Winning the war

Years ago, I hesitated to join Facebook. I already had a social media outlet called Myspace. I loved my Myspace account. I decorated the walls, inserted cool music and even had a flashing sign to welcome visitors to my page. Why have two accounts and what could Facebook offer that I didn’t already have?  Fast forward nine years and here I am on Facebook.

There’s nothing wrong with Facebook–it’s a nice vehicle to stay in touch. I appreciate the game aps and the ability to converse with people otherwise impossible to reach. However, below the surface, there is a whole marketing machine in place to prey upon us as consumers.

Our personal information–where we live, demographic, affiliations, likes and dislikes are all carefully and schematically noted, filed, underscored and collated. Some refer to Facebook as actually being dangerous. I prefer to just call it insidious. What the info hustlers are gaining, we don’t know. For now, I’m just enjoying playing Scrabble whenever I want.

Back to the ability to converse… While I am fairly adept at making my viewpoints on religion and politics, I have to remember not everyone takes the same p.o.v. While it’s tempting to want to clobber people with my opinions, the Lord is attempting to teach me that I don’t always have to win the battles that I so easily entangle myself with.

I can always tell a knee-jerk response on Facebook–both mine and others. The tension can be felt right through the computer. In my efforts to convince others to my side of the fence, I’ve come to realize that some people–actually, most people–do not want to change their position. They only enjoy telling their point of view–most times, not with any love.

Whether we believe our p.o.v. is the correct one, if it’s not shared with love, it’s worthless. I speak to myself here and hope that I can adopt 1Corintians 13 in all of my speech in life and especially on Facebook.

Image result for memes with 1 corinthians 13