E-Etiquette and Jesus-Free Zones

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Email etiquette. First, don’t believe everything that comes in your email. Just because someone has written it in cyber-script does not mean the report or allegation is true. Sometimes it seems otherwise smart, sophisticated adults suspend their critical faculties when reading--and forwarding--emails. Just for the record, Madeline Murray O’Hair (long deceased) is not circulating a petition to ban all religious programming and President Obama is not the love child of an alien from a planet of Muslims living in a parallel universe.

Second, email forwards. Please don’t send them en masse, at least not to me. Chances are sixteen other people have already sent whatever email ditty is currently making the rounds. Instead, tell me why this particular anecdote or inspirational offering touched you. Tell me why it matters to you and then it will matter to me. But making folks one of a thousand on somebody’s “blanket email” list is not a way to win friends and influence people.

Third, when angry or annoyed with someone, email is a very poor medium for communicating that frustration. For some reason, people feel free to be curt and rude in emails in ways they would never be in person. Further, while electrons reportedly move at the speed of light, email does not provide for instantaneous communication. Email allows for an instantaneous monologue or rant, but real communication requires a face-to-face or at the very least, a phone-to-phone, encounter between two people. Remember, when Paul wrote “don’t let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26), he lived in a world where people still talked with one another instead of firing a snippy email to a co-worker two cubicles over.

I sometimes wonder if email is a net gain or loss for me in my work as a pastor. On the one hand, I spend about an hour a day processing email, a task that didn’t exist when I started in the ministry. On the other hand, email allows for effective collaboration on projects that without it, would require a lot more paper and meetings. But on the whole, I am working to spend less time on email--and other forms of cyber-communication--not more. So it’s nothing personal, but a Facebook “friend” I’m not and as for “Twitter,” don’t even ask!

Feel free to send an email telling me what you like most and least about email. Just keep it short, keep it personal, and keep it nice. Because for Christians, there are no “Jesus free” zones of communication and conduct. Even in using email, the ordinary rules of courtesy, Christian grace, and civility still apply.