Sexual Dilemmas Summer 1995

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Recently I was introduced to "cyberspace," the electronic world of paperless communication. LEADERSHIP and our sister magazines from Christianity Today, Inc. went "online"--anyone with a computer, modem, and phone line can access our magazines electronically and send us instant messages.

It's a strange new world--more immediate, but a bit more abrupt than the world of postcards and first-class mail.

A couple of weeks ago, I was "trolling" online--checking message boards and reading e-mail to the editors--when I came across this one-liner sent by someone with the screen name Pedro (and a bunch of numbers).

The message: "Christianity is a crutch for the weak."

That was all. I wondered why Pedro bothered to send this e-note (it's hard to call seven words "mail"). It was a harmless drive-by egging of a Christian magazine's e-mail box--sent anonymously from a computer somewhere (next door? someplace in Indonesia?). But it's what you get when you put your magazine on a public newsstand and invite people to comment.

Since the message was hardly a new accusation, I would have ignored it, except for one thing: not only am I a Christian, but for the previous six weeks, I'd been on crutches. Literally.

While playing in a men's soccer league, with dreams of athletic glory, I'd tried to maneuver the ball past the last defender. Instead, I haplessly got tangled up with him, stepped on the ball, rolled my left ankle, and broke my fibula. Hello, cast and crutches.

So Pedro's note jabbed me, both as a Christian and as someone with a crutch or two.

I replied by saying it sounded as if he'd had a sour experience with Christians, and for that I was sorry, but I felt the need to respond since I'd been living with Christianity for thirty-six years and ...

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