Reply to All

In the business world, hitting “Reply to All” indiscriminately on your emails is often on the top ten list of career limiting moves. It is especially bad when the IRS or a client is on the list, or when you see an email from someone you want to give some juicy gossip to (ignoring the other recipients). It doesn’t even matter if what you say is entirely true. If the wrong person gets it you might as well dust off your resume and start you job search.

I recently took a “reply to all” emailer to task because he suggested something that never happened. I kept getting calls from others in the office asking if I was going to respond to [no name]. I replied that I had, but privately. I could have made it a “flame” war by replying in kind – to everyone – but knew that I would just be guilty of the same error. By the time we went to lunch together a week later, it was ancient history and no longer worth mentioning.

The same is often true in the spiritual realm. How often do we “shoot first and ask questions later” and wrap it in the mantra of “telling the truth in love?” I love that little phrase. It is so overused, and misused. Right there in front of you is a situation that you are sure needs some Christian fellowship – and you are just the one to give it. Don’t soft-sell it, or be discrete. Open up both barrels and be sure you hit the target – and everything else in sight.

But is keeping silent any better? Should we sit and watch the degeneration of a close friend, or of society around us without taking any action? (This of course presumes that our perception of degeneration is correct.) Surely we should say something – at least sometime.

I’ve taken to visiting a couple of discussion forums lately, one of which is linked from this site. (That site has since been taken down.) Even there, where the presumption is that they want to hear your rantings, how do you “speak” in a manner that conveys a message without driving away the listener? I’ve posted on a few occasions, and while I don’t think what I’ve said was wrong, I have questioned the wisdom of some of the comments when I looked back at them – or had a response back that made me say “what? Where did I say that?” It’s easy to justify that I didn’t attack anyone, and didn’t make any statements I wouldn’t stand fully behind. But still it might have been phrased differently – maybe a little softer – or just omitted altogether.

In short, just because its right, accurate, on-point, etc. doesn’t always make it prudent. Paul said that we have a lot of liberty in Christ, but that we should be wise in our use of that liberty. So now we have the charge of holding what we believe are sound, well-formed positions on a multitude of things but doling that wisdom out in a way that is useful rather than harmful. So, using another metaphor, how do we let our light shine without burning through like a laser? Tough line to walk sometimes.

As is too often my habit, my thoughts are not completely formed. I claim no special insight into the correct mix of freedom and restraint, but will continually review the stances I take, or don’t take, and seek to learn each lesson.

Now where is that laser . . . .