In recent months I've been making a concerted effort to expose what has become a curse of the Internet—i.e., the Cult of Online Discernment Ministries, also known as ODMs (see my article Don't Believe Everything Your Read On the Internet and several additional assessments linked therein).
Others—including well-known blogger Tim Challies (Article #1 & Article #2), Pastor James MacDonald, and the Internet Monk—have raised similar concerns about these so-called watchbloggers. Most recently, we have the following short article by long-time journalist Dan Wooding, founder of ASSIST Ministries, who is not only "an award winning British journalist," but a respected author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth." Wooding observed the following in a May 12, 2009 article titled "The Wild Wild West of the Blogosphere: Is it 'Love Central' or 'Hate Central?'”
In recent years, a new form of communication has appeared called blogging in which anyone can set up a blog (a contraction of the term weblog) and write about anything they wish. No journalistic training is required, but a point of view that can be either hateful or positive.
After being in journalism for 40 year now, I marvel at the variety of commentaries or entries, often without any real evidence, that are appearing all over the Blogosphere. For some who live in restricted countries, these bloggers literally risk their lives by writing about human rights abuses in their land. This is what I consider the good side of blogging.
But sadly, we also see many individuals, especially Christians, who use their blogs to attack other Christians with whom they disagree. These bloggers know no bounds in their hateful attacks and justify them, just like the Pharisees of old, by saying that their view is the only one that matters. There are also secular blog sites that continue their vendettas against those they don’t like or disagree with by going to such lengths that I wonder how they get away with it legally.
I have been the target of some of these sites, both “Christian” and “Secular,” and I usually just ignore their barbs as being part of the territory of my work as a journalist. I wonder what kind of lives these attackers lead and why they are so hateful in their words in what has become the “Wild Wild West of the Blogosphere.” Do they have any joy in their lives or do their personal attacks made them feel superior to those they go after?
I realize that not all blogging is negative, but I do wonder what non-Christians make of the so-called Christian blog sites that are often so vicious in their attacks against other believers. In Luke 6:31 (New Kings James Version), we20read, “And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise.” In John 13:34.35 (New Kings James Version), we read the words of Jesus, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Finally, we read in 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 (New International Version), “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.”
