The following is a guest post by my friend and colleague, Dr. Don Shepson. Don is the Chair of the Ministry and Leadership Department at Toccoa Falls College and an ordained Priest in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).  

Recently I have been thinking a great deal about a trend I have witnessed sweeping through college campuses the last few months, Yik Yak. It is a smartphone app that allows users to “chat,” or more honestly, post or comment on anything with others who are close to them physically. In other words, only users within about 2 miles of one another are able to see what is posted and comment.

The trick?

It’s completely anonymous.

To understand this new app I viewed a student’s phone (mine isn’t smart enough yet for this app) to see what kind of “yak’s” were taking place near me on campus, and what I saw was alarming. In the interest in saving digits (after all, this is a blog with a 650 word limit), here are two examples:

“[So and so, with a specific name]” looks really hot today, I can’t wait to see him in the gym without his shirt.” This had seven “upvotes” from anonymous people who apparently agreed.

“I wonder what [so and so, with a specific name] slept in last night? Any ideas?” This one came with a handful of responses that included “I don’t know, but I wish I was there” and “nothing!”

As you might imagine, these leave the specifically named individuals wondering what on earth each did to warrant these kinds of awkward, uncomfortable, or even threatening comments. They made me wonder too, about the idea of anonymity within a Christian community. I have worked with Steve for years in college ministry on two campuses and one thing we have always been impressed by (not necessarily a good thing, we get easily impressed) is the willingness of students to say and do things that they think are anonymous. Anonymity seems to me to cut across the grain of Christianity.

In his book To Know As We Are Known Parker Palmer observed: 

“The goal of a knowledge arising from love is the reunification and reconstruction of broken selves and worlds. A knowledge born of compassion aims not at exploiting and manipulating creation but at reconciling the world to itself. The mind motivated by compassion reaches out to know as the heart reaches out to love. Here, the act of knowing is an act of love, the act of entering and embracing the reality of the other, of allowing the other to enter and embrace our own. In such knowing we know and are known as members of one community, and our knowing becomes a way of reweaving that community’s bonds."

Anonymity however contains a number of dangers that prohibit a Christian community (like college campuses or churches) from knowing or becoming known more fully as Palmer describes. When we separate our selves from Christian community, as anonymity permits and promotes, we privatize our lives and what happens is that we loose healthy and Godly accountability, we make room for misunderstanding, and we hide our true selves that need the gentle shaping and love that a meaningful community offer. In effect, we make space for darkness and separation to become dominant factors in life, which are the antithesis of Christianity, where honesty, integrity, compassion, love, hope, charity, and peace are to reign in our hearts and minds.

The whole of 1 Peter 3 is instructive on these matters (read, memorize, and live it), and the key verses to highlight are 8-9, “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”

It is my prayer that in Christian communities and campuses our response to apps like Yik-Yak would reflect our calling to be a people who are known to one another as those who are full of love and grace, even as we make ourselves known in the careful and Godly words we chose to speak about each other, and our own selves.

The following article first appeared on Think Christian 

Recent weeks have been marked by separate but related cultural conflicts: one involving the Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, the other involving the Internet technology company Mozilla and both involving the highly explosive topic of same-sex marriage.

First, in a public statement to Christianity Today, World Vision announced changes in their hiring policies that would no longer exclude gay couples in legal marriages from employment in their organization. Within 48 hours, appalled sponsors began to withdraw donations, resulting in an estimated loss of 10,000 child sponsorships. In the face of these tactics, World Vision reversed its decision.

Just days later, it was revealed that newly appointed Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich had donated $1,000 in support of California’s Proposition 8 campaign in 2008, which sought to make same-sex marriage illegal in the state. In response, LGBT activists and users of Mozilla’s Web products demanded Eich’s resignation, with the online dating site OKCupid even calling for a boycott of Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.

Responses to both stories lit up the Web. Social media became a battleground of heated debate, accusations, stereotyping and slander. Regardless of which argument one was sympathetic to – the Christian argument, the gay argument, the gay Christian argument - everyone seemed to come away with blood on his or her hands. In the days following the decisions of both organizations, it became clear that there was only one thing that everyone involved seemed to agree on: aggressive, antagonistic rules of engagement. Indeed, The Dish’s Andrew Sullivan, a gay Catholic, likened the tactics of OKCupid to “a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else.”

As if taking a cue from modern foreign policy, public discourse in both instances involved sanctions, boycotts and embargoes. These appear to be the weapons of choice for today’s political and theological debates. And while many have embraced the current strategy of tit-for-tat retaliation, it has caused numerous others to become exhausted, disgusted or to simply withdraw from the table.

As if taking a cue from modern foreign policy, public discourse in both instances involved sanctions, boycotts and embargoes.

Now is an essential time to envision an alternative to the noise – especially for those who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. Is it not appropriate for members of a Kingdom that claims it is not of this world to embrace a distinct code of conduct towards those with whom they disagree?

Os Guinness, author of The Case for Civility, had this to say in a 2009 interview with Faith and Leadership: “We have a right and a responsibility to disagree, to debate, to persuade someone that they’re out to lunch. They may be muddle-headed. They may be socially disastrous. They might even be morally evil, but we have a responsibility to disagree civilly.”

In support of civil discourse, Guinness is not suggesting that deeply held convictions and beliefs are irrelevant; in fact, he argues just the opposite. If we take our beliefs seriously, the pursuit of civil discourse should serve as the preferred method of generating change at the most foundational levels of governments, institutions and organizations. Indeed, when our response to disagreements is reduced to boycotts and tweets, the true depth of our convictions is reduced as well.

Anything of lasting value takes patience and time to bring to fruition. Civil discourse is the slow work of changing hearts and minds through persuasion, in contrast to the “shock and awe” tactics of power wielding. As Guinness reminds us, “Followers of Jesus are called to be peacemakers, with truth and grace; Paul asks us to speak the truth with love. We’re called to love our enemies and do good to those who wrong us. This is our Christian motivation for championing the classical virtue of civility.”