By now, many of us have perused others, whether for interest or curiosity. All too often on non-Christian sites, the expectation is that you're empowered to be as impersonal as desire. One site even keeps a tally of the people who looked at your profile and calls them "stalkers", furthering this feeling that people need not feel connected to others in the virtual community.
However, we're Christians. We are under a debt of love to one another, and anything less Christ like love and affirmation of the saints in Christ is deep sin. After all, 1 John tells us quite clearly that if we say love God (Whom we've not seen) but act with hate or dislike to the brother (or sister) that we have seen, then we are liars and we do not have the Holy Spirit.
How should this be made manifest on a Christian site? Affirm the saints in Christ, speak the truth in love, and where necessary commit to corporate discipline of willful disobedience. On that last point, we are ambassadors of Christ and emissaries of reconciliation; every Christian is called to exhort and correct those professing faith in Christ.
So, what do you do when you're not really into the person who took the initiative to contact you? Simple, you treat them how you'd want to be treated if the roles were reversed. If you can honestly say you'd want someone to pretend like you didn't exist, then please continue not to reply to people. For the rest of us, though, the world will acknowledge us as Christ's disciples by our love one for another, giving preference to the other and esteeeming our fellow saints more highly than ourselves.
If this sound like your spirit, great. If not, then, like the rest of us, you need to put to death the sin nature.
After all, since we're all on here to meet other people, forgive us when we're not charming, when we're not idle flatterers, and when we jumble words when trying to initiate conversation.
What an awesome well-written, intelligent post. Bravo. We all should be striving to be more Christ like in general, and also keep that in mind when we are responding or not responding to one another's messages. I sadly have failed before in being Christ-like in my responses to people, but always try to be polite. Unless I ignore them, which I don't think is Christ-like at all. Sigh. Will. Try. Better. Next. Time.
By now, many of us have perused others, whether for interest or curiosity. All too often on non-Christian sites, the expectation is that you're empowered to be as impersonal as desire. One site even keeps a tally of the people who looked at your profile and calls them "stalkers", furthering this feeling that people need not feel connected to others in the virtual community.
However, we're Christians. We are under a debt of love to one another, and anything less Christ like love and affirmation of the saints in Christ is deep sin. After all, 1 John tells us quite clearly that if we say love God (Whom we've not seen) but act with hate or dislike to the brother (or sister) that we have seen, then we are liars and we do not have the Holy Spirit.
How should this be made manifest on a Christian site? Affirm the saints in Christ, speak the truth in love, and where necessary commit to corporate discipline of willful disobedience. On that last point, we are ambassadors of Christ and emissaries of reconciliation; every Christian is called to exhort and correct those professing faith in Christ.
So, what do you do when you're not really into the person who took the initiative to contact you? Simple, you treat them how you'd want to be treated if the roles were reversed. If you can honestly say you'd want someone to pretend like you didn't exist, then please continue not to reply to people. For the rest of us, though, the world will acknowledge us as Christ's disciples by our love one for another, giving preference to the other and esteeeming our fellow saints more highly than ourselves.
If this sound like your spirit, great. If not, then, like the rest of us, you need to put to death the sin nature.
After all, since we're all on here to meet other people, forgive us when we're not charming, when we're not idle flatterers, and when we jumble words when trying to initiate conversation.
Some good thoughts Bush, if this were to work like a church. Unfortunately online sites don'tseem to promote that all the time. I'm outside the age bracket for young adult, but this post caught my eye.
In the past I've had some difficulties with responding to some and found it very time consuming to reply to everyone, especially if I already discerned they may not be who they say they are or something very unhealthy is going on.
I'll be shutting down my account in a week (I only tried this for a day or so and am not able to stay on here for now), but some options, if there is a strong community on this forum is to have a welcoming committee or ones that invite others into the forum. That way it becomes more personal like a church. The door greeters. The more fellowship is built, the more maybe others will be accountable to each other and less removed. Just some thoughts.
good word bro.....good word. I do think that the fact this is by title a "dating website" that we (not tryin to generalize) use it as it is.....we pick and choose the people we wanna talk too instead of just being true to our word when we put in our profile that we wanna "talk to whoever"......but lets be honest at the same time, how many people on here only signed up because they're desperate for someone inparticular and could careless about those who message them that they dont necessarily wanna talk too? I know this is a hard statement, but im sure some of us can agree with it......im not judging, I'll admit I have done it to one person on here and if by chance they are reading this i just wanna say sorry.....this site isnt a bad idea, some of us have difficulty with dating out in the 'real world' or some other situation why we turned here.......but lets just try and be what our God wants us to be first before we completely blow them off......this is a site about finding God-centered relationships right? Then lets do the God part first before we go into our own agendas on here.
Ive only been on here for less than a week and I can say im learning alot from these forum posts and my own experience with what the site offers......i hope we can all do the same.
