With Facebook and Twitter becoming more prevalent in our daily lives (Have you Liked/Followed the Social Rulebook yet!?), I’m left wondering if we all truly understand the purpose of this technology. Is it to create new friendships? Sure. Is it to help us stay in touch with old friends? Absolutely. Is it a tool to meet creepy and sexually deviant online predators? Without a doubt. But lately, I’ve seen more and more people use these social media networks to post what should be very private religious thoughts/beliefs/prayers/etc.
I’m going to assume everyone reading this blog has an account at Facebook by now (and probably to a slightly lesser extent, Twitter). And with that account, you’ve undoubtedly seen status updates such as this:
Dear God, I come to you as humble as I know how. I confess my sins, those known and unknown. Lord you know I am not perfect and I fall short every day of my life, but I want to take time out to say thank you for your mercy. Thank you for my health, my family and friends, the roof over my head, food on my table and everything you have provided. Re-post if God has blessed you in any way.
This is where I get confused. Does God actually have a Facebook account that I’m not aware of? Is He spending His evenings tweeting His disgust for the latest Dancing with the Stars voting results? And what would His Twitter handle be if He actually was tweeting His random thoughts? GODisGrrrr8? 4GiveNezz? iWorshipBieber? Does He no longer listen to our silent prayers? Maybe God is actually Mark Zuckerberg. That would explain a lot. But when did God become so tech-savvy? Is he an iPhone or an Android kinda guy? Has He been having the same problems with Windows Vista that I’ve been having? So many unanswered questions!!
In all seriousness, you’re allowed to pray however you’d like, but posting your prayers to a public forum like Facebook or Twitter seems a bit, I don’t know…disingenuous? If we can agree that God is all-knowing and doesn’t need to log in to Facebook to hear your thoughts and concerns, then I think it’s pretty safe to say that your prayer posts aren’t really intended for God in the first place, now are they?
And if not for God, then who are you trying to impress?
