I recently received notice that I my Nextdoor account has been temporarily disabled for a violation of the community guideline. Specifically, the notice told me that “Nextdoor is a place to discuss topics that are important to your local community. We have rules on where members may post about religious, non-local and political issues.” Evidently, my little “time-out” ends on September 25, when I’m invited to log back in.
This isn’t completely a surprise, as I’ve been warned over the years about my posts, and I’ve responded by sometimes simply providing a link to my post on the church’s website, or by limiting the post to only our Daufuskie neighborhood. I will also admit that while the First Amendment guarantees me the right of free speech, Nextdoor is a private enterprise that does not share the burden of allowing me to speak. Nextdoor has a right to prevent me from using their platform, and they can certainly block anyone that they want or impose their own standards.
Having said that, it seems to me that preventing me from posting things with Christian content flies directly in the face of their stated intention of providing “a place to discuss topics that are important to your local community.” There are very few things that are more important to a community than to love our neighbors as ourselves, or to encourage others to help out neighbors in need. These aren’t simply good ideas, but rather they are specific verses from the Bible.
In the past few months, I’ve had within my posts verses about the Golden Rule, loving those who don’t love you, living peaceably with all, loving your neighbor as yourself, limitations on knowledge, and peace within. How are these topics not important to our community? They are at the very heart of community – at least healthy and happy communities. Where we see communities falling apart are the places where these topics have been removed from the conversation.
For the first twenty-six years of my life, I was not a Christian and I didn’t read the Bible. During those years, I thought that I was a good person, and a good neighbor, but it never would have occurred to me to love those who didn’t love me, or bless those who persecuted me. I would not have worried about living peaceably with all, because there are some folks who are just hard to love. I would have easily put myself above others, because that is the very nature of selfishness. But it is because of my faith in Christ that I am a new man. The old has passed away, and I seek the guidance and assistance of the Holy Spirit as I surrender my will daily, desiring to do God’s will. Desiring to live out my life as God has laid out in the Bible. Desiring to serve my community and be the best neighbor that I can be.
I recently read an opinion piece in the Washington Post about a man who walked away from church, in part because he struggled to believe what the church was preaching. Having now lived his life apart from the church, while he no longer felt his own personal beliefs being challenged, he longed for the sense of community that he no longer had. The article ended with the author expressing a desire that a new church pop up that shared his beliefs so that he would once again find the sense of community that he missed, but he then expressed his doubt that such a thing would happen. I agree completely with his conclusion. It is the very beliefs at the core of the Bible that create a strong, loving, united community. Without the foundational beliefs underpinning the community, there is no community.
In my role as a disciple of Christ, in my role as Pastor of the only church in our community, and in my role as a member of this community, I will continue to serve our community and love my neighbors according to the ability that God gives me. I will continue to point to God as the One who gives me strength, thanking his son Jesus who died so that my sins might be forgiven, and sharing his truth with all who will listen. And I will do these things regardless of whether or not Nextdoor thinks that explaining why I do these things is important to the community.
The ”why” is important, and I know that others in our community have become better neighbors because they have embraced the same “why” that changed my life. I see our community growing and getting stronger, not necessarily because of what I have posted, but because of where those posts point to. That is the ultimate source of strength, for me and for our community. I happen to think that makes it important for our community to discuss. It’s a shame that Nextdoor doesn’t feel the same way.
Ultimately, this highlights the difference between online communities and actual, geographically-based communities where you see your neighbors and interact with them in physical, tangible ways. So many of us were happy to use Nextdoor when they first started here in our community years ago, because you had to be associated with a specific geographical address here on our island, and we found great utility in gathering here for announcements, news, general scuttlebutt, or encouraging words from our actual neighbors (particularly in the wake of Hurricane Matthew). But the thing about online communities is that if you don’t like a particular topic, you can either ban that topic or reshape your community as to remove those who want to talk about that topic. You can’t do that in real communities, in the real world, where people with different beliefs and perspectives actually interact with each other. You know – actual living together that inspired emojis, with real prayers, real clapping, hugs, physical gathering places, and edible birthday cakes. Not cold and distant bits of data on a screen, but the warmth of human touch.
Maybe it is just too much to hope for that a company filled with people who spend their entire days staring into a screen would remember that the thing that made their initial business offering appealing was that it helped with actual, physical community. That was the one thing that differentiated them from the other social media options. Oh well. As I said before, it is their private company, and they can run it as they see fit.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron