From the editor

… be sure your sins will find you out.—Numbers 32:23b

Should we expunge from our website articles and names from articles we’ve published when someone requests we do this for them? That is a conundrum we face from time to time, and we usually turn to Colleen McFarland, director of archives and records management for Mennonite Church USA. Her response: “To request their removal from the Internet is, in effect, a request for censorship.”

In the past year we’ve had several requests from people requesting we remove articles from our website that were either written by them or quoted them.

They feared the articles would hurt their chances at employment should future employers do an Internet search with their names.

Even though the articles will remain in print in perpetuity (in our storage area if nowhere else), finding it in print is far more difficult than with a search engine on the Internet.

New York Times columnist Bill Keller published some stories about the problem in an April 28 column titled, “Erasing History.”

“Editors tell me they are increasingly beset by readers who once cooperated with a reporter on a sensitive subject—nudism, anorexia, bullying— and years later find that old story a recurring source of distress. (It’s called “source remorse.”),” Keller writes.

More and more states are passing erasure laws that require some things to be removed from the record. But here’s the dilemma: Can something that was true at one time become untrue? Keller describes the argument of lawyers in a class action lawsuit against some news outlets.

“They dispute whether something that was true when it happened can become not just private but actually untrue—so untrue you can swear an oath that it never happened and, in the eyes of the law, you’ll be telling the truth,” Keller writes.

In Christian terms, we describe this as forgiveness. We sing hymns about the blood of Jesus blotting out our sins. But when our sins are forgiven, is it as if they never happened? The blood of Christ washed them away?

Our work as reporters and editors results in a limited but permanent record of what some Mennonite Church USA members, congregations and organizations believe, say and do during this era.

This record will be a resource to those who follow us—if for no other reason than so they don’t make the same mistakes we do. But if we begin erasing history, where do we stop?

The Bible—especially the Old Testament—has some history in it that some may want to expunge. For example, if we erased God’s promise to his chosen people about a promised land, would we have a Palestine-Israeli conflict that is so intractable? Or would we want to expunge the story about Jesus using whips in the temple to drive out the animals belonging to the money changers and upsetting their tables?

Because there is no resolution yet to the matter of erasing or censoring history, there is only one action to suggest: When writing something that will be published—in print or on the Internet—calculate the risk. Is this something that might one day be a problem where someone can quote you against yourself?

The Internet is indelible. Today’s clever witticism may be tomorrow’s embarrassment. To be sure, “Your sins will find you out.”