to go to others and beat each other up behind your backs.

On the other hand, do not feel that you have to be a martyr either. Do not allow the name of Yehovah to be slandered or your friends to be outright deceived. If Yehovah has spoken to someone’s heart and they feel led to ask you what is going on in a spirit of love, not of spite or gossip, let them know as little as possible, not slandering or drawing them in emotionally, but let them know you are walking in truth and not partaking of any sin that is going around in the conflict. Don’t spread the juicy details, but let them know their discernment is correct and encourage and give thanks to them and Yehovah for the encouragement He gives you through them.

He is the bottom line. He is the Main thing. Let’s keep Him there, in the middle, regardless of agreements or disagreements, disappointments, heartaches, broken friendships, whatever comes our way online. Be positive, share what you are learning and be honest, giving glory to the One True God and allowing our actions to testify to His holiness.

Truly, our friendships have been greatly enriched online. We have many people whom we have grown to love and respect and many who have shown great love to our family. We so appreciate all the Father has given us in our online relationships, because most of them are great blessings. Those that aren’t great are blessings in that we are taught by Yehovah how to walk and talk, even if our first reactions are wrong. He is faithful, extends grace and love, and we are blessed to learn and know him in it all.

So, good or bad, online relationships will enhance your life. Most of it is very, very good, and we greatly appreciate our friends!

blessings to you~

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Because this post is sure to draw criticism, I openly and willingly admit that the reason I know much of this is obviously by experience. I have made mistakes, and as much as I have tried to keep certain friendships, it really is sometimes impossible. There have been occasions where I have made comments and argued when I could have kept quiet. I do not believe in peace at all costs. Sometimes peace is not allowed by all parties. I am thankful I am learning and thankful that I have a merciful God who forgives and loves and teaches as we walk in his ways. I hope that this has been an encouragement to you.

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Categories: Better Blogging, Blogging To Learn, Heart and Home, Oh Father, Help Me Live Biblically
Tags: blogging, Blogging to Learn, CMOMB, conflict, Facebook, friends, gossip, grace, Homeschool, lies, love, Matthew 18, peace, sin, slander, social networking, Twitter, walk in love