Â鶹ԼÅÄ

From Rev’d Richard Coles, cleric and broadcaster:

Every once in a while a tweet arrives from someone I would hesitate to describe as a member of my fan club. Quite often such a person finds religion annoying – well, join the club – and opines that those of us professionally engaged in it should desist. I’m paraphrasing quite carefully here.

One arrived on Christmas Eve from a young man who felt that wandering kings led by a star, angel choruses, and magic babies are self-evidently ridiculous and that those who believe in them should, in his words, ‘Grow up!!!!!!’ (six exclamation marks). I wanted to reply that if we were to compare my day – visiting sick people in hospital – with his day – shouting at strangers on the internet – which would he think the more edifying?  And maybe add that every extra exclamation mark used in a tweet costs the sender ten per cent of his or her credibility – but that would have taken me over my budget of 140 characters – and taken me also to a place I do not want to go.

For what would it profit me to get involved in a tit for tat with a stranger on social media?

A moment’s satisfaction, an answer to wounded pride? Like everyone else I don’t like to be shouted at, and ridiculed; the best response, people say, is to ignore the tweet and block the tweeter. Don’t feed the trolls.

But I don’t want to do that. It would feel too much to me like sticking your fingers in your ears and going la la la when someone you don’t care for is saying something you don’t want to hear (and it may be, behind the sound and fury, the thing you actually need to hear).

And because I think there are worse things than being ridiculed.

And because I think the best answer to hostility is to refuse to respond in kind.

And because when Jesus says ‘turn the other cheek’, he’s not goading his opponents, nor trying to dodge their rage – he’s offering a way through fear and resentment and anger into a whole new way of being.