Excellent advice for pastors, and for the rest of us: Paul Levy writing on Reformation 21 on When Your World Caves in , writing in response to two pastor friends who’d “fallen morally” and lost their positions and families. For example:
Online life is a killer . This isn’t new is it? There are lots of warnings about it out there and yet I’m not sure it really sinks in. I was on Twitter for a while and loved it. To be honest it’s addictive, catching up with old friends, getting new followers, checking who retweets you, linking to good articles etc. Very subtly good things can become bad things. It’s true in every area of life but online it’s probably more subtle.
As I became more obsessed with Twitter it became obvious I should just get off it and yet I didn’t want to. To cut off the arm and pluck out the eye. It won’t be the same for everybody but I suspect we can all think of folk who could do with getting off social media for a while. It might be a good thing to tell them. Of course Facebook and Twitter in and of themselves are not bad at all but, if you’ve got a slightly addictive personality like me, then you need to stay off it. For others it’ll be a good hobby but what it has done is make the moral collapse of some of my friends easier.
Both the guys I met with struggled and got into inappropriate relationships online which in the end turned toxic and destroyed them. The language is interesting on this, inappropriate = sinful, but that’s not often how it’s spoken of is it?
He also takes up the dangers of success, the problems with “accountability” programs, the need to sustain your marriage (by going to pubs), and other subjects.
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