As I prepared to write an article for our local Christian newspaper, The Voice of Grace & Truth, I asked myself, how can I combine my teaching on digital media at a local college with my faith?
As I thought through all the online tools I use on a daily basis, I liked the alliteration of a "Facebook Faith" so I started asking a few more questions:
What about Facebook is good?
- Helps you communicate
- Helps you organize
- Helps you be transparent (a key term both in journalism and the new web)
What about Facebook is bad?
- Distracting
- Can be narcisstic – as in only about me
- Gets you caught up in sometimes irrelevant activities in life
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- (Yes, I know I most resemble Fozzy the Bear in the Facebook Muppet quiz.)
I concluded that Facebook as a tool for communication is great and there are many tools that help us in our Christian walk. Being transparent is good with both God and man. God wants us to open our hearts willingly to Him. At the same time, we should be open and honest with others around us.
In 2 Corinthians 3: 3, Paul tells the Corinthians that they are letters from Christ, written not in ink but written with the Spirit of the Living God on tablets of human hearts. Acknowledging that we are representations of Christ should come through in all our tools of communication, given that you do believe in Christ, the Son of God whose birth we celebrate this Christmas and whose death and resurrection we celebrate at Easter and whose sacrifice for our sins we should be acknowledging daily.
But, as with everything, there are extremes in which a tool becomes a negative in our lives if it is distracting us from our true purposes. If you are spending more time on the Internet recreationally and less on prayer and reading the Word of God, how are you even creating quality content when you are online?
Overall, I would equate having a Facebook Faith with being transparent and open which is good but one is which we should be aware of guarding our heart, the privacy of our lives, and one in which we do not broadcast sinful behavior which should be acknowledged in confession before God and not your "friends" on Facebook. There is time and place for everything and in all things, prayerful wisdom has to prevail in all our activities.
More on this later. Disclaimer: I'm not pointing any specific fingers at anyone except myself. Just so ya know.
