I promised six parts to this mammoth series way back at the start. In January.
And here is the last one.
I was going to make part six a list of suggested reading in this area – but you should just read TheoMedia (my review), and From the Garden to the City
This video has been doing the rounds.
It’s compelling.
The basic thesis of the first post in this series was that social media isn’t ‘neutral’ – it’s not simply a tool. It effects us. It changes us. That’s basically what this video is saying – only it’s also taking a position. The changes are bad. Mostly. I think I agree. A bit.
But am I less committed to being present on Facebook as a result – or figuring out how to use it as a platform for presenting the Gospel? No.
I think the Gospel offers us a significant toolkit not for redeeming Facebook (or social media) but for subverting it in a way that helps people connect with Jesus.
I think the story at the heart of the Gospel provides us with a communication model. A communication model based on getting messed up through the mediums we use to communicate, in order to be heard by messed up people.
I think deliberately getting messed up by a medium as an act of love for the people using the medium – aware of the cost – is a way for us to imitate Christ. Who became a communication medium – human – in a way that cost him everything.
Jesus stepped out of his infinite, immortal, divinity, out of his perfectly loving eternal relationship with the Trinity – and into the flesh and blood and muck of human existence, and the humiliation of the Cross, and that moment of separation from the Father and Holy Spirit. Huge cost. To communicate and relate to us. His enemies.
That is costly.
Interactions on Facebook appear low cost. Facebook is free (because you’re the product, not the customer). There is the hidden cost this video speaks of – the cost to our relationships and quality of life.
One thing I think we need to figure out, as Christians, is how to make our interactions on Facebook – and platforms like it – more costly for us, and more beneficial for others.
Fleeing social media and the people you have limited contact with because you realise it is costing you quality of life might be attractive when a British sounding guy says we should do it in a compelling spoken word – but if being on social media allows me to pray for someone in a more informed way, or allows me to offer some words of comfort to a hurting friend, to give a reason for the hope that I have, to present the Gospel, to be a token Christian friend, or to supplement and facilitate real world relationships – then I think that is worth it.
Absolutely.
My challenge is to use Facebook to do those things – as long as there are people there. Though my natural inclination is to use Facebook to make myself a bigger deal. (NOTE: When people move on to something new, it’ll be our job as Christians to find ways to use whatever that new thing is to introduce people to Jesus at cost to ourselves).
My challenge is not to flee Facebook to avoid getting messed up and to have a more fulfilling life. Though that’s my natural response when I watch a video like the one above.
The message at the heart of that video is kind of selfish. Compelling. But selfish. Maybe I was in a bad mood when I watched it. Maybe I misunderstood. But I won’t choose what communication mediums to use on the basis of their impact on my life, but rather on the potential impact that choice might have for others who don’t know Jesus.
I have eternity to have a fulfilling life. In this life I want to get messy and messed up on purpose. For the sake of others. Because that’s what Jesus did for me.