So I didn't talk about this at Chapter Retreat, but the issue of Facebook and blogging and the like and how that affects our understanding of our identity has had me thinking over the past several days.
Let me first off say that I obviously think that social networking sites have benefits. I hope that all six of my ardent followers are encouraged by my blog posts. As I'm winding down into sabbatical, I'm glad to keep up with folks, especially my students, via Facebook.
But at the same time, the dangers of Facebook and blogging and the even more questionable benefits of the creation of avatars for stuff like Second Life is fairly significant.
There is something innately good about my inability to be the person that I want to be in my own strength. There is something to the jarring dissonance between the voices in my head that demand perpetually perfect performance and the reality that I cannot deliver such a thing that creates a holy dissatisfaction. When I am discontent with my life lived on my own strength, it presses me to continually seek for something deeper, more real to live my life for.
What social networking sites like Facebook allow you to do, however, is to spin a "you" that begins to actually live out the unhealthy demands in your head. You can image-manage yourself to be who you wish you really were...or who you think other people wish you were. It is much easier to lie to yourself and to other people that you are much more than you actually are. The holy dissatisfaction with life lived on your own is easier to numb.
So while I hope to continue to regale all six of you with my wit and wisdom, I also want to be aware of the innate dangers of trying to present myself as something that I'm not. Or as someone that I might want to be, but would be fatally destructive to my soul were I to actually attain it.
The original temptation in the Garden of Eden was that humans might be like God. This, it seems, is our perpetual temptation, especially as it pertains to our own sense of who we are, our identity.
We all long for second life, a new name. Most of us seek it in all the wrong places, try to conjure it up on our own. Jesus offers it to us, full of mercy and grace and truth. Let us press on to know and trust in Him, to follow Him. He loves us and he knows the way. Really.
1 comment:
V. helpful insights, as usual.
Do frequent visitors count as "followers"?
Post a Comment