I am one who enjoys a healthy debate. I like a good, sometimes heated, discussion about serious matters. Okay, even some not-so-serious matters. On more than one occasion I have seen substantial shifts in my opinion come from a good debate. And, I’ve known plenty of others who share that experience.

But, with the internet nosing its way into virtually every part of our lives, more and more often those healthy discussions take up residence on the net. And from there, they suffer from a kind of environmental infection rendering them almost completely useless. In fact, I’d even venture to say harmful.

Yeah, you read that correctly. Internet debate, I think, almost always leads nowhere good.

I think it has a lot to do with the impersonal nature of the internet. We’re all covered in what we feel is a shroud of privacy when we converse on the net. In real life we tend to avoid conflict. But on the net most people come out guns-a-blazin’. In less mature circles, online debate spirals into a flame war.

But in more mature circles, I think it manifests in far more subtle ways.

For example. In real life, conversations and debates usually progress nugget by nugget and our answers are not usually rehearsed. They coming off the cuff. That means the conversation moves bit by bit. Rarely is one detail exhausted, but rather, many small details are swept over as the come up in conversation.

But, on the internet it’s just the opposite. I am able to state an opinion or an idea. Someone who disagrees is then able to respond to me. But, instead of responding to one portion of what I said and following the conversation from there like we would in real life, they are able to respond to every detail all at once. Researching on the net, revising their thoughts and looking for leaks in their argument. All before ever hitting submit. That might sound like a benefit. But I don’t think that it is.

See, from there, if the person who had the thought in the first place wishes to respond, it will have to be in length. Once again responding to each point. This, while our facts may be right, does more for our pride than anything else. And by the time the debate is over, you have a thread of conversation that would make a masters thesis blush.

And, as I mentioned before, I think it mostly comes back to the impersonal nature of the internet.

When you converse with someone in real life, by simply making your opinion known, or contending with someone else’s, you are exposing yourself to vulnerability. And, in order for debate to actually be healthy and have any positive impacts on us, we have to be vulnerable to a reasonable extent. It’s humility 101. Something almost no one exercises on the internet.

I submit that the invulnerability we feel on the internet goes a long way to nullifying our debates and making them essentially useless. So for me, I will try and keep my serious debate (at least with those I do not know well) in the real world… or at least video chat.

In Have you ever read Romans 14:13? It goes like this:

“Therefore let us not pass judgment on one another any longer, but rather decide never to put a stumbling block or hindrance in the way of a brother”

I think I hear this verse (and others like it) way too often. It’s usually used as kind of a blanket verse. A trump card to avoid tense situations. Billy is drinking a beer and Betty thinks it’s wrong. Rather than Billy and Betty having to deal with the tension of holding differing convictions, it’s argued that Billy shouldn’t drink beer because it’s causing Betty to ‘stumble’.

Is it? Or is her sense of right and wrong taking offense at Billy’s differing opinion? They’re not the same thing.

Admittedly, this is not a topic that I have thoroughly thought through. There are still quite a few questions and points of contention in my mind over it. But the overarching issue, I think, is relatively clear.

Consider the verse, Proverbs 27:17:

Iron sharpens iron,
and one man sharpens another.

Is it possible for iron to sharpen iron without friction? No, of course not. Friction is more or less why iron can sharpen iron. Likewise, I can’t think of too many times that a brother refined me apart from my own convictions rubbing against theirs. For us to benefit from one another as believers, our sense of right and wrong must be offended some times.

In Romans 14, Paul does not want to cause a brother to stumble by eating meat. After all, many of his Jewish brothers would be violating their conscience by eating meat. But eventually, they did eat meat. There are very few Christians today who refrain from eating meat for biblical reasons. How’d this happen? At some point someone’s convictions must have been offended causing them to reconsider their resolves, ultimately allowing them to change their views and eat meat with a clean conscience.

In the situation with Billy and Betty, Billy shouldn’t entice Betty to drink beer, nor should he drink beer if Betty is feeling the urge to do so—thus violating her conscience. However, I don’t think Billy has much obligation to Betty’s preferences beyond that.

If we allow the definitions of ‘stumbling block’ and ‘offended’ and ‘conscience’ to be convoluted, then we’ll be restricted from just about everything. There aren’t many topics that Christians unanimously agree on and how specifically to live this life is far far far from being on that list. That’s okay. But it means that topics like this one shouldn’t be carelessly understood and hidden behind.

It usually results in more irritated conflict and threatens to stunt our spiritual and relational growth.