Holying-up your online presence

I ummed and arghed for a bit about posting about the book High Fidelity, because, like I said, it's a little rugged, and potentially unhelpful. While I was umming and arghing, I read this on Stuff Christians Like, which I drop in on sometimes:

Doing things you wouldn’t recommend that other Christians do

I caught myself in this one last weekend. A friend sent me a link to a lil’ Wayne remix of Jason Mraz’ song “I’m yours” and it was awesome. I listened to it four or five times to make sure it was clean and then was about to tweet it from my twitter account when I thought, “Is that Christian of me to share that link? I mean it’s lil Wayne. I better not, I don’t want to recommend that other Christians listen to that.” But me? I’m apparently impervious to all sorts of less than holy forms of media. Me? I can handle that. (The second problem in that scenario is that by editing what I tweet but still listening to that song, I create a “twitter Jon” and a “real Jon.” I’m not sure if other Christian bloggers struggle with the temptation to “holy up” how they present themselves online but that is some whackness I need to get under control.)

I agree with that: if I am reading books I don't want to blog that I am reading, then maybe I shouldn't be reading them. However, I don't claim that my blog is a comprehensive picture of my life and there are plenty of things I do that don't get blogged, so I am always making choices about what I share and what I don't (and plenty of perfectly wholesome books go unmentioned).

The other side of the argument, which the quote above partly alludes to, is the "weaker brother" one (Romans 14): that you don't want to be blogging about stuff or recommending things that might cause others to stumble ... so at times it could be wise and loving to refrain, even if that assumes a certain amount of spiritual superiority. (The funny thing about that is, I have never yet met a Christian who thinks they're the weaker brother. We all seem to think that term applies to someone else, do we not?)

So I am in two minds about holying up what I blog - I don't want to holy up how I present myself necessarily (or assume that I have a spiritual maturity over everyone who reads here), but rather ensure the content is such that it's not going to lead people (unwarned at least!) off into sin. Of course, there is only so far you can control that and the impact that anything has on a person. If someone discovers Apartment Therapy and goes off to drown in covetous materialism am I responsible for that? I don't know.