Mere Reflections

[This, of course, is my response to the question raised by Eric in the directly preceding post. Please feel more than welcome to join our conversation. But in the comments, of course. Please don't try to hack our blog and create an account for yourself. Unless you're Andrew, in which case you should feel free to do so. Anyways, back to the article.]

In the previous post, Eric asked “What is the purpose of Social Media?”* And just to clarify, I think that his question was not meant literally, but was rather asking, “In light of the chief end of man (to glorify God and enjoy Him forever), to what extent ought the Christian participate in social media? Can it be edifying and beneficial, or is it inherently pointless?”** So that’s the question I’m going to attempt to answer.

In my response to Eric’s original post (see the first comment), I established that I don’t believe any of the social media to be inherently wrong, or even inherently frivolous. However, I believe that Christians who choose to engage in social media on the interweb*** need to be careful to not fall into several of the traps that Eric listed–namely, the addictive, self-promoting, and time-wasting nature of many forms of social media. We must make sure that in all our actions, including what we do on the internet, we are living out our purpose (soli deo gloria), and not just doing stuff because we want to. Jonathan Edwards wrote when he was still young, “Resolved, Never, henceforward, till I die, to act as if I were any way my own, but entirely and altogether God’s”–we have been bought with a price. I don’t think we fully realize the seriousness and totality of this call, but if we have resolved that we don’t want to waste our lives–that we want to give God glory with our lives–then we must lay hold of that principle. Edwards’ Resolutions can once again be helpful to us here: he also wrote, “Resolved, Never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can”. If we take serious the call of Christ to take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Him, we must adopt a similar attitude to what Edwards expressed.

Now, I want to make a slight caveat at this point to keep from erring on the side of radical asceticism. I am not proposing that Christians can never do anything simply “for the fun of it”. I am not suggesting that all forms of entertainment are inherently wrong. I am not even implying that we should always have spiritual thoughts forefront in our minds. I believe there is a place for doing crazy and/or somewhat pointless stuff for the sake of fellowship and building relationships. I believe there is a time to just kick back and watch a movie or read a book because you’re stressed out and need to just wind down. And I certainly believe that it’s possible to honor God in all things without actually consciously thinking the thought “God, I give you glory in this”. But here’s what I am saying: if we really believe that true joy and true satisfaction and ultimate fulfillment are found in Christ alone, then we must determine what it means to abide in and treasure Christ in the midst of ordinary, everyday life that goes beyond just “having a quiet time”. We must be intentional about what we do with our time and energy and resources, asking “how will this enable me to better love God with my heart/soul/mind/strength?”

Okay, so now to get to the question of social media. Here would be my rule of thumb for the use of social media (and time spent on the internet in general for that matter): am I using this _______ as a tool for the development of the kingdom in my life and/or others’ lives, or is it simply something I do for the fun of it? And if the answer is the latter, that doesn’t necessarily mean you should cut it off altogether, because like I said earlier, I believe there is a time for doing stuff for the fun of it. But I would submit that that amount of time should be severely limited. And I mean pretty severely. I remember in perhaps the best Piper sermon I’ve heard****, he says “If you watch TV and don’t read biographies, then you’re…making a mistake” (he wanted to say worse, I think, but managed to restrain himself). So I think that a decent test to see if we are spending too much time in leisure–just doing things for the fun of it–would be to consider what we are or are not doing, like reading, spending time in serious prayer, carving out intentional time to evangelize, etc. And if we aren’t doing those things, but are spending three or four hours a week on social media just for the fun of it, we might be wasting our lives.

Now, if the answer to the question (tool or pleasure) is that we are using the social media as a tool, then I think we are on the right track to being good stewards of the time God gives us. What remains to ask is how effective we are being with our time, how pure our motives are, and how important the “work” we are doing on said social media needs to be in our priorities. I really appreciate Eric bringing this question up, because those of us who blog and tweet and facebook need to stop occasionally–often, actually–and reevaluate what exactly we are doing and why we are doing it, to ensure that we really do love God with all our hearts, and all our minds, and all our strength, and all our time, and all our resources, and all our blogs, and all our words. Let us not waste our lives, but press on toward the goal, which is to know Christ more.

Soli Deo Gloria

*By “social media”, I’m assuming that he is referring to social networking sites (facebook, twitter, myspace, etc) and the blogosphere. Perhaps this is a slightly flawed definition, but it’ll have to do for now.
**I’m assuming that this was really his question. If not, then I guess you’ll get a nice little unasked spiel from me for free. But I guess everything on Mere is both unasked and free, so it wouldn’t really be anything new.
***I’m pretty sure that at some point, this word originated as an inside joke somewhere, but from what I can tell, has passed into common usage to refer to the internet. Also, I’m trying to jack up my footnote count.
****It’s called “How to Fight for Joy”, I believe. In other news, I’d like to draw your attention to the fact that I’ve reached the point with asterisks that it’s starting to look like I wanted to cuss but edited myself. Which is awesome. #excessivefootnotesftw

What is the purpose of social media?

Let me begin with my initial ideas:

Social media is addicting. Apparently, activity on your wall or blog causes a reaction similar to feeling affection, which therefore causes addiction (see this). And addiction to anything isn’t terribly good (quite the contrary, I’d argue).

Social media is inherently self-promoting. This is and the previous point are similar. As men, we can easily want to be more in the opinion of others, and social media can so cause self-centeredness, which is absolutely contrary to the way God wants us to live. Trevin wax makes this point here.

Social media is time consuming. To this I’m sure we can all testify first-hand. How long do you spend blogging, tweeting, or Facebooking? And what fruits do we bear? In Trevin’s post above, he writes that he needs to “take a step back and evaluate the spiritual effects (both good and bad)” of social media. Does the time we spend justify our use of it?

I see these three points primarily as results of using social media, and I make them without regard to [social media's] actual purposes. So, what is the purpose of social media? How would you reconcile these three points with social media’s real purposes?

And specifically, how would you reconcile these three points with a blog’s purpose? Facebook’s purpose? Twitter’s purpose?

So Zach’s small suggestion to post your favorite hymn(s) which apparently got noticed started me thinking: why do people like hymns? I mean, I know more or less why I like hymns, but I wonder if everyone else agrees. So let us know what you think (or I guess, more like how you think). What makes you like hymns? And do you like original arrangements, or creative new ways of playing them? Or if you don’t like hymns at all, why not?

We want your thoughts.

I am probably the weirdest person you will ever meet in terms of making up words to put in the place of cussing. I will frequently range from saying something as close to the American culture’s ‘bad’ words as “freaking,” to words that are just basically me pulling letters out of thin air and putting them together after the phrase “what the…” I’ve been known to say frick, flip, frack, gravy, goodness, gracious, nonsense, fark, and many other borderline prafane words to make myself feel better about my exclamatory tendency. Now, (and of course this doesn’t make me any better than anyone I know who openly cusses, it probably actually proves I’m in denial or something) I haven’t really ever been one to outright cuss, I’ve always just used filler words. But the other day at lunch at Willie’s with some of my friends from the Art Institute I got called out.

We were waiting in line to order when something warranted the exclamation from someone else, “What the french toast!?” which reminded me of the sign in Mrs. Prine’s old room at Cy-Creek that said “What the function?” (Math joke! But anyway.)  and so I said it out loud. Now, though this isolated event was not just me making an almost profanity exclamation for no reason (I was outwardly referencing the sign), I do a lot around my Art Institute friends, and this time, one of my two closest friends at Ai, Ashlee, called me out on it. We’ve talked about how I don’t cuss before, and she said, this time, “You know, you don’t really cuss, but you do in your own way.”

She wasn’t trying to be mean or anything, but that comment froze me for a fraction of a second. I was really caught off guard by it. Really. I had to try really hard to not stop and have a mini theological debate in my head right there and stop everything else I was doing. So that’s where this blog comes in:

Where do you stand on the subject of profanity?

Obviously, some of us have had similar conversations a few times before because of everyone’s favorite edgy person, Derek oh-what-a-tangled-Webb-we-weave, and his album that you love-and-feel-uneasy-about-at-the-same-time, Stockholm Syndrome. (Sorry, I think I just broke the legal hyphenated adjective limit.)

But anyway, I’m looking at a slightly different dichotomy I think. I’m looking to examine the difference between flat-out cussing and (let’s call the other one) ‘substitute’ cussing in the context of Christians being saved by faith (Ephesians 2:8) and God looking at the heart (1 Samuel 16:7).

I think we can agree that flat-out cussing is generally frowned upon in Biblical teaching, if not because of the whole “Taming the Tongue” part of James 3, then because of the charge Paul gives us to not do anything that might make a brother fall (Romans 14:21). Aka, cuss in front of someone because we think it’s okay. Even if you think you are ‘solid enough in your faith’ to yell expletives, there may be someone around you who is struggling and will be really disappointed that someone they looked up to doesn’t care enough to keep their tongue tamed.

Then there’s also Matthew 5:21-24 :

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘Do not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.

“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”

I put this whole thing in here because I think it’s the most important part of this subject for me and you to consider. Jesus is effectively saying here that it isn’t a matter of the word itself, it’s a matter of the heart behind the words. (Though I might add that I’m saying this after noting Romans 14:21 earlier, so I’m not advocating that we try to transcend the sin of cussing and be able to do it with a clean heart which I’m pretty sure isn’t even possible.)

I suppose the main point of this post is not specifically that we should not cuss, but that we should be concerned with having pure hearts before God, because God looks at the heart. He does not care, I think, if we accidentally (or purposefully) cuss, or if we sin in any way (though if you’re not at least concerned with not sinning, there is probably something wrong), but I think that God sees us as really are, not as our specific sins. God wants us to yearn for him. If we are truly wanting God as we should, then we do not need to worry.

“Give us clean hands and give us pure hearts,
let us not lift our souls to another.
O God let us be the generation that seeks,
seeks your face, O God of Jacob”

What do you think: about cussing? about little vs. big sins? about God looking at the heart? about anything else?

Donald Miller doesn’t think so.

What do you think?

A lot of times I hear people rant about how awful books (usually ones that we have to read at school, but also super popular books like Harry Potter and Twilight and whatnot get thrown in the mix) are, and how much they hate them and don’t see how anyone can stand to read them. And what gets me is when people start talking about how “bad writing” all of these classics are, because it makes me think that if the authors were really as horrible as people make them out to me, they never would’ve become “classics”. Now, I realize that the whole “classic” thing is a whole ‘nother discussion, but it makes me wonder: what makes a good book? Can you objectively say that a book is good or bad, or is it entirely objective?

I want to know what you think. For the sake of clarification, here are my questions:
1. What do you call a “good” book?
2. Is “goodness” in books entirely subjective, or can it be objective?
3. If you answered the latter to the previous question, what are the objective standards by which one can call a book good?

Let me say first of all that this is a topic that has been floating around in the back of my mind lately. It surfaces when I’m not doing much or when I’m working on a graphic design project that doesn’t take much thought. Some of my best thinking comes that way…ha. But anyway, here’s the question: What do I think about the doctrine of election? I mean, (as Trey so eloquently said of me) I’m a universalist in that I want everybody to go to heaven, but not in that I believe everybody will go to heaven. More recently I’ve been of the thinking along the lines of this quote from the end of an article written by Shane Claiborne to non-Christians:

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, “I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.” If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.

(Read the rest of this article here for an interesting point of view to consider from a very legit, if a little extreme, Christian.*) Not so much of the “It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you,” part, though it definitely pains me thinking about friends I have and other people who won’t be in heaven (all the better reason to live out Christ’s love and forgiveness), I’m guessing I won’t be concerned with much else than God. I’m more talking about the last sentence. I’m of the mindset that I should believe that God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world and pray that God will use me and every other Christian to help that be accomplished.

I was fairly conflicted with my line of thinking I’d been following in my mind and the doctrine of election that is so prevalent in the Christians that I know personally until I read a post the other day that made perfect sense to me. This is what John Piper posted about election, and it’s the best way I’ve heard it explained so far:

Is it a sin to dislike the doctrine of election?

It’s sin not to like the true doctrine of election. It’s sin not to like what God likes.

I want to say it like that because many people have conceptions of doctrines—all kinds of doctrines—that are inaccurate. And therefore their good hearts dislike them.

So you could say, “I dislike election,” and be a good person, because you don’t see election clearly. And what you’re disliking should be disliked. Or you may be a person who is starting to see it clearly and your old self, which is bad, is rising up and not liking what ought to be liked.

So I don’t know whether this person should be chastised or not. The principle would be, “To the degree that you see biblical truth clearly, you should like it.”

Hell is a biblical truth. So when I say, “You should like hell,” what I mean is that you should like it the way God does.

God, it says, “is not willing that any should perish.” God “does not delight in the death of the wicked.” God “afflicts us, but not from his heart” (Lamentations 3). So there is in God himself a willing that hell be and a liking that it exists in that big picture. And yet he grieves over sending anybody there.

So the word “like” is just a little bit difficult here, because you’re going to have to do double perspectives again.

If God ordains that Jerusalem be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, should we like that? My answer is both yes and no. We should not like women boiling their children, but we should approve of God’s decision that it happen.

And so there’s a double perspective in which the things that you see in the small lens should be disliked, whereas what you see in the bigger lens of how God runs the world should be liked.

So there you have it! While I may not appreciate that people go to hell, I should appreciate the place hell has in God’s plan. Though I’m definitely still not saying I’m a Calvinist in regards to this debate as a whole. I feel like that’s too simple of putting it. I believe there is a tension between the two sides and I believe that John Piper pegged that tension very well in that post.

(I feel like I didn’t write this post as well as I could have, so please feel free to call me out on anything that is unclear.)

__________________________________________

*Though from what I’ve read of his work, he would greatly appreciate me saying I thought he is a little extreme, because he believes that if everyone agrees with him he’s doing something wrong, but that’s another subject I can post later. If you are looking for a book that is challenging/a different perspective, try Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. Though I don’t agree with everything he says, he poses very interesting points.

This is something I read a while ago that has been resounding in my mind recently, so I decided to share it. This is a quote from Richard J. Foster’s book “Freedom of Simplicity.” Here, Foster is talking about balance; how many teachings in the Bible are two seemingly opposite ideas that must be kept in balance, otherwise they become distorted. This is a great subject to have in the back of your mind when thinking about different ideas presented in the Bible.

“Christian simplicity lives in harmony with the ordered complexity of life. It repudiates easy, dogmatic answers to tough, intricate problems. In fact, it is this grace that frees is sufficiently to appreciate and respond to the complex issues of contemporary society. The duplicitous mind, on the other hand, tends to confuse and obscure. While the dogmatic person cannot understand the divercity in simplicity, the double-minded person cannot perceive the unity in complexity.

This brings us to the central paradox of our study: the complexity of simplicity. The fact that a paradox lies at the heart of the Christian teaching on simplicity should not surprise us. The life and teachings of Christ were often couched in paradox: the way to find our life is to lose it (Matt. 10:39); in giving we receive (Luke 6:38); he who is the Prince of Peace brings the sword of division (Matt. 10:34). Those with simplicity of heart understand the Lord, because much of their experience resonates with paradox. It is the arrogant ad the obscurant who stumble over such realities.

Paradoxes, of course, are only apparent contradictions, not real ones. Their truth is often discovered by maintaining a tension between two opposite lines of teaching. Although both teachings may contain elements of truth, the instant we emphasize one to the exclusion of the other the truth becomes distorted and disfigured. We can see this easily enough when we insist–rightly I think–that God is both imminent and transcendent, both in the created order and beyond the created order. If we stress imminence to the exclusion of transcendence, we end up with some form of pantheism. Conversely, if we stress transcendence to the exclusion of imminence, we will end up with a detached, disinterested, wind-the-clock-up kind of God. If we embrace either end of the teaching exclusively, we get a distortion; if we hold both in tension, we find the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We could just as easily take concepts sich as the love and justice of God, the deity and humanity of Christ, or and number of examples that abound in Scripture.”

I continually find that this is a true idea. Molly has mentioned this concept many times when we’re in a group that is discussing controversial subjects. Most times those conversations end up with the concession that both sides must be kept in a balance.

What do you think about this subject? Is there and teaching in the Bible (or an idea in general) that you’ve realized recently must be kept in a balance?

btw, I recommend this book, it’s very interesting.

Alright, readers, here’s your chance to sound off so we can figure out who is reading this blog.

Leave a comment with your name!

This helps us (or at least me) understand who’s reading this thing.

Also, I challenge you to give us feedback on our posts if you’re not already so we can know what you think. If you know me, you know I’m all about discussion. I’m not a big fan of one-way blogging. That would be no fun at all! So there’s your challenge. And thanks to our faithful commenters (new word) Molly, Andrew, and Marie. Other readers, help us out here and let us know whatcha thinking!

-Riley