Courier Conversations

Christian Keyboard Warriors and the Problem of Online Speech

• The Baptist Courier • Season 4 • Episode 2

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How should Christians speak online? In this episode of Courier Conversations, Jeff Robinson and Travis Kerns tackle the growing problem of harsh, uncharitable communication on social media—especially among evangelicals. Drawing from Proverbs, Ephesians, James, and real-world examples, they explore why Christians often fail online, how expressive individualism fuels hostility, and why attacking people instead of arguments undermines the gospel. This thoughtful conversation offers biblical wisdom on words, tone, and charity, urging believers to engage social media in a way that glorifies God and reflects Christ.

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Jeff:

Welcome to Career Conversations. I'm Jeff Robinson, your host, and with me as usual is my co-host, Travis Curns. And we are going weekly or three times a week in our Courier Conversations women will go the third week of the month.

Travis:

Maybe three times a month. Right. Not three times a week, yeah. That'd be a lot. Yeah.

Jeff:

That would be a lot. Well, uh you now they will have to edit me then now that you said that and corrected that, but thank you very much. It's we're all off to a roaring start in the new year here. Uh but uh we do have a career podcast every week now. So today we're gonna talk about Christians and social media and communications and how we use our words and the tone in which we've used our words. And this is something that I'm a leading expert in, misusing words, so much so that I wrote a book about this uh back in 2021 and uh about what scripture has to say about words, and I preached on it last week at my church, which is Abner Creek Baptist Church in your association, Travis. And uh it's just something that's been on my mind, and you know, I have been talking about it and thought we'd make a good episode. But how are we as Christians to speak to one another, to interact with one another, particularly on social media? And right now, I think you and I, based on our conversation earlier, we would give evangelicals a failing grade, perhaps.

Travis:

Mm-hmm. Horribly failing. It it seems that um, as many people have said in the past, as you and I just talked about before we came on here, that people will hide behind keyboards, behind screens, and say things through keyboards and behind screens they would never say to a to a person face to face. Um uh it seems that for whatever reason, people on social media tend to be more combative. They tend to show more anger. Um, there's nowhere near the compassion that would be shown to a person face to face. Um, and just example after example, especially of evangelicals, uh, some even evangelical leaders who are just nasty on social media um without naming names specifically. Uh we talked about some earlier that um have claimed or made claims in the last week as we're recording this, um, that folks, for example, who might believe media narratives are mentally incapacitated or have mental issues. Um other Christian voices, evangelical voices on social media saying, um, you know, I I might kind of want to shoot a liberal here or there, uh, or I might kind of feel that way, that it's okay to shoot people in the face. That's just not charitable, one. More fundamentally, it's not Christian uh to be vile uh in that way. So yeah, I think there are some some major concerns. Obviously, it's not everybody that acts that way. There are very good channels and outlets on social media. But it does seem for whatever reason that Satan is using it well, uh I think probably since its inception, but uses it to split uh uh believers and uses it to split believers and unbelievers. Uh but again, I I think the issue is that people tend to hide behind keyboards and screens and for the most part would say things they would never say in person.

Jeff:

Yeah, I think I think a lot of us would benefit from taking another pass through the book of Proverbs, which uh I preached uh my sermon Sunday was uh The Trouble in Our Talk from Proverbs. Um our our church we're preaching through a series through Proverbs right now on some Sunday mornings, usually verse by verse, book by book, but doing this, which has been very beneficial. But uh the Bible has a lot to say about our communication and our broken communication because we talk all the time. And I don't know, surely, in human history, there's ever been a time when there have been more words um expelled from the human mouth than there is right now between books and podcasts. And by the way, I I've I'm I I think everyone has a podcast. Am I right about that? Almost everyone.

Travis:

Just about, seems like.

Jeff:

Yeah, it really, there's all these podcasts, so I don't know what that says about our podcast. I'm not sure. I'll leave that up to those who are listening out there right now. Uh but um and of course, 24-hour news, uh, you know, I can remember, and my kids are just they didn't believe me. I had to take I had to take them to YouTube of all things to prove my point. I told them that at 1 a.m. when I was growing up, television went off.

Travis:

Yep. Star Spangled Banner came on and just static after that.

Jeff:

Yep. They said, Oh, you turned it off. I said, No, no, it went off. Uh and there was a test pattern the rest of the night. There was a starspangle banner. Usually um you would have uh uh tr uh Charlton Heston or was some actor giving in a pro, you know, some very uh patriotic speech and then test pattern.

Travis:

That was it, yep. Until the advent of CNN.

Jeff:

That's right. 6 a.m. it came back on, but then CNN came on. Of course, you got Fox News and ESPN, the things we love, and you know, and I remember the first part of ESPN, you would I would stay up late watching because you'd had Australian Itals football. And I love to watch that. But but it really there's so much talk. I mean, think about the talk about sports. It it's nuts the different uh sports uh talk shows that are available now. But Christians, I I don't feel like we do well in this arena. And yet scripture has so much to say about really took a couple categories of words in in uh Proverbs. If you want to hear my sermon, go to Abner Creek Baptist Church's website and it's on there. But uh it's um words of life, we speak in words of death. And really that's a summary of what Solomon writes about in there. You know, and really our words are going in one direction or another. And you go back to the Reformation and Martin Luther, for example, and how he debated uh some of his opponents and Calvin and how he debated some of his opponents. They weren't nice, but they did not debate personalities, they did not insult each other personally, they stayed on the topic.

Travis:

The same thing for the letters between Whitfield and Wesley over theology, over soteriology specifically. When Whitfield is asked, Do you think you'll see Wesley in heaven? He said no. And oh, we got you. We knew that you didn't think he was a Christian. He said, No, no. Dr. Wesley will be closer to the throne. I will never get that close.

Jeff:

Yeah.

Travis:

Yeah.

Jeff:

Because he's an Arminian, the Calvinists all said, Well, surely an Armenian is not gonna be in heaven. Right, right.

Travis:

You know, we're And Whitfield said, Well, absolutely he'll be there. I just won't see him. I'll be too far away from the throne, he'll be too close. Yeah.

Jeff:

And I think that's it. What what you the the two examples that you used uh kind of opening here that we saw recently on uh for some from some people who want to know better. Um I think arguing at the person, at the man, but personal insults. Yeah. I mean I think that I mean arguing the issues is one thing. But arguing personalities and personal personal attributes is quite another.

Travis:

Yeah, it's an ad hominem attack, uh which is a classic logical fallacy. And something just just came to mind, you know, uh I've heard over the last few days, especially um with the various events going on in the US, that um some on um on the conservative side of things, the right wing, have said liberals don't want to win arguments, they just want to kill you. Which I don't necessarily think is the case for all liberal-minded people, progressive-minded, whatever they want to call themselves. Um are there some on the left who want to kill those on the right? Sure. Are there some on the right who want to kill those on the left? Sure. Um there's crazy uncles in every crowd. Um however, I wonder if on the right we're not saying we don't want to win the argument, we want to kill you. I think we're I think what we could be saying on the right is we don't want to win the argument, we don't make you look like an idiot.

Jeff:

Right.

Travis:

We want to we want to question your character, we want to question your mental capacity. We don't want to actually make the argument itself, just like what you're talking about, Jeff. Um we just want to make you sound like a fool. And if I can make you sound like a fool or paint you in that light, I don't need to engage the argument, which is much more difficult than arguing at the person.

Jeff:

Proverbs 10, 31 and 32. The mouth of the righteous brings forth wisdom, but the perverse tongue will be cut off. The lips of the righteous know what is acceptable. This is the English Standard Version I'm trying to quote it from here. But the mouth of the wicked what is perverse. And yet we hear a lot, I see a lot of Christians who are using, especially on social media, things that are perverse. There's not wisdom in their speech, there's nothing acceptable in their speech. It's not it's not encouraging. Uh, you know, Paul in Ephesians 4.32, let no or 429, let no unwholesome talk come out of your mouth. Only as good for building up as fits the occasion, so that might give grace to those who hear. And I think that's a question we have to ask ourselves. Are we giving grace to those who hear? And saying, you know, it's okay to kill somebody or want to kill somebody, or calling them mentally challenged, uh I don't think that's giving grace. Again, those are just two examples we can multiply among many, I see. And uh uh in one of the appendices in my book, um uh um Taming the Tongue from Not 2021, I I write about one of the reasons why I'm hesitant to use uh a lot of social media, why I I tend to stay off Twitter and now X. I wish you'd change it back to Twitter just so we have to always say that. But um is because um because of this very thing. Because there's always that temptation to throw a a flaming dart at someone, an insult, lob an insult at someone you're not gonna see. And uh, you know, I'll I'll have enough things to give an account for before Jesus without that.

Travis:

Yeah, you know, first Corinthians 10 31 comes to mind. Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all things to the glory of God. Now, I had I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that there are some out there who would try to justify what they're doing by attacking the person as being to the glory of God, but there's no way you can do so from an older New Testament perspective without standing on one foot, hopping, wearing a aluminum foil hat and squinting one eye and trying to do some really crazy eisegesis to make that into being glorifying to God, to attack another person's personality or looks or character or whatever it might be. I uh it's just troubling. Um I don't think at all that I think this is important to say as well. I don't think we're saying don't ask questions, don't attack arguments, don't don't try to reason with people. That's not what we're saying at all. The the issue becomes when you attack the person, especially in a way that you would never do to somebody's face. Now there are some who would do it to the person's face. That doesn't make it okay. Um but when when you're attacking a person rather than an argument is when the trouble tends to happen.

Jeff:

Well, I think an important for me over the years, because I've struggled with this, um, and which is what made led me to writing the book uh a few years ago. And um Proverbs 15, 1, A Gentle Word Turns Away Wrath. And I saw a good example of this recently, uh Sean Hannity on Fox News, you know, uh Sean's a uh conservative commentator, very well known, and Stephen A. Smith, a liberal commentator on ESPN. And they're friends, and they were on there going at it over an issue, and I love the way they they really they they kind of modeled this. They had some playful fun. They disagreed strongly, but they never they they wound up laughing. They were in different locations, they couldn't shake hands, they would have. You know what they they uh talked about appreciating each other when they got finished and and uh had some good laughs, but they debated the issue and that was it. And I thought, why can't and I know Sean is a um a Roman Catholic, I believe, and I don't know about Stephen A. Smith. I have no idea what his uh if he claims to be a Christian got no, but so this isn't I'm not weighing in on them. But if as Christians, I mean, uh if they're not Christians, we need to be more like that. Um and I think part of it is they're able to laugh themselves. Uh that's we've lost that ability in our uh in our country and even among Christians. And even I remember Steve Wellum one time uh in seminary did a uh a a whole 30 minutes, and he didn't remember to having done this years later. I tried to rehearse that for me. A theology of laughter, a theology of humor. And he said, We we don't laughing the ability to laugh at ourselves shows that we don't have it together, that Jesus had to come and get it together for us. That we're not we don't, you know, we're not all that. We take the gospel seriously, but not ourselves seriously. And I think, you know, in our in our culture now, on both sides of the aisle, uh, conservatives, liberals, uh, within evangelicalism, we take ourselves a far too seriously ourselves. And so we're able to swap insult for insult like that.

Travis:

And there is a tendency to just just human nature uh derived from Genesis 3. There's a tendency to want to answer somebody when they make an argument you don't agree with, there's a tendency, or they make a statement that that comes at you, there's a tendency to want to push back. Um my dad would always say, Sometimes my redneck comes out. Um and he would just kind of laugh it off and just yeah, just kind of yeah, just kind of almost saying, Well, it's okay because my redneck was just coming out. Well, that's not okay. No. Um a uh a very good friend of ours, Jeff, that we did doctor work with, uh, Dr. Adam Greenway used to say all the time, Well, it's original him or not, I don't know. I never heard him attribute it to somebody else, but he would say regularly, um, when you wrestle with a pig, one gets dirty, the other one likes it.

Jeff:

Yeah.

Travis:

And that's incredibly true, especially on social media. If you get into a character argument, you're gonna get assassinated. Uh your character is going to. That's true. Um Yeah, I don't mean that at all in a physical way. No, no. Your character is just gonna get obliterated. Um, one, because the other person that you're likely going after either doesn't care or doesn't think high enough of you to actually engage in argument. Um Proverbs 26, 4 comes to mind. Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you'll be also like him. That's right. Um I mean, it's pretty straightforward. There's no questioning what uh what's being said here in the text. Um so I think Greenway's statement is a modern day rendition. If you wrestle with a pig, one gets dirty, the other one's gonna like it.

Jeff:

Well, that that that's right. And uh I I've heard Adam say that. And um uh I I think of uh other friends of ours from the past and still still friends, the the two the two toms, my two favorite toms at Southern Seminary, Tom Nettles, who's my uh one been one of my my mentors over the years, and Tom Schreiner. What I loved about them was how they handled their opponents. Uh and one of the things I loved about Ronald Reagan, or one who, if you listened to this one time, you know, he's been one of my always been one of my heroes and voted for him. My first vote uh when I was able to vote uh at 18, he never be they never belittle their opponents. And I don't think Christians should belittle their opponents. Uh now Luther would have belittled his opponents. He might have belittle the Pope. Uh but uh but no, we don't we shouldn't belittle them. We we we we live at the um the level of arguments of of issues. I mean, probably the best piece of advice I got before I went to ministry is going into ministry, living for seminar, as my my pastor back home said, go hard on issues, but go easy on people. Because you're gonna be tempted to go it hard on issues because you've all been taught those things your whole life, these sublime theological truths you've not maybe learned in church, you're gonna go hard on people. And and I I've and I've certainly lived that out imperfectly out in anyone who knows me will tell you that, my family and and others. Uh uh, so I had to write a book to myself about it. But um, but I think uh I think that's it to to live at the to be able to live at the level in our conversations of issues, especially in social media. Of course, Twitter's there that's not room enough to debate. I mean, you're talking what, how many characters is 149 used to be?

Travis:

Used to be 140, I don't know what it is.

Jeff:

Whatever it is now, but still that's just not the venue. I had a had a uh a high school friend once uh maybe a couple years ago who just blasted me for something I put on on uh Facebook. Uh I mean something simple. The Ronald Reagan movie. I said, I can't wait to see this. Well he's Ronald Reagan's biggest idiot the world ever seen, yada, yada, yada. And I can't believe this. And I just I I I messaged him in the messenger and said, Hey, uh, I'm happy to talk with you about that. Call me on the phone. I'm not gonna we're not gonna talk about that, we're gonna debate that on Facebook. That made me mad, or he doubled down on it. I no. I deleted him as a friend because he just wouldn't stop, you know. And so I just don't think that's a good venue. Uh and that's why I'm so frightened of it, because that's not a good venue in which to hammer out these very nuanced issues.

Travis:

I think I think a lot of this comes down to a larger cultural uh trend that's been taking place probably since the late 80s, early 90s, and that is the massive movement towards individualism. So I used to use this example with students at Southern. If you were to walk into a gym in the 1970s and you see a row of treadmills, what think about what you would see with the people in those treadmills doing. They're running or they're walking or whatever. What about the other treadmills around? They're probably talking to the people back and forth across the treadmills as much as you can while you're huffing and puffing doing a cardio workout. If you go into one in the 80s, you might see the occasional set of headphones with a Sony Walkman. That person's just listening to music in his or her own world. If you walk into a gym now and you go to anything, treadmills, weight machines, anything, everybody has in earbuds or has headphones on. There's no sense of community being developed. There's it's just a collection of individuals. I think that individualization of of culture is is really what is at the heart of and it's it's Genesis 3 is the ultimate foundation, but so it's at the heart of this sense of wanting to attack all the time on social media. There's no sense of community, there's no sense of shared humanity because you're not looking at a person. You're just seeing a collection of pictures of however that person wants to present himself or herself, uh, statements that are posted, whatever it might be, stories that are posted, but there's no real sense of I'm talking to another human being who has a mom and a dad, who might have a spouse, who might have children, who might have grandchildren, who has a life lived outside of or off of social media. Folks who get so deeply involved in that as their reality end up losing a sense of what reality actually is, which is not at all represented on major social media platforms, whether it be Facebook or Instagram or X or anything else, Discord, uh, TikTok, whatever it might be. This is a subculture of a subculture of a subculture that's a created virtual reality.

Jeff:

That's right.

Travis:

And that's all it is.

Jeff:

Yeah, that's actually a point I make in my book on my chapter on social media, is that you think the whole world's on Twitter debating this, you know, debating the uh uh you know, the uh free will or something like that. But it's really just there may be 4,000 people on there with you debating it, but out of eight billion people on the planet, nobody's on Twitter.

Travis:

Yeah, something holds true in inside our own religious tradition in the Southern Baptist Convention is you see people on social media debating all about the SBC and all these things that are something. Yeah, all these things that should be happening. Then you put 10,000 to 15,000 people in the room that are messengers, and it doesn't work out that way. Well, you thought based on social media it's going to go one way and then it goes the other way by 80 percent. It's because this subculture of a subculture on social media is not representative of reality, of what's actually happening. in the room of the actual human beings in the room with physical brains who are doing the voting, doing the discussing, whatever it might be.

Jeff:

When I think that the the term you're you're unpacking there is expressive individualism. I think that's you're I think you're right. It's a good point. I think you're that is the what is behind this. And then and the uh truth, there's no absolute truth. And I have my truth and it's deeply personal. And when you insult my truth, you insulted my person. And I think part of that is a loss of truth, of absolute truth, of things that are I mean uh how many genders are there? Well now you've insulted me if you say there's more than you know there's only two because that's not my view and you've insulted me. I think you're right. It's very personal. And I think stress of individualism is something that's really uh has you're right has uh sort of helped mend the winds that's blown that along by a good bit. Yeah and I think and and and I said this in my sermon Sunday I think a couple of things very fundamental things we have to remember as Christians that hopefully would help us and this is what I try to remember when I'm speaking with someone with whom I know I disagree or I know we're gonna have a disagreement or I know we're not gonna have being a pastor in local church I've had conversations I know weren't going to go well you know with church members uh for different reasons but one be this person a Christian or no they are made in God's image. This is a person I think it's what you're getting at. This person is a an image bearer of God no matter what they believe no matter how wildly liberal they may be or conservative you don't like whatever you know the opposite of you different right but they're an image bearer of God and as such they have value and dignity and secondly you are making you are having this conversation with your fingers either conversation online or uh in person or on the phone or with the text or whatever before the face of God. Quorum deo before the face of God. Everything we do is before the face of God and he we have an audience he's watching us and so it's not like we're just having this conversation in a bubble on social media. I mean every uh you know every uh as our put it what every molecule and atom God is sovereign over it and I would say and every tweet and every uh every email and uh hopefully that if we think about that it those very fundamental biblical truths that will you know chasten us and help us to to grow in our ability to communicate with one another because I mean the book of Proverbs shows there's a lot of trouble in our talk.

Travis:

Yeah I I you know every time I think about posting something um on social media especially if it's reactive I always come back to something my mom told me when I was a kid so we'd go to there was a local store here in Greenville called TGNY it was the early version of Walmart but tiny little store uh and then Kmart came along then Walmart but uh she told me this in Walmart or maybe in a TGNY I don't remember anyway I remember the Walmart version of it. I would see a toy as a kid and I pick it up mom I gotta have this I got to have this I got to have this and she would say honey pick it up carry it around Walmart for five minutes. And what she meant by that was don't be reactive just on in the moment slow down think about it. Think about one how many weeks of allowance it's going to cost you to buy it to you know do you have another one like that at home already or somewhat like it do you really need it or do you just want it? Don't react in the moment don't react quickly. Don't be like the Burger King commercial have it your way right away kind of thing. Danny Aiken always calls it Macworld have it just the way you want it right now. So in the same way I think with social media I think the difficulty is is the fastness with which we can respond to something without thinking about it. It's interesting I don't think you ever see handwritten letters like you would see are in the same vein of what you would see on social media. Because it takes time it takes thought it's the process of physically writing something rather than just banging it on a keyboard in 10 seconds and saying I got him I cornered him between a rock and a hard place slow down give it some thought and then think about 1 Corinthians 10 31.

Jeff:

Is this glorifying to God by what I'm about to do or say slow down, take your time don't just react in the moment James puts it this way let everyone be slow to speak quick to listen and slow to anger for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God and uh my dad in his North Georgia hillbilly way of putting it used to say son God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason.

Travis:

For a reason yep I've heard that more than once I'm sure you have my family in Elbert County Georgia is a few south same place I do.

Jeff:

So uh but that that's it. We let to learn to listen. And uh that's something I prayed a lot about as a pastor and as a minister now and uh you know don't always get that right but uh we need to listen to one another and and and stop talking and uh really listen not just our ears but our hearts and uh yeah I think that's a matter of loving God loving neighbor is it not no thank you for listening to this podcast of the Baptist Couer and Career Publishing be sure to follow us on all social media platforms give us a five star review and send any questions you want us to consider to Career Conversations at gmail.com if you prefer to watch our conversations check us out on YouTube by clicking the link in the description

Contributor

Jeff Robinson

Host
Contributor

Travis Kearns

Host

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