When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness, for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.

1 Corinthians 9:22

On Friday my reflection focused on 1 Corinthians 9:22, part of which reads, in the New Living Translation: “I try to find common ground with everyone, doing everything I can to save some.” More literally, this passage speaks of becoming “all things to all people.”

There are almost limitless ways for us to put this principle into practice in our lives. I thought I might share with you one way I seek to follow Paul’s example.

As you may know, I have a blog. For six years, it was published online at http://www.markdroberts.com/. Three months ago, it moved to Beliefnet, the leading religious-content website on the Net. You can now find my blog at: http://blog.beliefnet.com/markdroberts.

I began blogging in 2003 because I believed that Christians needed to participate in the new world people were calling “the blogosphere.” So I entered this world, you might say, as an expression of the “all things to all people” principle. “For the bloggers and blog readers, I became a blogger,” to paraphrase the Apostle Paul. During the past 6 ½ years, I have had the opportunity to participate in a wide range of conversations, trying to offer a faithful Christian perspective on the issues of our lives.

Yet I have also chosen not to participate in some aspects of the blogosphere’s culture. As you may know, sometimes bloggers write before they think, speaking rudely and even crudely. Bloggers can criticize people in ways that would be unacceptable in standard print media. Moreover, many bloggers publish rumor and innuendo, without a sufficient commitment to the truth.

In my blog, I always try to be truthful. I work hard to check my sources. When I’m wrong, I admit it and make corrections. Moreover, I am committed to communicating through my blog in a Christian manner, speaking the truth in love, if you will. I refuse to attack people or speak poorly of them, even if I am critiquing their ideas. Sometimes, I must confess, it is hard to maintain my dedication to turning the other cheek. I have been criticized by some bloggers in ways that made my blood boil. And some of the comments I receive are clearly intended to assassinate my character. Yet I try hard not to retaliate or to become discouraged.

For me, blogging is a way I live out what it means to be “all things to all people,” both in what I do and in what I don’t do. I am connecting with people in their world and through their means. Yet I am not joining them in speech that is inconsistent with Christian morality, not to mention God’s grace.

By telling this story of my blogging, I am not trying to recruit you as a blogger. Instead, I hope that my example will encourage and challenge you to discover where and how you can be “all things to all people” so that they might be exposed to the truth and love of Jesus Christ.

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION: Where are you being “all things to all people” so that they might experience God’s love through you? Is God calling you to step out into something new in order to share his truth with others?

PRAYER: Dear Lord, I thank you for the opportunity you have given me to be “all things to all people” in my life.

Give me wisdom, Lord, to know how best to connect with the people to whom you have sent me. Help me to discern how to join them in their lives, yet without compromising who I am as one of your followers.

Give me vision to see how I might find new ways to build common ground with people, so that I might be salt and light in this world.

I pray in the name of Jesus, who became human for our sake, Amen.