Facebook Drunkenness, or Being Wiser than
God.
Bud Powell,
October 20, 2010 at 10:39am
Wanna talk
religion?
I think a sort of intoxication comes over some of the
denizens of Facebook. Facebook
is not a medium of love--at the best it conveys information and at worst
spreads lies. I use it for information. It is fun to keep up with
old friends and to make new acquaintances. We have a list of friends, but
people will not make friends on facebook.
Friendship, in my world, involves more than shadows on a white screen.
I look on Facebook as a nifty
means of passing out tracts in the public square. You can take them, read
them, throw in the trash, or drop them on the street. Once in a while an
old friend comes by and we exchange memories. And sometimes as you pass
out the tracts you make a new real friend and help someone, but it is rare and
is a very difficult sort of work. But everyone needs to have done it at
one time or another, I suppose, and I do not regret the time I spent passing
out tracts and preaching on street corners. The most important lesson, I
suppose, was to learn that most of the crap that people die from is the same
old stuff that you hear over and over and over again. "Just take the
tract, buddy, I have heard it all before. If you want to argue, go get
your own fireplug. There are some good things in the tract that are from
the Bible. Does people a lot of good if they will
hear."
I remember good Christians who came along, gave some words
of encouragement and prayed for us. Others didn't want to be seen with
us. Some people tried to hijack the few people there for their own ideas. The return was far more meager than the effort, that is as far as people “saved,” but then I have
never been on to “milk” people for decisions.
People who pass out tracts in the public square--and I did a
lot of that at one time-- expect to be abused from time to time. I
learned to avoid the contentious, the nut-jobs, and the cults, and others who
would try to draw you into profitless and time wasting conversation. If
you hope to gain the emotional and spiritual support that every Christian
needs, then you better turn off the computer and go to church and meet some
real people--and I mean a real church, not one of the pious clubs or social
clubs built about elevating "relationship" above truth and true
godliness.
Worship should be uncluttered and
have enough silence to hear the still small voice. The minister is a man
who is the worship leader which is not the same as singing, which is only a
part of worship. Church should not involve stand-up
comics, magic shows, or performances. People other than the
minister should not talk too much in church, because opinions are to be
weighed, not counted. Don't attend one that makes a trade of bashing
"religion" as if Christ were not religious and made under the
law. If you don't know what is wrong with "I follow Christ not
religion" then you REALLY need to go to a real church and learn something.
In general, beware of toxic churches. They do need a
lot of love: but be on your guard and don't go unless you have the stomach for
it. If you think that Facebook is church, you
neither understand church or Facebook. Don't
try to be smarter than God and think you have no need for a real church with
creeds, elders, pastors, deacons and the sacraments of the Lord's Supper and
Baptism. Jesus, being God, was always sensitive about authority. He
didn't dodge the question of His authority when He was asked, unlike many
American people where everyone is an expert on religion or the lack of it.
People say that Jesus was not “religious,” but then why did
He wear the robe of a rabbi, talk about God, ceremonies, and behavior so
much? People usually say, “I am not
religious, I just follow Jesus,” because they are mad
a somebody, not because they follow Jesus.
The word "religion" is related to the word
"ligament" or something that binds and limits movement. Precisely. It is the wicked who said of Christ,
"We will not have this man to reign over us,"
and "Let us cast his cords from us...." He gave
you the church, elders, deacons and creeds to discipline you and curb your
wicked innovations, self-love, and pride. To cast off them is to cast off
Christ. Sure they have sins and failures, and you don’t?
Don't excuse your disobedience in regard to the church by
imagining yourself in the "invisible" church. The trouble with
things that are invisible, is that they are, well,
invisible. Like Harvey the rabbit they do nothing for anybody except the person dreaming. It is very hard to visit
invisible people in the hospital, in jail, or to feed and clothe them.
There is an invisible church; it is made up of those whom God knows are
His. Those who name the name of Christ [the visible ones] are to depart
from iniquity, including the iniquity of despising His gifts.
Having an invisible wife might simplify some things in life,
but there would be other disadvantages, especially the sanctification and civilization
that a good wife brings to the savage she married. The rascal who says to the sweet young thing,
“We are married in heaven; we don’t need a ceremony,” is up to no good. She
mustn’t believe him.
The soil isn't deep enough on Facebook
to cultivate real love. It cannot be done. It only deals in phony and pretended
love and the expressions of self-love. A demand for love on Facebook shows a poverty of spirit and emotional
retardation. Only proof texting and stage kisses can grow here. People
don't even read most of what is written. You have to insult them to get
their attention. This is not to mean that some people with debilitating
injuries or illness cannot find some good from Facebook,
for they can and it can be a godsend for them. Better would it be if
their loved ones or church family would come to see them.
Even in real life--and Facebook is
an illusion of life, not real life--friends come and go. In fact, I put
up with stuff on Facebook from people I would not
invite to dinner or vote in Spiritual Council to accept into membership of the
church. I have de-friended a few people who
wouldn't behave, but that is not excommunication, for Facebook
is not the church. Sadly, a great many people in the modern world
wouldn't know the church if they met her face to face, for they have never
experienced a real church. They have been fishing in the wrong
pond. There are some good churches in Colorado Springs structured in the
biblical model, made up of sinners and imperfect people who need love just like
the experts on love who sit at home invisible.
People behave on Facebook [and I
am learning a lot as I go along--this is a new experience for all of us, I
suspect] in ways that they wouldn't in the world of reality. Sometimes
people want to be your friend in order to gain access to your friends.
That repulses me. People have to walk together, be together, talk together,
face trial together, weep and laugh together to become
real friends. Real friendship stands the test of trials and hard
times. Two cannot walk together unless they are agreed, and trust only
comes by going through hard times together. The gold of true friendship
will stand the fires of affliction.
But even real life friendships come and go. I have not
kept up with my friends from high school and college--many of them are dead
now. My circle of close friends now are people I
have met in the past ten years, and many of them are younger than my
children. It is from the love and support of these people that I draw my
emotional support and encouragement. We seldom communicate on Facebook, though.
Facebook is
wonderful for reconnecting with some of my real friends from long ago and we
have forged some new ties, but I am sure that none of us are like we were
thirty or forty years ago. People grow and change and friendships
change. Don't get so drunk that you forget that.
My true emotional support comes from very few people.
Chief among those is my beloved wife of almost 49 years, and we connect with
each other on Facebook mostly for the sake of amusing
the real friends who live a long ways away and others on Facebook
who are interested. Usually she is one flight of stairs above in the
family room and I in my basement office. I have known real love and it isn't on
Facebook. Penny and I would never have been the
friends we are if ours were a Facebook friendship.
If your feelings of support and friendship and love depend
upon Facebook, then I suggest you get a life.
If you want love and fellowship with real people, then go to church where true
religion is practiced and God is worshiped according to His Scriptural
attributes, which include invisibility, power, wisdom and holiness among
others. I don't think much of anyone's love and piety if they have abandoned
the church and sit alone behind a Facebook screen
looking for love. Real love for God or for man is deep and special, not
universal and shallow. The love you find on Facebook
is an ego fix, self-centered and poverty stricken.
You are not supposed to go to church to find love, for there
you will find sinners just like yourself; you go to church to show love, for in
losing yourself you will find yourself. The hole in your heart that
requires love can be filled only by Jesus Christ, and if He hasn't filled it
you are looking for an idol as dead as yourself. The church is God's
means of letting you prove that you love indeed and in truth, not in phony
baloney.
Don't get your shorts in a twist if you don't feel loved,
for you cannot find love on Facebook. [Did I say that
already?] I write to convey information, information that I think is
necessary and vital, that has been life changing for
me. No one can do love for you. If you don't know what is wrong
with the statement, "I don't feel loved," then I cannot do anything
for you. Christianity is not expressed by a pout.
I have never found that I could love anyone enough to make
them feel loved. I have tried and finally learned that I was presumptuous even
to have tried. If they live in the world and do not feel the love of God,
why would my love persuade them? I will bear witness of His love and it
is up to Him to make it good. I desire attention and the limelight too
much in myself to take on the task of loving in the place of God. That
implies that the love of God is hidden until Christians show enough of
it. I have known many people in my life who live and witnessed and
demonstrated the love of God to everyone around them, but it was not a
performance for they were unaware of it. "Lord, when saw we thee in
prison and visited thee...?"
"Who hath believed our report...?" the prophets
cried. But the world didn't come flocking to their door in order to know
God. In fact, some of them were shamefully treated. I remember that Jesus
said something about the shameful treatment of the prophets. It also seems to
me that the world didn't come flocking to Jesus to repent and follow Him, but
put Him to a death that was shameful and cursed of God. His apostles all
suffered martyrdom. Guess they hadn't gotten the love thing down very
well either.
The deacon was also stoned by people who perceived that lack
of love in him. Maybe because he didn't speak the truth in love when he
said, " Ye stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always
resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye.52 Which of the
prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they
have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye
have been now the betrayers and murderers:53 Who have received the law by
the disposition of angels, and have not kept it." When they heard
these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their
teeth.
Poor deacon Stephen. He
should have seasoned his speech with salt. [For the ironically
challenged, much of this is irony].
David wrote in his last words: "But the sons of
Belial shall be all of them as thorns thrust away, because they cannot be taken
with hands: But the man that shall touch them must be fenced with iron
and the staff of a spear; and they shall be utterly burned with fire in the
same place." The Greater David rules with a rod of iron, a strange
figure of speech that the modern love prostitutes could not possibly
understand.
Facebook has
become a method I use of laying ideas at the
doors of people's minds, most of whom I know very little. I have no idea
whether most of you are honest or not, whether you are persons of integrity, or
snakes in the grass, pretending a devotion to God that you do not have.
The overwhelming majority of the people I have known over the past seventy six
years who made great professions of piety were as phony as a lead nickel.
The few who didn't, I suppose, got better and don't
profess so much now. Real piety makes much of God and little of man.
The most trustworthy people I have known had suffered a
great deal, known betrayal, but didn't whine or talk about it. Like WWII
veterans, they didn't talk about it, but they knew how to talk straight and how
to discern a phony. They didn't pout about not being loved,
for they were too busy serving others to notice. In the circus of American
religion that breed is dying out, but there never were very many. I knew
a few when I was a boy and the Lord used them to convince me that there was
gold in the mine. I have not been disappointed. A lot of people
will never get better, some will and adorn the church
in the days to come.
All of you have a good day. I have some real work and
reading to do and will be absent from FB for a while. But I will return
to my street corner with my tracts for distribution in due time. You can
do with them what ye will. This man has learned something of the love of
God; by that I do not mean my love for Him, for that is paltry and mean; but
His immense love for me, of which I discern but a little. This I learned
from long gazing into the Scripture where I have found the glory of God in His
face. "when thine eye is single, thy whole
body also is full of light."
Thish is goood!
