In junior high (1986-89) I lived in Southern Spain--my dad was in the Navy and we were stationed on a base in Rota. Over the past several weeks I've had a Facebook explosion of finding old junior high friends, particularly over the weekend.
This has generated several odd internal responses. The first is the nagging compulsion to go to Itunes and download the entire Beastie Boys "License to Ill" album..along with some select Bon Jovi.
The other is to wonder about my impression on people I haven't seen in over twenty years. If I last knew me with big hair, braces, and glasses, how would I appear to me now? It helps that I've got some of the cutest kids on the planet, but beyond that, what kind of impression does my Facebook page leave?
In the late-80's, as I was hanging out on the beaches of Southern Spain, a revolution was happening. Computers, once made for the exclusive use of corporations and businesses, were making their way into homes. The personal computing revolution was on--giving each home and individual power that was inconceivable 30 years ago...and giving us some entertaining Mac v. PC commercials.
A similar movement has happened with the advent of Facebook and other social networking sites. Public branding, spin, and image management, once the exclusive domain of corporations and celebrities with agents to help them, is now everyone's right and responsibility.
It's now all our jobs to try to make ourselves look better than we actually are, or at least for those of us who hazard getting plugged into the social networking world.
Jesus has very little to say about Mac v. PC (in spite of what many Mac users might want to insist). But he has very much to say about the significance of where we find our identity.
To try to find our identity in an image or how others perceive us or by angling for approval of others is death. The invitation goes out from the Scriptures: don't spend your life on a mirage of approval and applause! Don't build your life striving for something that can't ever satisfy!
Instead, we are invited, all of us, to enter into a deeper, stiller, more significant life. A life rooted in the Land of the Trinity--God's country, the place where he has the last word on us and where his delight in us as his children speaks freedom from the tyranny of applause and acceptance and approval.
We were made to hear "well done." But in the end, it's God's well-done we were made for, not one another's. When we try to build a life (or Facebook profile) striving for the approval of others we build our life on something that will ultimately collapse back in on our souls, robbing us of true life. Approval of others is far too small a thing to anchor our lives around.
So I'm fighting to stay in that place this morning. But it might be time for a little Beastie Boys addition to my music library in the mean time.
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