Pastor Steve's thoughts

Susan,

My comment about counselors was to make a point about emails or text messages. I actually like counselors. Good ones are worth their weight in gold. I refer people for counseling every month. The specific issue I mentioned above is complicated. I saw people communicating poorly. Face to face communication would have been better than a series of harsh emails.

My point is that text messaging confrontational thoughts makes it easy to over state things. In a face to face conversations, people are generally more respectful and gracious.

Steve Hill

Pastor Steve-
Text messaging aside, it
sounds like you don't like counselors/therapists?

Our 16 year old daughter got a job and bought her own cell phone and we added her to our account. She pays for the additional line and unlimited texting. Last month she had over 7500 text messages sent and received. I said, "Honey, if your average message is 10 words you and your pals just wrote a book!" Unfortunately it's not a book that anyone would be interested in reading. I would like to find a way to channel all that energy into something worthwhile.
On the plus side of texting, my wife and I have started using it to send each other, and our daughter and some of our friends, messages that otherwise would not be relayed until later, or perhaps forgotten altogether. It's email without having to sit down at the computer.
On the negative side I believe that texting, and online chatting, is harmful to the development of the younger generation. These forms of electronic communication leave out the thoughtfulness component. Once upon a time people wrote letters containing multiple thoughts and ideas and they mailed them and it took time for the letter to travel and then the recipient read it and thought about what it said and wrote a response and the response took time to travel back to the originator. How on earth did they maintain an interest in topics they hadn't thought about in days/weeks/months? Or did they think about these topics outside of the moment when they sat with pen poised over paper? Did they think about what they would say and how they would write it? Did they consider how the recipient would respond? Did they think about it often enough that their pulse quickened when they opened the mailbox and found the response to words they had written sometime in the past? You can get to know a person through written communication but you must put some effort into the process. Todays texting and chatting is shallow and without heart.
So there. I have admitted that my young daughter texts in excess even though I believe it is bad for her. At least when she texts to me she spells everything out because she knows I have no patience for the abreviations and she almost always spells correctly.

I totally agree about the shallow part but what kills me is I get the text communication from people that clearly only want me to receive. Oh, and it's urgent....that REALLY gets me when I pay almost $100 a month for a bank of time on a device called a cell phone that allows things like tone of voice, question and answer and sharing in real time. But for mass communication...can't beat email or blogs or Bob Welch's column. But he cheats, he knows how to do it. Me?...uh..I'd like to buy a vowel please.