Why Christians Are Online Jerks

I saw an interesting article by Jonathan Acuff over at CNN.com today. Acuff blogs at www.stuffchristianslike.net and is the author of the similarly titled humorous book Stuff Christians Like.

In the article, Acuff makes the observation that Christians are often jerks in their online communications with their bitter Twitters and hateful blogs. He goes on to ask why this is is the case, seeing as we serve a loving God who has told us that the among the greatest of commandments is that we are to love our neighbor as ourself.

Acuff suggests two reasons:

1. The Business Traveler Approach, which believes, "What happens online, stays online." Sometimes we buy into the idea that our internet life somehow "doesn't count," and we are free to become jerks in this forum.


2. Room Cleaning Christianity, the strong desire to do certain tasks (like cleaning one's room when you're in college) as opposed to more difficult tasks (like getting started on that final paper that is due). We tend to criticize others instead of doing the difficult work of loving one's neighbor. After all, as Acuff puts it, "Loving your neighbor might be simple, but it’s not easy."

Thankfully, as Acuff points out, there is a remedy for these phenomena:

Jesus came for the mess-ups like us. Jesus came for the failures. Jesus came for the jerks. (That’s not in the King James version of the Bible, I remixed it like Timbaland.) And the truth is, grace is the antidote to being a jerk online.

You can read the whole article here.