Facebook? or Cultivating Oasis?

Moments in time which make history—any student of the ages can assemble a list.  I’m wondering if one of the moments in time most pregnant with meaning hung in the balance between Pilate saying, “I find no fault in Him at all.”  --and “So then Pilate took Jesus and scourged Him.”  If these two were book ends, or sandwich bread, what was in between?  For, of course, it’s what’s in between that is the substance, the reason for the bookends or the sandwich.

In-between? Capitulating to the pressure of the tide of human opinion without care to what the implications, consequences, are destined to be.  We see Pilate as an enemy; yet (footnote in my NKJ study Bible) “it is the pagan Roman governor who tries to release Jesus, while “His own” want Him to die.”  Left to himself, he would have released Jesus and world history would have been infinitely different.  God’s perfect providence did not intend this.  But the instrument God alchemized to good in that moment still was Pilate’s capitulation to the pressure of the times from the culture surrounding him.  Not that he even liked these Jews, moreover.

And then there’s Peter.  Peter, who tried on humility in vain when he told Jesus he would never have Him wash his feet, then knowing the power of Jesus’ servant-gesture invited Him to wash all of him if that would make him clean indeed; Peter, who surely must have been rather sobered in realizing he was not as strong as he thought he was, in the moments following his first two denials of knowing Jesus.  Again, a moment in time pregnant with meaning – the third challenge, this time from a relative of that man whose ear he’d just cut off.  Now the stakes were higher!  Was he recognized, the one who’d performed that bloody impetuous slice right off the side of his head, and now the relative was bent on extracting justice?  This was indeed dangerous: “Man, I do not know what you are saying!”  And the cock crowed.

The power of the culture surrounding us is a potent force.  We have our own moments in time which change the course of our life and sometimes impact another person’s life forever.

So here I am going to go into the arena with a sacred cow.  Years ago at the dentist’s office I picked up a Rolling Stones magazine that chronicled the beginnings of Facebook.  Zuckerman got drunk one night after being dumped by his girlfriend and hacked into the computers at his ivy league school, spreading personal information university-wide about a number of students.  It all went viral and he realized a fundamental appetite in his peers for knowing stuff about others. And thus, Facebook was born. It seemed to me a rather auspicious beginning to a rising phenomenon, one to avoid, really.

All these years later, articles are beginning to emerge about the rise in depression and erratic behavior among youth after being on Facebook and realizing just about everyone is more popular than they are, is having more fun than they are; and so we begin to examine the “ideas have consequences” fallout of a cultural movement in which just about everyone participates.

I’ll file here a disclaimer, that since FB has become so universally used, it is undeniably true that there are those who are using it to good purpose, using it wisely, and using it for God-honoring purposes.  Our technologically-wired world can be used to further the glorious truths of our Christ, to build one another up and spur one another on.  I take joy in several examples of persons committed to using FB in this way.

But one night I had all my family gone, rare enough, and had fallen into a bit of nostalgic thinking.  Ridiculously, I stayed up till midnight scanning Facebook pages of newer and older acquaintances, and reminiscing about ancient friendships. It was surreal, the emptiness that I felt at the end of this venture.  Like the kids in Voyage of the Dawn Treader that were examining a painting of a ship and found themselves rolling in the waves underneath the ship and being rescued and brought on board an actual ship, I felt like I was walking into some modern art painting in sepia tones of a wasteland desert place, dead spires of trees rising as gnarled monuments on a flat horizon, leaden sky.  Heavy yet empty.  Do people feel filled up, built up and buoyed in their journey to eternity, by their time on FB?

It occurred to me with the morning light, this does violence to what women should be cultivating in their lives.  One of the greatest needs of husbands, children, friends, fellow church body members, is for their women to be an oasis.  A place of enduring refreshment, of quietness, of beauty, of filling-up.  A quick online definition search gives “A pleasant or peaceful area or period in the midst of a difficult, troubled, or hectic place or situation”.  To be this kind of woman requires a cultivation of the heart and mind that cannot well coincide with scanning quick clips about what everyone is doing and then squashing down the discontent as she rises to put in a load of wash, think about dinner and deal with a sibling squabble.  To be this kind of woman requires long minutes lingering in the Word, on her knees, and in the thoughts of people like Robert Murray MCheyne, Elisabeth Prentiss and Elizabeth Elliott, Jeremiah Burroughs, Amy Carmichael, Mary Winslow, and the list goes on and on of the treasures men and women of God have left us as they cultivated rich lives in Christ.  When we rise up from time spent in the presence of these persons whose lives were monuments to His kindness and glory, we have a deep reservoir from which to draw, to build one another up, to offer an encouraging word to someone, to disciple our children, to live in biblical fellowship, to speak the words of His Word to one another.

What would happen if we took the time we spend on social media and instead “walked, stood, sat” in the counsel of the godly, in “delighting in the law of the Lord”(Ps. 1) ?  Or conversely, what would happen if we used FB to share some of these riches with one another so that the oasis we are cultivating in our own souls can be used to refresh a fellow-traveler each day; so that they rise up with thoughts of Christ and His goodness giving joy to their hearts?

*photo courtesy of Thistledown Photography