As a person of the Christian faith, and a 23 year old in the age of social media, I interact with multiple web-based Christian platforms on a daily basis. What a wonderful thing it is to have this free access to sermons and blogs and other resources from millions of churches, foundations, .coms and .orgs. There are so many of these that if you type “Jesus” into a simple Google search, you can pull up “About 884,000,000 results” (in 1.12 seconds). If you decide to refine your search and inquire, “Does God love me” you’ll get about 17,000,000 results. Typing in “Why does suffering exist if God loves me” will give you over 3,000,000 results. Ten minutes online reveals that, for anybody who is curious and has internet access, there are “answers” that exists for almost every single question we could ask about Jesus Christ and God. If you believe in Jesus, then you can also Google “answers” to every secret struggle of the heart as you try to recon with your own painful habits and questions. Each has a related but distinct and instantly accessible answer you can download in the form of PDF or listen to as a Podcast.
In fact, so tailored are these “answers” that you can Google to find out whether or not your depression is a sin, if your non-Christian mother and father are going to burn in eternal flames, and which presidential candidate you should vote for if you are a real believer (This of course depends on which Google page you decide to find your answer. On the first page you’ll probably find at least 5 sources that say a GOP vote is the vote of God. On the tenth page you can find out that democracy is unbiblical and a vote for either an unbaptized democrat or a republican is actually a vote for satan). It’s a unique age we live in. Before the explosion of the internet, to find answers to big questions within our faith, we were forced to turn to our local church leadership, to our congregation, or, (worst case scenario), to prayer, if we were to come to some kind of understanding about the questions weighing on our hearts and minds and spirits. Interesting how, now, it is easy to replace intense spiritual discernment with a few clicks around on the screen of our smartphone. It seems, too, that every ministry is eager to provide this media, answer the same questions in slightly different (but definitely from “God’s perspective,” or the “correct Biblical interpretation”) and so to get as many webpage hits and subscribers as possible. Please don’t take me the wrong way here. I believe that people have been saved from suicide, from acting out on an addiction, from abandoning their faith completely through the encouragement and guidance that these online sources can offer! I know because I’ve heard those stories. And I too have found comfort and wonderful guidance through links sent to me by friends or in random internet searchs when I was researching some faith topic I wanted to get multiple opinions on. When Christian online literature is written under the influence of Galations 5:22 (those lovely fruits of the Spirit we are promised), it has the potential to be wonderfully uplifting. It recognizes that it is but one voice among many, part of a bigger family, serving as a jumping off point and not the final authority. It is gentle and respectful, offering a perspective on the topic and inviting the reader to make the final decision by seeking more wisdom and knowledge. But, through personal experience, I know that the vast treasure trove of online information and opinions about Christian life can also be the Pandora box of condemnation, judgement, and manipulation. In vulnerable times when I was alone and confused, isolated from a healthy and thriving faith community, or deeply troubled about some difficult circumstance of my life that I wanted to find an answer to quickly, I was plunged into a darker online world. Here,I found faceless and disembodied Christian voices who were carrying guns loaded with singular verses, cocked and aimed and firing rapidly back and forth over the controversial topic of our day: homosexuality, mental disorders, doubt, politics, money, violence. There’s another common manifestation of this that might be even more familiar. I’m sure we have all experienced the 50 comment long Facebook posts where people are trying to prove that their position on an issue is the right one (which, in our community, boils down to trying to prove what God thinks about an issue based on our interpretation of what Holy Scripture means). So what am I trying to say here? What I’m trying to say is that we have to be aware that the cyber culture of bullying, finger pointing, hatred and discrimination is one that we, as Christians, need to acknowledge exists, and refuse to engage in. The internet is an easy place to cast stones and judge aspects of our culture that we believe are wrong. It’s easy because we can do so without the responsibility of standing and having to answer for our words. The virtual world is a place where people who have a platform can spread their beliefs on any topic and where some of the most vulnerable of those among us can easily become the victims of subscribing to an opinion or a person instead of the Truth (that we are all equally close to God and can come to him through the saving work of Christ). That’s the Gospel that sets us free. Free to begin a relationship with God and others without fear of being condemned even though we make mistakes, have baggage from the past, and are in need of a lot of encouragement. Free from the need to judge others as we realize that the hatred, lust, and jealousy in our hearts towards another means that we share the same sin as the murderer, the pimp and his prostitutes, Donald Trump and Mother Theresa. Now, more than ever, as hard questions and existing divisions continue to tempt us to tear each other apart, we need to insist on fostering healthy communities. Spaces where we are free to ask big questions, to find support instead of incrimination for our doubts and fears, to learn about Jesus from the guidance of the Holy Spirit, from a holistic and committed approach to unbiased Biblical investigation, and, so importantly, to learn from the lived example of those around us. I believe that this can happen over the internet, but it will take a great commitment to tolerance, to refusing to use our platforms (as small as our personal Twitter and as large as jesus.org) to elevate our interpretations or opinions at the danger of equating our view with that of the absolute authority of God and Christ. May we please remember as we express our views on faith and life via technology that “We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!” (1 Corinthians 13:12 MSG).
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March 2017
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