…rather than from them
I love Twitter. I love the elegance and linguistic economy of its 140-character limit. I love its accessibility via handheld devices – which means that you can tweet from a sunny beach, the edges of a storm, or the middle of a riot. I love its democracy – where anyone can join in the debate and contribute their ‘two pennorth’ without stricture. Sometimes, though, it is precisely these things which lead to knee-jerk tweeting, from which nobody benefits. Sadly, religious people can be the worst offenders when it comes to tweeting with their knees.
In the overwhelming flood of Twitter reactions to the machete attack in Woolwich last night, many of the religious tweets showed the worst kind of reductionism. My primary school teacher used to tell me that ‘if you can’t say it nicely, don’t say it at all’. Maybe the same applies here? One of the grossest offenders was a smug Christian tweet along the lines of “you never see someone attacking a person with a machete in the name of Christ, do you“? Had they never heard of the Crusades, I wonder?
Those of us with a profound faith would do better to pray from our knees, rather than with them, I feel.
