Anything goes in many places, especially on the wide-open internet. Inhabiting this cyberspaciousness calls for discernment.

Are you also wide open? That’s the sense of “naïve”, or the “simple ones”, in the original Hebrew in Proverbs 1:4. Or perhaps someone you know is “a youth”… either young in years or young in their faith. Proverbs has good advice for the naïve and the youth– they need prudence (craftiness or shrewdness in the Hebrew) and discretion.


Discernment
The inexperienced one believes anything, but the sensible one watches his steps. ~ Proverbs 14:15 (HCSB)

Do you have friends who believe (and share) everything they read? Maybe you’re a bit skeptical (or maybe not… some stories can be pretty believable), so “watch your step” before sharing. When in doubt, don’t.

Of course, you aren’t called to be the cyber police, but if the error is important enough to correct and your relationship is good with someone, you might want to direct them to accurate information. When needed, I check eMail and Facebook posts in Snopes.com, which is dedicated to researching misinformation, and then share the correct info with my friend.

Discretion
I, Wisdom, live together with good judgment. I know where to discover knowledge and discernment.~ Proverbs 8:12 (NLT)

What is good judgment?

Some choices we make on the internet are obvious–for instance, don’t follow the links to lewd photos or take outlandish claims literally. Some choices we make in cyberspace might sneak up on us. I was caught recently. I care about injustices to people, but one article I read started going into more detail than was good for my active imagination. The next time an article seemed to promise the seamy side of a story, I bolted. It’s enough for me to know it happened, not the explicit details.

I can think of two scenarios I’ve encountered which I felt lacked good judgment. One person shared a series of photos that weren’t explicit, but about a fourth of them had sexual innuendo. If you have a mixed audience in your friends on Facebook: male, female, other cultures, … I advise against sharing something even mildly offensive in any way. We are the ambassadors of a holy God.

Another instance was a photo in a mommy blog of a naked child potty-training. Maybe that’s momentous within the family, but not for the world to see, especially on the internet where child pornographers could potentially find and share that photo. If her photo was taken with her mobile phone, the geolocation of that photo is part of the data, right down to the GPS coordinates for her home. I’m not trying to be an alarmist. It’s highly unlikely that photo will be found, but why take the risk?

Whether or not we are naïve or young, we all need discernment and discretion in our interactions on the internet.

Do you have advice about being discrete and discerning on social media and in blogs?

Sus Schmitt serves as a Technology Ministry Developer for Women’s Resources at Cru. Her goal is to equip Campus Crusade for Christ staff to have more effective ministries through learning technological skills. Her main medium to do this is through her blog, eQuipping for eMinistry.  Sus also maintains a personal site, Mike and Sus.org and an evangelistic site, The Sovereign.  You can find her on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest. Sus is enjoying her new role as a “nana” to a cute, little boy.

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Every day, over two million people search on the internet for “I need God,” “Who is Jesus,” and other spiritual questions.  Through these searches, people find one of Global Media Outreach's 100+ websites every few seconds, indicate some sort of decision for Christ, and ask for follow-up. You can actually “see” this happening across the globe in real-time at Global Media Outreach (GMO). (The counter resets to zero daily at midnight PST.) In seven years, 50 million people have visited GMO websites.

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Several years ago, I wasted one-and-a-half hours several times per week playing Solitaire on my computer… late into the night. I tried setting different limits. Three games. Fifteen minutes. But when I played, I often  kept playing past my limits (and sometimes to postpone getting started on what I knew I needed to be doing). Several times I “fasted” from computer games for forty days.  Soon after the fast, I was under control… for a while.  I finally simply removed the games from my computer and don’t miss having games there.

Then Facebook came along.

Have you heard of the 10/40 window? It is the section of the world where 90% of the unreached people groups live, yet only 1 out of 99 missionaries go there. 

Angi and I recently wrote a book about how to use social media to reach and influence the world for Christ. The day of the book launch we put on a college student retreat focused on the need to go to the 10/40 window. The Lord used the combination of the book release and world focused retreat to get me thinking of more ways social media can be used to get the gospel to these unreached groups so I decided to experiment. 

Have you ever been involved in an online quarrel?  Maybe the temperature of your conversation heated up a chat room. Or a series of comments on a blog post got warmer with each reply. Did someone ever get "in your face" on Facebook?

The Bible has some advice for us in 2 Timothy 2: 23 - 26 (NLT):

Again I say, don’t get involved in foolish, ignorant arguments that only start fights. A servant of the Lord must not quarrel but must be kind to everyone, be able to teach, and be patient with difficult people. Gently instruct those who oppose the truth. Perhaps God will change those people’s hearts, and they will learn the truth. Then they will come to their senses and escape from the devil’s trap. For they have been held captive by him to do whatever he wants.

The words that strike me are, "a servant of the Lord must not quarrel."  It's just not an option!

My husband and I get to spend our time talking to college students about Jesus. We consider it an honor and privilege to get to invest in the lives of young, unencumbered, seeking for answers mostly teachable people. Once a student catches the vision of why God created them and begins to take personal responsibility and ownership of the mission He’s given them, it’s exhilarating. Each year we get to see very dark students changed by the Holy Spirit into people willing to give up the American dream to live on purpose for God’s glory.

But for me the hardest part of our job is meeting new students. The harvest is plentiful and in order for anyone to hear the gospel we have to first get in a conversation with them. In our culture, this can be somewhat difficult without some thought and creativity put into it. So we experiment a lot with ways to meet new people. One way was by using facebook. 

To read the rest hop on over to Marie Osborne's site where I am privileged to be a guest contributor. Read more