Public vs. private in the digital world and....Do I believe?

Something unusual just happened to me. Someone, in a forum entirely unrelated to religion, just emailed me to chastise me for my religious views. The email was interesting on a few levels.

The person who emailed me was someone I don't know and have never met. She felt it was OK to take me to task for my religious convictions. It speaks to the interesting and often jumbled mix of private and public personae in the digital world. I wrote some of my core convictions on a website, which can be accessed by the public, yet random public commentary of others is considered invasive. What are the boundaries of privacy in the digital world? While I feel fairly certain that random commentary about other people's beliefs, outside of forums that are dedicated to that commentary, is socially unacceptable, I also believe that the lines are blurring. Although personal conscience, not ettiqutte, should be the ultimate authority to guide our behavior, a set of rules that outline the socially acceptable would be very beneficial to navigating the digital world.

In the email itself, the person called me to task on my "lack of faith" and said that for me, there "is no God" in a response to my self description as a religious agnostic. Although I know this is a random email from someone I don't know with a sketchy set of boundaries, I'm still wrestling with those descriptions. I don't feel as though they fit me, but I'm having a difficult time articulating why they don't. While I am fairly certain there isn't a god who "pulls the strings" of the world, I would not call myself an athiest. We are connected by forces beyond our understanding, and we owe ourselves, each other, and the world our best selves, not because of some distant reward, but because it will make life more interesting, rich, and bountiful. We are called to evolve and change because the world evolves and changes. While I may lack faith in God as defined by the emailer, I have a deep abiding faith in that call to change and evolve.