I admit it: I have succumbed. I now have my face on Facebook.
I didn’t even know what it was until recently, but now I’m part of an online network of friends and family that circles the globe, where I can post my latest pictures and let others know what (I think) makes me tick. In fact, it’s such fun that every time my wife walks into my office, she catches me tweaking my profile…
It’s easy to pour scorn on Internet ‘communities’. If you close your eyes and think ‘chat room’, you’ll probably imagine a geek in a darkened room who’s looking for love. But the Facebook phenomenon is subtly different. You distil a little of your essence – not a bad exercise in itself - in the form of a thumbnail sketch, and exchange it with those you know. It’s less about chatting ceaselessly on-line, perhaps, and more about feeling gently reconnected.
This is no substitute for the face-to-face stuff, of course. But in today’s fragmented, over-driven world, we have less time for each other, it seems - and less energy to dig deeper into what makes us who we really are.
That can be so even in our home groups and Christian communities, where a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. We may think we know each other, but do we? When was the last time you told your story, or shared something about a book or a song that moves you? Do you know how those around you were shaped into the people they have become?
The Bible offers vivid imagery of a God who knitted us together in the womb and who knows not just our favourite film but the number of hairs on our head as well. Psalm 139 is a comforting reminder of the fact that we are, ultimately, and passionately, known. Yet such a passage could challenge and inspire us, too, to seek to know those around us in a more God-like way. To remain stubbornly curious about how we are all changing, growing, flowing into and away from each other.
If Facebook acts as a small, on-line reminder to count our friends and to ask how they might still count on us, then it won’t be a complete waste of our precious, pressured time. At least, that’s what I’ll tell my wife, next time I’m caught in the act.
Brian Draper
additional resources
To learn more about Facebook, visit its homepage at facebook.com, or bone up at wikipedia.org. (For criticisms of Facebook, click here.)
‘Facebook is so popular’, says one Oxford student, ‘it has replaced email or a college message board as the way to communicate.’ Read more about the website, which started out as a way of networking students at Harvard University, at guardian.co.uk.
Read Psalm 139 here.
Finally, here are some questions to mull over:
Once you have got to know someone reasonably well, what can you do to avoid presuming you know everything about them? How can you remain ‘stubbornly curious’ without being nosy?
How, in a few short sentences, would you sum up ‘who you are’? How would you decide which details to include, and which to omit?
How many friends have you lost contact with in the last year? Why have you? How might you seek to reignite those friendships in a sustainable form?
Is there anything you try to keep hidden from others? From God, even? If so, why is that? How well are you really known? And does it really matter?
