On September 11, 2001 I was a junior in college. My brother had just moved to New York City to begin his freshman year at NYU, and he could see the Twin Towers from his dormitory. That same morning, hundreds of miles away, my roommate’s boyfriend sat in his office at the Pentagon while a plane slammed into the building. All the while, many of my classmates were panic-stricken as they tried to contact parents who worked in the World Trade Center. Like most Americans, I was personally connected to the events of that day.

Everyone remembers where they were on 9/11. We remember when we first heard the news, and when we saw the planes crash into the buildings. We remember who we called, and what we said. Ten years later, I can still feel the fear and the disbelief that shook my body that morning. At one point my roommate and I collapsed on our couch in tears and held one another’s hands as we prayed and cried out to God. It was an indescribably horrific day.

That day was also a turning point in our nation’s history. Just think about all that has changed in our country since then. Travelers can no longer pass through airport security without a ticket. Our government issues daily terrorist threat levels ranging from green to red. We have initiated two different wars.

But there has been another change in our country that goes beyond practice. September 11 changed our national psyche. Not only did 9/11 unite us, but it also shattered the illusion of our invincibility. We were attacked on our own soil, opening our eyes to a vulnerability we never knew we had, and injecting a new type of fear into our culture. This newly introduced fear is perhaps why the war in Afghanistan was popularly called the “War on Terror.” America wasn’t simply going after Osama bin Laden; America was going after fear itself.

With the 10 year anniversary upon us, I’ve found myself reflecting on 9/11 quite a bit, and my mind keeps gravitating back to that term: war on terror. It is a label full of meaning, but it is particularly poignant for Christians.

For most people in the world today, the “war on terror” refers to an American military campaign. But for Christians it can mean something entirely different. As Christians, we know there is only One capable of waging a war against fear. There is only One who can storm the gates of Hell and triumph over death and destruction. There is only One who can truly wage war on terror, and win.

His name is Jesus.

I make that statement, not as a partisan political commentary on America’s defense strategies, but as a uniquely Christian hope. In a world where September 11th happened, it is easy to be fearful. It is also easy to respond to that fear by grasping for greater control, control over our lives and the chaotic world around us. When we face that temptation, when we face September 11, it is therefore important to remember that the war on terror has already been fought and won.

As we observe this 10th anniversary of September 11, it is right to mourn and it is right to remember. But we need not fear.  Although 9/11 changed our country, it did not change our God. Our God is not the author of fear, but the vanquisher of it.

This week the media has been aflutter with stories about New York Representative Anthony Weiner and his extra-marital infidelities. His case is particularly unique because the infidelities were not explicitly physical. His actions were limited to the cyber world, which relegates them to a rather blurry realm. The scandal raises questions about what actually constitutes cheating, and what exactly Weiner was guilty of doing.

One of my favorite responses to the scandal was written by Liberty University English professor Karen Swallow Prior for Her.meneutics. In her piece titled Anthony Weiner, Gnostic, Prior exposed the body/mind divide inherent in Weiner’s defense. To some of Weiner’s defenders, the severity of the transgression is blunted by the fact that it never happened in person, and it does not impact his ability to lead. It was a cyber affair that never culminated in an “actual affair,” and we should let his private life be private.

Prior, on the other hand, argues that the logic behind such reasoning is as old as the infamous heresy of Gnosticism. Any ideology that draws a hard, clear line between the body and the mind, ranking physical action above heart orientation, is departing from Christian orthodoxy.

Here it is important to note that Gnostic belief was far more complex than the simple divide between body and mind. In fact, after first posting this Prior contacted me to say the use of the term “Gnostic” was the editor’s insertion, not her own words. But all terminology aside, I appreciate Prior’s perspective on the unhealthy dualism in play. She provides a terrific lens for thinking through the questions raised by this scandal. The idea that we can compartmentalize our bodies from our minds so cleanly–or that sins are only real if committed bodily–runs up against the very words of Christ. When that sort of language is thrown around in the media, we need to name it properly.

However, as detestable as Weiner’s actions were, he is also a scapegoat of sorts, a symbol of our generation’s blatant double standard between “real world” and “virtual” behavior. In addition to the pervasive addiction to internet pornography in the church (ie. it’s not cheating if it’s not real), Christians freely hate others in their hearts and on their Facebook statuses, even though few would have the guts to express that hate in person. We are rarely as bold in “real life” as we are on the internet or in our minds.

This double standard is typically attributed to the anonymity of the internet, but Prior’s accusation of body-mind dualism is fair. Let’s be honest: As long as we can limit our vices to the virtual reality of our minds and cyber space, it doesn’t seem quite so real. Yes, those vices are wrong but they seem just a little less wrong than actually having an affair or inflicting actual physical harm on a Christian brother or sister.

Of course this flimsy logic is easily rebutted by Jesus’ words in Matthew 5. In God’s economy, sins of the heart are real. You don’t have to meet a woman in person to sin against her. What you think in your heart and what you see or do on the internet is just the same to God. It is just as real as the act itself.

On a final note, this mind-body dualism has a sister. While some Christians rank the body over the mind, others do the reverse. For some, what we do with our bodies matters less than the heart orientations of love and mercy. This camp gives greater weight to the heart and the mind, and what we do with our bodies is a little more relative.

This dualism, too, is theologically problematic. It is against God’s design for holistic human beings who reflect God with both our bodies and our minds. While love and mercy are certainly essential to God’s intent for us, they fit hand in hand with God’s instructions to honor Him, and others, with our bodies.

In sum, if you remember nothing else from the Weiner scandal and the discussions that follow, remember this: All of you matters to God, and all of you matters to the church of which you are a part. When we divide ourselves in two (or three or four or five), we end up hurting ourselves, hurting others, and disobeying our First Love. Who you are, every bit of you, matters.

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

- Jesus (John 13:34-35)

Women’s ministries are known for a lot of things, both good and bad–discipleship, self-help, retreats, fellowship, crying, and the list goes on. One thing that women’s ministries are NOT known for is taking vocal stands on current events. We tend to leave that to our sisters in the feminist movement.

I am often guilty of this. I focus a lot on theology and discipleship in this blog. I don’t frequently take a side on controversial hot topics because of how heavily they are politicized. And while this avoidance stems out of a desire for prudence and wisdom, I don’t want to hide behind this practice when the time comes to speak boldly and with conviction about current events.

This week is one of those times at which I feel burdened to take a stand. The issue is the church in Gainesville that plans to burn Qurans on 9/11. And before I go on any further I first want to state clearly and unequivocally what I believe every Christian (men and women alike) should be stating without hesitation:

This is wrong.

Unfortunately, a lot of Christians are struggling to take a firm stance on this. Why? Because of the church members’ rights as Americans. This morning as I drove to school I heard a Christian radio DJ discuss the issue, weighing the church members’ rights against their Christian obligations. As I listened I kept waiting for her to assume a definitive stance, and perhaps I was expecting too much–she probably would have gotten in a lot of trouble for taking a stand on behalf of the entire radio station.

Even so, this battle between our American and Christian identities is troubling to me. We seem to have lost sight of the fact that we are always Christians FIRST, and Americans second (or third, or fourth or fifth). And because this particular situation involves people who claim to represent Christ, then our primary mode of operation is that of the church. This is an issue of Christian accountability. Were it to happen in your own church or community, it would be a matter of church discipline. Just because people have the right to commit adultery does not mean we stand for it in our midst. And neither should we now.

Yesterday I heard a professor at my current school express a desire for Christians across the country to write their local newspapers issuing a strong repudiation of this act. I agree. In fact, a professor from my former seminary did just that. You can read his wonderfully gentle and articulate response here.

However you respond to this issue, know that your voice matters. Your co-workers, your neighbors, and your fellow students are all watching for your response. And your silence indicates one of two things: agreement, or apathy.

So at a moment when God’s reputation is on the line and the world is confused about who Jesus is and what it means to follow him, I have to ask how you are responding: In loving rebuke, silent assent, or with confusion over the location of your primary identity?  However you respond, know that your voice DOES matter. Being a faithful Christian woman means defending Christ in love and gentleness, but also with passion and boldness.

These last few days I have been heavy hearted as news of the devastation in Haiti continues to filter our way. What is perhaps most difficult to understand about a catastrophe like this is why them? As you probably know by now, Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest countries in the world. As horrible as the pictures on t.v. are right now, the country did not look a whole lot better before the earthquake. I had the privilege of traveling there five years ago and the poverty was mind-numbing. I’ve posted just a few of the pictures I took while there to give you a taste:

The first is a picture I took inside the capitol city of Port-au-Prince. The cinderblock structures you see in the background are people’s homes. The second is an orphanage in the remote city of Fondwa. It was a small, concrete building that sat on the side of a mountain and had been sub-divided into rooms to house a couple dozen children.

It is hard to understand how God could let such a disaster befall an already broken country like Haiti. It does not seem fair and I do not understand. One thing I do know, however, is this: Whenever a tragedy like this strikes a country, there are always some (who shall remain nameless) who are tempted to interpret it as punishment. This was not punishment. This was a sign of the hopelessly broken world in which we live, a world in which dictatorships cruelly oppress their people, in which young girls are sold into the sex trade by their own parents, and in which the earthquakes destroy the foundations of an entire country in a few moments. We live in a dark world.

Fortunately, I am also certain of something else as well. Our God is a redeemer. He cares about Haiti, and He can redeem this. For decades the country of Haiti has existed in abject poverty just a few hundred miles away from the Florida coast while our country has largely turned a blind eye. It is to our nation’s shame that it took an earthquake to wake us up to the needs of the people in Haiti. It is my hope and my prayer that this earthquake will mark a turning point in the nation’s history. Now that the world is paying attention, we will hopefully provide the help that Haiti has needed for decades. God cares about Haiti, and He can redeem this earthquake.

As you pray for Haiti, pray not only for the thousands of people who are injured, dying, hungry and thirsty, but pray for Haiti’s future and how we can be a part of God’s redemptive work there. In a country as dark as Haiti, we can truly shine like stars in the darkness.

I will close with some pictures of the children I met while there. The first three children lived in the orphanage and the last little boy attended a school in Port-au-Prince. I have no idea if any of the children are still alive, but pray for them.Also reflect on your role in God’s redemptive work. Is God calling you to give radically? Is he perhaps even calling you to consider adoption, given the orphan crisis the country is now facing? Ask God to use you as an extraordinary example of generosity and hope, in ways that you may have never dreamed or imagined. These are just 4 of the thousands of reasons why you should:

The tragedy in Haiti reminds us just how oppressive the darkness of this world can be, and how desperately people need hope. How will you give them hope?

At the risk of receiving nasty comments, today I am posting John Piper’s response to the backlash against President Obama’s address to our nation’s students. This is an issue that has truly befuddled me (and no, I am not trying to start a debate here so please don’t start one), so amidst all the firestorm of shouting and mud-slinging, I was refreshed to hear a different kind of voice reminding us that we serve an all-powerful redeemer God who can use our President’s words for great good in this country.

I am also convicted by how little I actually pray for that to happen.

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John Piper: I Hope My Daughter Hears The President’s Speech

I am stunned at the outcry against the President of the United States  speaking to the youth of this nation about the importance of education.

I am embarrassed by the governor of my home state saying, that the president’s plan to address them is “disruptive . . . uninvited . . . and number three . . . I don’t think he needs to force it upon the nation’s school children.”

This speech seems, for me, to be an answer to a prayer that I have prayed for the president repeatedly.

Father, the condition of our schools and families is so broken that nothing seems to be working, especially for the poor in our urban centers. Help our president to have the courage to use his amazing place of influence to speak into this situation in such a way that boys and girls would take their studies seriously and put school above sport and homework above hiphop and graduation above gangs.

And as the President plans his speech, help him to feel as helpless as he really is to meet the greatest needs of the children, so that he turns to Jesus who alone has the answer for the ruin and the wrongs of our cities. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

I hope my daughter hears the speech.

Last week I wrote about Bishop Jefferts Schori of the Episcopal Church, and her denunciation of “personal relationships with Christ” at their General Conference. Though I only alluded to it in that post, there was a second controversial element to the conference, and that was the Church’s decision to ordain homosexuals into the priesthood.

Now I am by no means trying to pick on the Episcopal Church by highlighting them twice in one week, but I came upon a response to the Episcopal Church’s decision, written by N.T. Wright, that I found worth noting. If you aren’t familiar with him, N.T. Wright is a renowned British theologian, and he is also a member of the Anglican Church (the Episcopal Church’s British counterpart). He makes some incredible insights into the the Episcopal Church’s decision from which we can all learn. Not only does he appeal to Scripture and tradition in his defense, but he does so without the emotional work of name-calling or mud-slinging. What follows are some of my favorite excerpts:

On sexual chastity in the Christian tradition:

“Many in TEC (The Episcopal Church) have long embraced a theology in which chastity, as universally understood by the wider Christian tradition, has been optional. That wider tradition always was counter-cultural as well as counter-intuitive. Our supposedly selfish genes crave a variety of sexual possibilities. But Jewish, Christian and Muslim teachers have always insisted that lifelong man-plus-woman marriage is the proper context for sexual intercourse. This is not (as is frequently suggested) an arbitrary rule, dualistic in overtone and killjoy in intention. It is a deep structural reflection of the belief in a creator God who has entered into covenant both with his creation and with his people (who carry forward his purposes for that creation).

Paganism ancient and modern has always found this ethic, and this belief, ridiculous and incredible. But the biblical witness is scarcely confined, as the shrill leader in yesterday’s Times suggests, to a few verses in St Paul. Jesus’s own stern denunciation of sexual immorality would certainly have carried, to his hearers, a clear implied rejection of all sexual behaviour outside heterosexual monogamy. This isn’t a matter of “private response to Scripture” but of the uniform teaching of the whole Bible, of Jesus himself, and of the entire Christian tradition.”

What an important reminder that sexual purity is not just about being holy, but providing a witness for those around us. We are meant to be different, to look different, and our sexual lives are one way that we set ourselves apart from the rest of the world for the glory of God. When we conform to the sexual norms of our surrounding culture, we become like a salt that loses its saltiness (Matt. 5:13).

Wright also responds to the TEC’s notions of justice in relation to human identity–that is, treating all humans justly, regardless of sexual orientation. This was also a great point:

“The appeal to justice as a way of cutting the ethical knot in favour of including active homosexuals in Christian ministry simply begs the question. Nobody has a right to be ordained: it is always a gift of sheer and unmerited grace. The appeal also seriously misrepresents the notion of justice itself, not just in the Christian tradition of Augustine, Aquinas and others, but in the wider philosophical discussion from Aristotle to John Rawls. Justice never means “treating everybody the same way”, but “treating people appropriately”, which involves making distinctions between different people and situations. Justice has never meant “the right to give active expression to any and every sexual desire”.

Such a novel usage would also raise the further question of identity. It is a very recent innovation to consider sexual preferences as a marker of “identity” parallel to, say, being male or female, English or African, rich or poor. Within the “gay community” much postmodern reflection has turned away from “identity” as a modernist fiction. We simply “construct” ourselves from day to day.

We must insist, too, on the distinction between inclination and desire on the one hand and activity on the other — a distinction regularly obscured by references to “homosexual clergy” and so on. We all have all kinds of deep-rooted inclinations and desires. The question is, what shall we do with them? One of the great Prayer Book collects asks God that we may “love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise”. That is always tough, for all of us. Much easier to ask God to command what we already love, and promise what we already desire. But much less like the challenge of the Gospel.”

It is always ironic that many of the Christian voices who preach the loudest about community tend to ignore the greater community of Church tradition. We must not be so arrogant as to think that we know better than the 2,000 years of Christian brothers and sisters who preceded us. That is not to say that we shouldn’t hold Church tradition under the scrutiny of Scripture, but in this instance the two are clearly aligned. With that in mind, it’s important that we love those with whom we disagree, but loving them does not mean we are so shaped by the culture that we no longer resemble the Church established by Jesus Christ.

To read Wright’s entire response, click here.

This week the Episcopal Church created yet another stir at its General Conference when the presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori denounced the idea of a personal relationship with God through Christ as heresy (that is, a contradiction with the truth of Scripture and belief of the Church). She explained,

“The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy –- that we can be saved as individuals, that any of use alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of all being.“

She later added,

“I said that this crisis has several elements related to that heretical and individualistic understanding. We’ve touched on one – how we keep the earth, meant to be a gift to all God’s creatures. The financial condition of the nations right now is another element. The sins of a few have wreaked havoc with the lives of many, as greed and dishonesty have destroyed livelihoods, educational possibilities, care for the aged, and multiple forms of creativity – and that’s just the aftermath of Ponzi schemes for which a handful will go to jail. If we want to be faithful, we need to be continually rediscovering that my needs are not the only significant ones.“

The great irony of the Bishop’s statement is that the Episcopal Church has embodied this very individualism against which she rants, by departing from the bulk of Church tradition in their ordination of homosexuals. In doing so, the Episcopal Church has actually isolated itself from the larger community of faith, a move that some might call ecclesiologically individualistic.

But aside from that minor detail, I actually think there is something to her words. Bishop Jefferts Schori is right in critiquing the idea of “my personal Jesus”–an understanding of Jesus that not only enables one to isolate one’s self from other Christians, washing their hands of any responsibility to others, and refusing accountability from the larger Church, but it can also turn Jesus into a kind of custom order Savior who serves your particular needs–namely, not going to Hell.

In the face of such distortions, I can understand why Bishop Jefferts Schori would raise an eyebrow. The language of “personal relationship” has been used in the name of some very unscriptural practices.

However, Bishop Jefferts Schori goes awry in her identification of the problem’s source. The problem is not the language of the personal–the problem is how we’ve used it. A healthy understanding of “personal” is that God knows you intimately as a person. He “knit you together in your mother’s womb” and he knows “when you rise and when you fall.” Just read Psalm 139–it doesn’t get much more “personal” than that.

What’s more, God is not some far off entity who is only accessible through a system. If you need God, you can cry out to Him–yet another practice we see all throughout the Psalms. Yet Bishop Jefferst Schori elevates community to a level of near idolatry given how thoroughly she founds salvation upon it. If salvation is both by faith AND community alone, then we can offer little comfort to missionaries, both abroad and in the American workplace, who find themselves isolated from other Christians with whom they can fellowship.

But most importantly of all, I would like to know how Bishop Jefferts Schori would reconcile her idea of heresy with Paul’s method of conversion in Acts 16. The Philippian jailer, frightened by an earthquake that had freed the Christian prisoners, comes to Paul and asks, “What must I do to be saved.” Paul simply responds, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved.”

When we depart from this said “formula,” we wander dangerously close to the heresy from which Martin Luther fought to free the Church 500 years ago. J.D. Greear once stated, “Salvation is by faith alone, but the faith that saves is never alone.” We must let this truth serve as a boundary for our language about “personal relationships,” but the personal aspect must remain. When we reject it, we not only stray from the model of salvation given to us in Scripture, but we lose any hope of reaching a human race that was designed to be inherently relational.

MTV has come out with a new show that follows the lives of high school girls who are pregnant. The show is called “16 and Pregnant,” and the following trailer will give you a taste for what this mini-series has in store:

I watched the show for the first time last night, and I have really mixed feelings about it. If you only watch the first 30 minutes, it would almost seem like MTV is glamorizing the idea of teen pregnancy. All you see is young girls throwing baby showers and getting excited about how cute the baby will be.

In my opinion, that’s the last unrealistic message that MTV’s viewers need to hear. Lately the news has been peppered with stories of young girls who intentionally got pregnant for a myriad of reasons. My fiancé’s mother is a high school teacher with numerous pregnant students, and when I asked her why she thought it happened so frequently given the education schools are providing about safe sex, she replied, “Oh, they wanted it! A lot of these girls come from bad family situations where they don’t receive a lot of love and encouragement, so they think that if they have a baby then the baby will love them, or maybe they can get their boyfriend to stick around.”

That scenario is by no means true for all teens, but it is safe to say that when most young people make the fateful decision to have sex before they’re married, they’re not considering the weight of their actions. So is MTV feeding their naiveté?

Surprisingly, I don’t think so. I actually think there is some virtue to this show. (I can’t believe I just said that about MTV. Write it down, people!) First, if you hang on and watch the second half of the show, it follows the young mother after she has the child, and chronicles the hardships that she faces–her dying social life, her un-supportive boyfriend, sleepless nights and all. It’s a realistic look at how tough it can be to have a baby in high school, and it de-romanticizes any misconceptions young women might have about the process. It challenges young viewers to stop and weigh their actions.

But in addition to this strength, I can’t help but wonder if shows like this will de-stigmatize out-of-wedlock pregnancies. That is something the pro-life movement has been talking about doing for years–How do we talk about pregnancy in a way  that values life whenever it comes, and does not produce such crushing shame and hardship that women would rather get an abortion than face the world?

I think this show might serve as a positive step in this direction. While it does portray a realistic picture of teen pregnancy, and in a way that will hopefully educate young women about the consequences of their actions, it doesn’t do so in an armageddon kind of way–ie. THIS WILL END YOUR LIFE FOREVER! The show doesn’t treat babies as a curse upon humanity, but actually highlights some of the wonder of new life as well. While watching the show, I couldn’t help but swoon over how precious the little boy was, and you could see in the young mother’s eyes that she felt the same.

By chronicling the beauty AND the hardship of pregnancy, MTV strikes a careful balance between encouraging responsibility and also valuing life. From what I can tell, each of the girls featured in the show actually carried her pregnancy to term, so there is a subtext of life underlying the entire story line.

But perhaps I am being too optimistic. Anyone else have thoughts on this?

Yesterday a doctor who practiced late-term abortions was shot and killed by a fanatical pro-life proponent.

His name was Dr. George Tiller.

He was shot in his church.

While he was serving as an usher.

These last two details of the story really threw me off. Without calling into question the salvation of either man involved, to the world it would appear that Christians are now killing other Christians over the issue of abortion…a movement that is supposedly “for life.”

Not only were both men Christian, but they were both Lutheran as well. And both men were acting out of their spiritual convictions. The shooter likely thought he was saving thousands of lives through the taking of one. Dr. Tiller, on the other hand, engaged in his work for the protection of female lives. In a public statement, Tiller’s wife explained that her loss “is also a loss for the city of Wichita and women across America.”

One faith, two totally different convictions. What is going on here?

The problem is that both men had strong convictions about the value of life, but they applied their ideology in very selective ways. They both supported various aspects of life, but not ALL life. One failed to value life whenever it comes, the other failed to value life no matter what it does. And in so doing, they departed from the example set for them by Christ.

This is what happens when Christians get tunnel vision on one particular issue–it eclipses EVERYTHING else, including God Himself.

I think that’s why the world is so often confused by the pro-life movement. While the events of yesterday are by no means the norm (that man was probably just insane), there are other ways that we engage in a kind of philosophical schizophrenia.

We say we support life whenever it comes, but we don’t follow this statement to its logical conclusion. We’re as vocal as can be about the evils of abortion, but we don’t actively support unwed mothers (and I mean actually support them in tangible ways–not just talking about supporting them in some vague, hypothetical way). Nor do most churches actively invest themselves in the school systems and under-privileged families that raise those children.

What’s more, the people who fight so long and hard for abortion seem almost oblivious to the injustices that occur in our system of capital punishment. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, numerous individuals have been falsely convicted and sentenced to the death penalty due to eye witness error, government misconduct, and false confessions, just to name a few. (Source) Why isn’t the pro-life movement fighting for these lives, many of which were only exonerated AFTER their executions?

Our culture is also baffled when staunch pro-lifers are liberal on the issue of war. Now I am not going to dive into the topic of whether or not our present war is just, but how you discuss this war, regardless of your position on it, betrays your stance on life. Do you grieve for the loss of life, both American and Iraqi? Are you committed to ending the bloodshed in as peaceful a manner as possible?

When the pro-life movement focuses almost exclusively on one type of life, we reveal ourselves to be no different than Dr. Tiller. He ranked the value of adult women over unborn women. Oftentimes we rank the value of innocent unborn babies over criminals and strangers in other lands. But we part ways with God’s character when we do this.

To fight only against abortion is not a holistic approach to pro-life. We must therefore embrace a worldview that not only values life whenever it comes, but also values the redemptive possibilities of all lives, no matter who it is or what they have done. It may sound radical, but this is the appropriate response to a God that has shown impartial grace to a world that does not deserve it. God sent his son to die for criminals and strangers, so I wonder what that might look like were we to live it out today.

Facebook in Real Life:

(This video comes from a British comedy group called Idiots of Ants)

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I still remember the first time I heard about Facebook. Some college students were explaining it to me, and in their minds it was really just a socially acceptable way of stalking people. I, of course, thought that sounded really weird and vowed never to join Facebook.

Well about 4 years later I am a Facebook junkie. I’m on it all the time, and I definitely stalk people….not in a creepy way, but in a “I need to find better things to do with my time” sort of way. I’m quite certain that if I tallied up the number of hours I spend looking at other people’s photos each week, I could have attained another educational degree by now.

But aside from the enormous time suck that Facebook is on our lives, there is something that concerns me even more–how self-involved it has become. While Facebook is a great means for keeping in touch and it has other valuable purposes as well, Facebook tempts our self-absorption with the opportunity to create a space that’s “all about me.”

What results is a near shrine to the self:

These are pictures of my happy life. These are fun facts and interesting quotes that make me so unique. And here is my relationship status, which I change every time my dating life undergoes the slightest alteration. And don’t forget my Facebook status, which enables people to follow MY EVERY MOVE.

There’s a part of me that wonders if this behavior is a result of living in a paparazzi culture in which the intimate details of celebrity lives are splashed all over the internet. There’s an extent to which we emulate those individuals we idolize. It’s like creating our own personal celebrity.

But on a more basic human sin level, Facebook (and Twitter as well) has largely become an altar for our pride. Again, it’s not that any of these technological innovations are inherently bad–they can all be used in the service of God. But are they most of the time? No. They are used in service to us.

I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling me why she got off Twitter. Apparently she was following a few people, but her phone was vibrating all the time with these updates, updates which were frequently pointless and a waste of her time. And not only that, but the updates started to make her feel bad about her own life, and her singleness in particular. Many of the updates went along the lines of “Out on a date with my beautiful wife” or “I am so lucky to be married to such a wonderful woman.”

While I don’t doubt that the Twitterer was trying to honor his wife, I can’t help but wonder if there was also a little pride mixed in as well. When I examine my own motives in using Facebook, I find they are often competitive. I want people to know how good and happy my life is, so I post photos to essentially brag about it. And if I’m going somewhere or doing something that I think will make people envious, it goes straight to my status update.

The reason this competitive spirit can be so subtle is that we describe this behavior as simply “sharing with friends.” It wouldn’t be weird for me to tell my roommates where I’m going over the weekend, especially if I was excited about it. What might be weird is if I called up all my friends simply to tell them that I was vacationing in Florida for a week. They would probably wonder why I was calling just to tell them that. They might even feel a little put off by it. Yet in some cases, that’s essentially what Facebook does.

And in doing so, we can use Facebook in ways that not only alienate others, but tear others down. In case this idea sounds a bit abstract, think about it this way–Consider the Christian woman who spends hours getting ready for church in the morning so that she can look perfect. She not only does this to look nice for church, but feel confident and to feel better about herself. Yet in doing so, she sends a message to all the women around her who did not put that much time into their exterior, and do not look as good. The women who look up to her will suddenly find themselves feeling insecure, like they don’t measure up.

We can pull off this same phenomenon with Facebook. The more time we spend glamorizing our lives and broadcasting the things that make us look good, the more we convey to others where our real security lies.

So while I don’t think we should all swear off Facebook, and there are certainly Christ-centered ways of using it, I personally am not a great example of that. This is an area in which I must constantly check my own motives, especially given that hundreds of people can be impacted by such public choices. If you’ve spent any time “stalking” other people on Facebook then you KNOW other people are stalking you, so when they visit your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter, what are they REALLY learning about your life? What message are you sending? What is truly the center of your life?

The best rule of thumb for this, and really all areas of our lives, is to ask the following question: “In posting this, writing this, or spending countless hours following others who do, am I loving God and am I loving my neighbor?” If you cannot answer a definitive yes, then it’s best not to do it at all. That might sound harsh, but it draws a dividing line between real friendship, real Christian community, and a way of relating to others that is inherently fake.