This chapter gave me pause to ponder. Am I neglecting face-to-face relationships? I can't answer that right now — requires more meditating.

I do believe that Christians tend to not use some methods because of the evil that makes the headlines. Frances Schaffer talked about Christians giving over politics, entertainment, and law to the secular world by not taking part. I think he would say the same thing about the Internet. It's that dance between being in the world, but not of the world.

We can reach some people who would never cast a shadow on church door. But, like anything, we can only present to them when we are willing to invest in each person. We're back the key – realtionships.

Hey, dewde. Great stuff you were doing on your website. You're so right some teens need a safe place to be honest with themselves and others.

Back to pondering my own question.

I ran a website dedicated to helping teens that struggled with porn addiction for a few years. It was basically a tribe of mostly Christian teens that felt confined to their own minds. They had youth group and bible studies and high school cliques and youth pastors and mentors and well meaning parents… but what they didn't have was a safe group of peers, or adults, where they felt they could say, "I'm not perfect and I struggle with pornography."

We cried together. We prayed together. We held each other up and encouraged each other. We celebrated each others victories and grieved each others defeats.

In the span of 3 years we intervened in several suicide threats, a few sexual molestation accusations, parents who didn't care and parents who over-reacted. We had cutters and liars and homosexuals and heterosexuals and chronic "self gratifiers". We had teens that made Craigslist dates. You name it, we saw it.

For most of us, we never saw each others faces. We were just digital words on a screen. We loved each other in a pure, clean sense of the word, and we love each other still even though I turned the community over to the next group of leaders.

Online relationships can be more real and authentic than real life ones because when you open yourself up and be completely honest and transparent to a group of strangers for the first time… you have nothing to lose. We can be our real, honest selves almost immediately without the fear of losing the love or respect of a Mom or a Dad or a friend forever.

Part of the problem with the online world is that you are free to be anonymous and you find yourself doing things you would never do in front of other people. But part of the beauty of the online world is the same exact thing. It can be a liberating place to find a rag-tag band of lost souls just like you where you can finally be free to say, "I hurt" and know that the person on the other side of the screen will not judge you because they have made the same mistakes and have felt the exact same pain.

peace|dewde

Good post.

I am a part of several communities of both types. I tend to drift between them pretty easily and there are several people that are in more tan one of the communities I belong to. I really enjoy the conversations and sharing that goes on both online and in person. I really enjoy when a virtual connection becomes a "real friend" as you put it because we met in person.

I only see danger in virtual communities in so much as there is danger in anything that can draw us away from the 2 greatest commandments. I've been in both types of communities that were drawing me away from God and both types that helped me draw closer. In all cases, it has more to do with me than it did with the technology involved.

Going to read "part 2" on your blog now…