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
Visit Facebook at Facebook.com
Reproduced with permission: © The London Institute for Contemporary Christianity
