Religion & Law

I just read an insightful and sometimes touching essay on the positive uses of Facebook in building relationships ? particularly long-standing relationships - by Ellen Painter Dollar at the Episcopal Cafe. It is an essay that pointed me to uses of Facebook instead of simply being a passive presence. Dollar, however, recognizes the negative possibilities as well: ?Allowing Facebook to be a tool for relationship-building instead of a distraction requires humility, self-discernment, and discretion?qualities that are fostered by spiritual disciplines, honest relationships, self-examination, and confession, not by spending hours in online conversations consisting solely of clever one-liners. . . . As with most human inventions, Facebook can foster intimacy or alienation, compassion or cruelty, substance or stupidity. The challenge is to use it for the former and avoid the temptation to participate in the latter. Facebook is no more to blame for Tyler Clementi?s suicide than the GW Bridge is. But we still have a responsibility to foster online communities marked by respect and appropriate boundaries, to use Facebook and other online tools as instruments of the light and not the dark.?