The other day, I arrived to my office to find a copy of an article in my mailbox. It was an article from Relevant Magazine. The title? “The Problem of Pride in the Age of Twitter.”

Quite a thought provoking title, I think. My boss put the article in my box, knowing my penchant toward all things social media. At first, I was skeptical of the author. I thought he was going to tell me that my use of my smartphone to post pics to Twitter, or my desire to constantly check others’ Facebook profiles or my addiction to Google Reader was unchristian.

Quite the contrary, in fact. The author, Brett McCracken, postulates that it is not the use of these social media devices that is sinful, rather it is our need for the approval that comes from a higher Technorati ranking that causes us to stumble.

I must admit that I check my blog stats pretty regularly, and I am anxious every time I see a comment on one of my posts. I try not to let it take up too much of my thought process, but there are times when I have a little more bounce in my step after a big day of visitors to my blog.

Here’s the bottom line: I believe that God can redeem just about anything and use it for His glory, including technology and social media. I think that there can be true community that exists on a virtual platform. BUT, I think that in order for these things to happen we have to start from the perspective of serving others, and not our own interests.

I shouldn’t try to write a better post so that people think I’m a better person. I should try to write a better blog post, so that someone else could be a better person. In that way, we’ll follow Christ’s example even on Twitter.

Here’s a few more articles about technology and community:

Jeff Goins is putting a positive spin on the answer to the question, Can online community exist?

Jeff Campbell is pondering the Limitations of online community

Elysa MacLellan claims that Virtual community was her real community.