Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Destructive words


Ephesians 4:29 New International Version (NIV)

29 Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.



Our words should be used to build people up, not tear people down. But it’s obvious in today’s political world that comments are meant to demean, damage, damn, and destroy.







Evan Williams, a Twitter founder and co-creator of Blogger—wanted to set everyone free to express their emotions and opinions on line. So how's it going? A recent (May 2017) article in The New York Times offered the following answer to that question:



"I think the internet is broken," Williams said." He has believed this for a few years, actually. But things are getting worse. "And it's a lot more obvious to a lot of people that it's broken."



[The article continued]: People are using Facebook to showcase suicides, beatings and murder, in real time. Twitter is a hive of trolling and abuse that it seems unable to stop. Fake news, whether created for ideology or profit, runs rampant. Four out of 10 adult internet users said in a Pew survey that they had been harassed online. And that was before the presidential campaign heated up last year.



"I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place," Mr. Williams says. "I was wrong about that."



[David Streitfeldmay, "'The Internet Is Broken': @ev Is Trying to Salvage It," The New York Times (5-20-17)]

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