Perhaps you have read the book: The Church of facebook®: How the Hyperconnected Are Redefining Community.
In case you have been asleep, at the time of publication (2009), there were about 5 million new users of Facebook each day. I just checked Google a few second ago and that number has skyrocketed to about 50 million per day. If Facebook were a nation, it would now have the fourth largest population in the world with 70 million active users. Like it or not, Facebook is at least a reflection if not a significant influencer of how we view and act in relationships—including relationships in the church (as the author suggests).
Author Jesse Rice states, “…a Facebook friendship ‘really isn’t too demanding of a relationship.’ Our Facebook connections typically require little thought or action on our part. We don’t have to work hard at them, or offer much of ourselves in return. We don’t have to “take responsibility” for anyone. We get to enjoy glimpses into our friends’ lives—old and new—without all that messy ‘getting to know you’ business. And perhaps most importantly to us, we get to reveal and withhold whatever we feel like. We are in control. We do not answer to anything other than our own temporal wishes.”
There is no getting around the fact that relationships are messy, trying, time-consuming-pains in the rump at times. This is because we all have sinful hearts that are in need of Gospel transformation. Yet, the practical means through which the Holy Spirit transforms us is none other than…relationships (the messy kind, not the Facebook kind)! (The actual means is always the Gospel.)
The hardest part for me is not so much the “messy” part. (There are far too many people who accept me despite my many shortcomings, sin, and idiosyncrasies for me to become weary with others!) No, my challenge is time. But if we don’t spend time, we aren’t really getting to know people on a heart level, and we’re probably not really helping them either.
I have begun the practice of spending focused, scheduled time with one of my six children each day of the week. It works out fairly well. Each day at 5pm, I will take one child out for coffee, play a game, or go for a drive…just to talk.
To be honest, it has been challenging at times to keep this up. I may get hot on a project and not want to stop at 5pm. But I have very quickly seen that these times give me access to the heart that before were hit-or-miss. To a child, each has said how much they enjoy these times together. Certainly, challenges arise all the time that require flexibility on my part to address, but that’s relationships!
We would do well to consider well the value of the relationships we are in, beginning those within our own homes: our spouses and our children. How we prize these relationships will be seen in the time we spend developing them. It is a wonderful privilege to be part of God’s work in the life of another individual. But that comes at a cost. No amount of technology can every change that.
Maybe there’s a child, family member, or friend who spends a lot of time pining away on Facebook, but who really needs a real friend?
