When to engage... and when not to.

Have you ever found yourself reading an article and thinking..."I wonder what other people are saying about this...?" Only to scroll to the bottom of the page and see that the comment section is a pile of hot garbage, scathing reviews, grammar police and trolls? It seems like in the last decade this strange need to comment on just about anything and everything (regardless of our actual knowledge or expertise) has become common-place. There was once a day when people used to hold their tongue for fear of getting the good ol' "Will-Smith-Slap." But those days are long gone.

It's SO EASY to get sucked in to the drama. Drama about people whose live's we've never met and know nothing about. Drama about matters we have zero expertise in or knowledge about (but we've got a thousand opinions to spare). Before we know it, we're all riled up, adrenaline's rushing, cortisol is spiking, and stress hormones launch into outer space stoking a "fight" response to engage with people we don't even know. It's awful for our mental health. And it's worse for our hearts.

A good friend of mine, Emily, recently shared her thoughts with me on this, and what she said hit the nail on the head. She said that we, in good conscience should care about things that require justice, but if we aren't careful- we find ourselves falling into judgement on matters that we aren't qualified to judge. Judgement is heavy thing to bear... and a good judge is someone who has had time and studied evidence to make a credible sentence. A judge has the power to change someone's life. In our day and age, the court of public opinion has shifted itself to judge, jury, and executioner. Good people are being publicly "executed" with no courtroom, no facts, being denied fair trial. The damage this does to a person is truly beyond words. The devastation is real. And yes, it happens online, but it also happens when we gossip and talk bad about others.

For a while, people seem fine with that... that is, until they're on the other end of it. It's not pretty. It's these moments that I'm prompted to remember the gravity of verses like "you will reap what you sow" (Gal. 6:7-9) in judgement and "you will be judged by the same measuring stick you use against others" (Luke 6:37-41).

A few recent personal experiences on this have really rocked my heart. I felt the need to share just one of them with you today.

A while back, I met a young lady who had just recently come into a new relationship with God. She had had a really tough life, and had rocky past. So when she found out about Jesus, she was so excited about the forgiveness and restoration He had for her. I knew she had a long bumpy road ahead of her, and I was prepared for the twists and turns- and I tried to prepare her as well. The journey of faith is more of a long-game than an overnight transformation- especially with the trauma she'd lived through.

Not long after we'd met up, and I noticed a social media post regarding a crime bust nearby.  The person who posted it then went on to post the mug shots of all the individuals involved, followed with their own condemning commentary. I stopped to looked a little closer at the pictures, because something about one woman looked familiar- but I couldn't put my finger on it. As I looked closer, I realized that it was same lady I had spoken with- but this time she looked like she'd been roughed up. My heart dropped.

I knew that she had been struggling with her former way of life, and that although she was trying, there were parts that were harder to shed than others. I knew that this was one bad day, not a lifetime judgement. I knew there had been more good days than bad than she'd had in a long time. But what got blasted all over the internet was a bad one. My heart immediately worried what the comments were going to be.

I scrolled down quickly to catch a glimpse, hoping no one else noticed her. The hopes were unfounded. It seems some people feel better about themselves if they capitalize on someone else's worst moment. People were all over it, ready to condemn her. People who didn't even know her or her story were commenting, calling her all kinds of names. Sharing a plethora of opinions. It was like they forgot she was a real person. To them, she was just a news article. They didn’t care about her or know what shed been through.

Here's what they didn't realize. They hoped to expose her, but all they really did was expose the ugly inside themselves. They didn't realize that in that moment, their judgements made them just as guilty and sinful as her. The most heartbreaking part of that was that many of these commenters professed to be Christian.

Pride isn't pretty, folks. Criticism isn't classy.

I can say this because, well, I AM them. I've been there, and I've done that. I'm not proud of it. If we profess Christ, we're called to a different standard: The standard of love. When we're low on love, it's easy to fall in to temptation to bring others down, but that's a bright red warning signal that something isn't right in our own heart. Whether we're feeling jealous, insecure, inadequate, or maybe even guilty- some how, some way it eventually shows itself through a prideful attitude if we don't deal with it. Her sin may have been publicized on a front page, but hidden sin is just as destructive.

So destructive that it can actually make you an enemy of God. Scripture is packed with verses about how to deal with a heart that is full of pride (see James 4:1-10, & Romans 12:16-8), but for now, let's focus on 1 Peter 5:5. “... Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” YIKES. The thought of God opposing me is something I don't want to have to imagine.

Luckily, there is another option: humility. Where there is humility, there is grace.Humility is really just giving others the same compassion you'd like to receive. It’s showing others the same forgiveness God showed you. It's stopping before you engage in a pile on, and considering how you'd want to be treated if it were you. I wish I could say the story had a positive turn around. It didn't. She never quite came back from that. A few years later she overdosed.

I don't say all this to ruin your day, I say it to show you that words matter. Grace matters. Humility matters. Love matters. If we are Christians, we hold the power in our words for life and death.

So, here's the bottom line: the heading promised an answer to the question "should I engage, or not?" And here's my attempt at encouraging you to make a choice that your heart will be happy it made. The next time you might thinking about scrolling down and reading or adding to the comments, ask yourself... "what will this do to my heart? What will it stoke in me? Will it push me to sin against someone else, or add love to them? What would I hope someone reading this would do... if it were about me?"

And then... do that.

XOXO,

Natalie