Children of God…Online, Too
It may seem to be a little (or a lot) disingenuous to see a post on social media from somebody who has fairly recently limited his exposure to social media, but that is what is going on here. Sometime in the distant past I signed up for an Instagram account and a Twitter account. I have no idea why I did that because I may check Twitter once every month or so and cannot remember the last time I “just browsed through” Instagram.
About the only social media platform I still use on a somewhat regular basis is Facebook. Not long ago, I made a significant change in how I use it. I made the decision to significantly cut back on the number of people I “follow.” As it currently stands, I only follow the members of my immediate family, both of our preachers (one of whom is our son), one of my fellow elders (the only one on Facebook), and a few institutions, publications, etc. which I believe are helping people with their relationship with God.
It may or may not be of interest to you to know why I made the decision I made. At the same time, I think that there may be some implications for all of us to consider.
I’ve told a lot of people that I was just tired of all of the drama. Specifically, the type of drama that I grew tired of was that which caused debate, disagreement, and hard feelings.
Unless you just crawled out from under a rock after being there for quite a while, you surely know what I’m talking about. Somebody will post something that they know beyond a doubt will stir controversy. Sadly, they are correct. Somebody else will somehow feel that they have some kind of duty to respond. It doesn’t take long for battle lines to be drawn, unkind and hurtful things to be “put out there” for all the world to see, sarcasm and ridicule to be employed, alienation to take place, and a lot of other unpleasant things to happen.
As sad as all of this is, it is even more sad when the people engaged in all of this would be very offended if anybody would suggest that they are not children of God. They would probably protest (and maybe very loudly and angrily) that they are, indeed, children of God and that they have as much of a right to express themselves as anybody else.
Freedom of speech is absolutely very dear to those of us who are privileged to call ourselves Americans. Nothing that is said here should suggest otherwise.
While I love our nation and am very, very concerned about some of the things going on in our nation, I need to realize that, if I am a Christian, I have a far greater blessing with far greater corresponding responsibilities. After all, as Paul would be inspired to write, “…our citizenship is in heaven…” (Phil. 3:20, ESV).
Maybe before we get in front of some sort of electronic device and “…bite and devour one another…” (Gal. 5:15), we might want to give some consideration to something that the One whose name we claim to wear said:
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God (Matt. 5:9, KJV, emphasis added).
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AUTHOR: Jim Faughn
