Sunday, June 07, 2020

What does your billboard say?

This started out as just a regular Facebook status, but then it got long and I remembered I have a blog, and can actually express my thought in more than 40 characters (or whatever the twitter number is now).
This is mainly to speak to my Christian friends. The ones who are suppose to be united in love and truth and share the goal of spreading the message of the Bible. However, I want to hold myself more broadly accountable, so I am posting for all to see.

Social Media gives us an opportunity to convey who we are and what we are about to people who might not otherwise know us very well. I'd encourage you to take a minute and look at your own profile page. Scroll through as if you were someone you barely knew, someone considering hiring you, someone trying to decide if they can come to you for guidance, wisdom, and safety.
Have you presented yourself the way you want to?
Would you ask this person to pray with you over a private matter?
Would you trust this person to have a firm foundation in Christ?
This is the really hard one. If you wanted to know what a Christian lives like on a normal day, would your profile page encourage you, or scare you off of "church people"?
After you have scrolled a bit, has your blood pressure gone up seeing all the things that have upset you over the past few days, or do you have a warm fuzzy feeling from the love and joy before you?

With love and respect and concern, I have to say that I see so many people doing nothing on social media except reposting articles that reinforce whatever political opinion they hold to an extreme.  So much so that I have seen more than one of you post a clearly satirical article as fact because it affirmed your fears. That's not okay. That kind of thing hugely damages your testimony. How can I trust you to know anything about something as enormous as the subject of the kingdom of God when you fell for the classic blunder of going up against a Sicilian with death is on the line?

I love you guys, and love that most of you will recognize the not so subtle Princess Bride joke I just slipped in. I want what is best for you all, and I just don't want to see you hurting your ability to do your most important job for the momentary relief of trying to show up strangers on the internet.

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