Currently I have 258 Facebook friends.
That number stays pretty consistent since I’m a “pruner” – meaning that for me my social media relationships are in a nearly constant evaluation cycle. Do I know them in real life? Do they bring value to my world? Do I learn from them? Do I respect them? Do I feel respected by them? Or, almost negating most of these, am I related to them?
These aren’t the only questions but they are among the questions that I ask myself most often.
The answer doesn’t have to be yes to all of those questions but it does have to be yes to at least most of those questions. Interestingly, this set of questions does give me political and religious diversity in my feed – which I appreciate.
These are also exactly the same rules I apply to my non-Facebook friends.
So today’s reading, which I yawned my way through because for the second day running (out of three days) the chapter had no war stories – which are an instrumental way for me to connect to a message – asks “How well do you know Jesus?”
I was 7 years old and sitting in the waiting room of a pediatricians office when I picked up a children’s Bible sitting on the table in front of me and independently read a series of Bible stories for myself for the first time. Up until then everything I’d ever read had been prescribed for me by an adult. Which meant that I knew about Winnie the Pooh, Dick and Jane, and a dog named Spot. Beyond that, I hadn’t yet discovered the world that would open up for me as a result of public education and a literate mother.
That book of stories put a name to the entity that I’d been aware of for as long as I can remember and that name was Jesus.
This wasn’t a matter of faith or belief for me. It was a simple fact of existence. That friend, whom I have always known, had a name and that name was Jesus.
There are a few people on my Facebook friends list whom I have never met face to face but who, through their writing and our interactions, I feel I know nearly as well as people I’ve known face to face for years. I treasure them.
I unfollow and unfriend people whose online behavior is counter to what I would want in a friend I’m standing next to in real life. I also place people in the “acquaintance” corner if I’m not yet sure I’m willing to unfriend them but I don’t want them weighing in on my timeline in areas where I don’t trust them to be thoughtful or appropriate in their actions.
The beauty of Facebook is that you often see a side of people you wouldn’t see in a face to face interaction and that exposure gives you insight into aspects of who they are that you might not ever know otherwise.
Which has me wondering: What if Jesus used Facebook? Would he have millions of followers, much like modern day celebrities? What would his grammar be like? What groups would he be a member of? Would he be on my friends list? Would I follow his page? Would he be thoughtful when engaging other people with different view points? Would he respect boundaries? Would he share cat memes?
This is the Jesus I wish I could get to know…
What If Jesus...? 