Blogging, ethics, and a Christian World View
Posted By Paul on January 23, 2005
Interesting AP article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this morning - Influence of Web pundits raises questions about ethical standards.
It deals with the whole issue of whether ethics should have anything to do with blogging, and if so, to what extent. Cruising around the blogosphere, this seems to be one of the current hot topics of the moment.
This is yet another instance of how your world view affects everything you do. One of the quotes that I found most revealing:
Blogging is more like a conversation, and “you can’t develop a code of ethics for conversations,” said David Weinberger, a prominent blogger and research fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “A conversation with your best friend would become stilted and alienating.”
Hmm…so this guy is saying that you should have no ethics in your conversation with your best friend? So what, does that mean anything goes? Lie, cheat, slander….Yeah, I really want someone like that for my best friend.
But, if, as Rom 12:2 suggests, we are transformed and our minds are renewed, this becomes almost a non-issue. Can you imagine having the mind of Christ and yet having no ethics? Of course not!
Edited to add: Phil 2:5 was the verse I was really trying to come up with here. Our mind, our attitude, is to be the same as Christ Jesus! All the time, in all things! Interestingly, my good friend and fellow blogger Steve Scarrow has a most excellent post about this very verse today. Please go read it.
Now I realize that I have greatly over-simplified things, and quite frankly, no one is going to pay me squat to write anything for them. But wait, I did go to that movie on the condition that I blog about it. So I guess this does apply?
Of course it applies! Ethics apply in every aspect of life. We can no more turn our ethics on and off than we can turn our breathing on and off.
Let me just urge bloggers who are also Christians to hold to your Christ-centered world-view…in all things. Credibility can be destroyed instantly when we decide to set ethics aside (Armstrong Williams?).
We’re citizens of another world, our ethical standards must reflect that, in our blogging, as well as our lives.
Hi Paul
Jon also posted on that today - isn’t it interesting, I’ll link to this as well on my post.
I think how we blog makes ahuge statement about who we are - as it stands, if I want to see some arguing and anger, I can just pop long to one of the popular Christian sites!
Hmm - I’ll have to think about that in my own blogging.
Cheers - Steve
Amne, Paul. Thanks for reminding us all of the big burden we carry when we jump into the blogosphere. It’s easy to forget sometimes, particularly when you’re caught up in the moment of posting something you’re passionate about, that there may be lots of people out there reading your stuff who don’t know Christ or anything about the Bible. It is and should be a solemn reminder for us all. Thanks!