Friday, November 1, 2013

Fellowship across ideological divides

For my imaginary friends again.

I'm thinking now about our efforts to practice and promote fellowship across religious and other ideological divides. A few months ago I spent a lot of time reading and posting in some atheist forums and blogs. There were some heated discussions going on about some issues that interest me passionately, including improving the community life for a wider diversity of people, and promoting better conduct on the Internet. I also read and posted in some Baha'i forums dominated by views and practices opposed to mine. Just now I was missing some of those discussions.

One of my goals in those discussions was to learn to never depreciate anyone, and to free myself from all ill will. One way I've found to do that is to explore and practice healthy ways of using anger.

I'm not sure if or when I'll go back to that. When I'm ready to spend more time on the Internet, I'd like to work on:
- learning what kinds of online interpersonal experiences help open people's hearts to God and attract them to His Kingdom.
- helping to develop online training for people who are learning to make better use of the Internet to help spread the knowledge and love of God.
- finding ways to project the framework for action into Internet neighborhoods.
- finding more people who want to be candles for God, or some equivalent of that in non-theistic language, and learn to encourage and support them, especially in spreading the knowledge and love of God, and in serving the best interests of their communities.

3 comments:

Jim Habegger said...

I just had a new thought about practicing and promoting fellowship across ideological divides. I've always been hoping for the friendly feelings to be mutual. In my mind I've never expected that, but I realize now that I keep hoping for it, and fishing for it. I might be free of that now.

Jim Habegger said...

Before I spend more time on blogs and forums, I want to spend some time with some of my email friends.

Imaginary Friend #2 said...

Can you write about how you practice healthy uses of anger?