Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord [is] at hand.I tried having the comments on this blog be unmoderated this week, to see how things would go. But the escalation and blame game resumed as in the past. It is not easy to learn to state things without any blame or sarcasm, but I suggest that it is important to learn these skills. We all need them so that we will become more biblical in our communication styles
So, I will take the advice of the KJV (twisting its intent!), and return the blog to moderated status. This comes at an awkward time for me since this afternoon my wife and I will fly to Oregon to help clean out her parents' house so it can be sold to help pay for their costs of living in a nursing home where they recently moved. We will be gone for a week. I will have limited Internet access. There is no phone service anymore in my parents-in-law's house and in my wife's brother's house there is only a slow dial-up connection, so it will be difficult for me to moderate comments.
But other bloggers here have the authority to moderate blog comments. For those who are bloggers here, go to the Blogger Dashboard then go to the Complegalitarian blog. Click on the Comments tab periodically to see if comments need to be moderated. Check to see if a comment follows the blog rules. If there is sarcasm, put down of another commenter, any broad brush negative assessment of anything without evidence presented, or any other communication stoppers, you can reject that comment.
I wish you all well and I hope that we can learn better together how to recognize or reduce using communication stoppers. Let us learn to listen well to each other, respectfully, without blaming the other side for hurt feelings. In fact, if you feel hurt, consider writing a private email to that person so that the atmosphere here can be as objective and educational as possible.
This blog is a good laboratory for learning to debate without using "hook" words that trigger hurt, frustration, or anger in the other person. It is good lab for learning to stop using sarcasm.
As stated in our blog guidelines, let us try to "speak the truth in love". My own view is that communication stoppers are not loving. But, rather than giving up on the effort here, I would encourage us all to dig a little deeper, become more aware of our own deficiencies when attaching negativity to the content we are trying to argue for, and move forward, with God's help. He really does want his children who disagree (which he knows is normal) in loving ways.
