Charity, Fear, and the Internet

Labored through the Bari Weiss column that everyone is freaking out about. Really loved the perfectly distributed pictures of all those people who were once beyond the pale, but not so much anymore, having gone end run around the usual media and connected with listeners and readers directly. Find it utterly fascinating, utterly, that the most pressing question for Bari Weiss is knowing the intellectual parameters of the Intellectual Dark Web, which name I love, and being sure that gatekeepers enforcing those parameters are firmly in place before she can even consider joining them. When that is the very essence of the “movement,” if that’s what it is. Can anyone say anything? Evermore the answer is a resounding ‘No.’

Would be pretty interested in a Christian version. Only maybe it could be Light instead of Dark–The Light Christian Fellowship Internet Space. If I were going to be honest, which I try to be as much as possible, I will admit to hefty doses of self-censorship, under the spiritual euphemism of Christian Charity. I tell myself that I want to be kind, I don’t want to cause offense where offense is unnecessary. And this is true. But mixed in with my personal commitment to general kindness is a measure, pressed down, shaken together, of fear.

What will happen to me if I have Wrong Thoughts? What will happen to my small corner if I make a theological error, let alone a political one? If I express myself in this particular way, who will claim me as their ideological friend? If I articulate this unapproved idea, who will decide to be my enemy? Whose camp do I really want to be in? Do I even want a tribe? A label?

These kinds of daily anxious questions are necessarily stifling, especially if they consistently get the upper hand. Fear shouldn’t win, either over the truth, or over interesting ideas. On the other hand, fear doesn’t necessarily have to be at odds with charity. Fear and charity together might produce prudence, which might be the charming friend of wisdom. Provocation for provocation’s sake isn’t necessarily eternally useful. Moreover, disciplining oneself to write inside some circumscribed lines is occasionally felicitously creative and enlivening.

See how I justify myself so cleverly? And yet, the fractured tribal character of Christian discourse, both on the right and on the left, makes me evermore charitable towards myself, and means the blogging will more often be about the weather than it will about anything that really matters.