Facebook Is Not My Family nor Is It My Friend

I originally posted this on my FreeBeingFree blog. The more I thought about it, the more I realized it belonged here. I added one picture especially for this post 

 Family, friends, all loved ones:

Please stop limiting your important announcements to Facebook posts.

I don't live and die by Facebook. I can go DAYS without opening Facebook.

I don't want to miss out on knowing when someone in my family needs prayer or some other support just BECAUSE I DON'T WORSHIP FACEBOOK.

People, stop. 

The first time I knew Facebook was going to be a problem was a few years ago, I couldn't locate an obituary for a friend. I searched the local papers and found nothing. Turns out, the only obituary of any substance was on Facebook. 

That should not be a thing.

So, stop. Please. 

If you have something important that a friend or family member or other loved one should be aware of, don't assume that Facebook is the center of their universe. 

Living our lives online is a big part of the reason for many of our current problems.

Want to get a broad idea of what's happening in the world? You might have to check several sources and then use your critical thinking skills to process the information but, trust me, you can do it. Pick up your newspaper. Pick up more than one newspaper. Don't depend on the Facebook algorithms to supply your daily dose of world news and information.   

Want to keep up on your friends - you know, the people you actually know and have seen without a filter? Then pick up your phone every now and then for more than checking your online social media. Remember, you had a social circle before you relegated everything to Facebook and Instagram and all the other Like-me-notice-me networks.

Want to keep some part of your humanity that isn't controlled by AI or some billionaire selling your life away for their profits? Maybe put down your phone and try practicing making eye contact, heart contact, life contact, actual contact with the living and breathing, and God-created people in your life.

Want to feel better about yourself? About your own daily blessings? About the way you look and feel and live? You know - the home you have, the kids you have, the spouse you have, the possessions you have, the clothes you wear, the way your life is? PUT DOWN THE DAMN PHONE.

Is it great to have some of the benefits of social media? Absolutely. It is until it's not.

It is when:

• You can find and share resources that help you live and learn better.
• You can help society in general with solutions to problems.
• You can teach yourself and your child about things that help enrich your lives.

It is not when:

• You can't tell what is real or not about -
• basic news and information
• people who may or may not be your friend (or enemy)
• what ordinary human beings look like as children, teens, adults, and seniors
• normal expectations for normal daily living in a society
• You are indoctrinated to indulge in every one of the deadly sins. 
  
  
  
• You find yourself coveting how other people look, live, eat, vacation, and couple-up or (Lord help me) 'un-couple'.
• You are so busy watching other people live their lives (or what they portray) to live your own with any semblance of natural joy.
• You can't engage in any kind of conversational debate without using social media as your (unchecked) fact source.
• You always come in on the middle of potentially serious issues without getting a more well-rounded idea (see the 1619 debate; QAnon; Black Lives (or Blue lives or All lives) Matter; and on and on and on.)

And I really could go on and on but I will just stop by pointing back to the Boiling Frog Syndrome. Some of us are old enough to remember life without cellphones. For those that do, remember how you could remember important phone numbers - or at least your own? We don't have to anymore - until we do. Don't lose that phone and have to use someone's landline...

Every advancement - or let's more accurately say "progression" - in technology, we gain something and we lose something. 

Reaching way back, we learned to better record and store information and we lost oral history traditions. That's neither all bad nor all good. We did lose the necessity to communicate in some ways. (Does anyone remember their family griots? Ours was my mother and aunts and uncles.)

Closer in time, we gained access to a wide wealth of information and learning (via the internet and other media technology), yet many of us don't take advantage. There is less of a restriction on educational resources (in developed and able societies) but is there? I don't have numbers but I would be interested to see them for comparisons of some things. Wonder what the average daily engagement is among certain age groups for Facebook or Instagram or TikTok for, say, Wikipedia or Khan Academy? (And did y'all know that there is such a thing as Wikiversity?) 

I often wonder how many people actually read the entire articles in the links they so quickly share on Twitter? I personally know that I will get more interaction from people online if I share a link to something about a singer, actor, or reality TV personality than if I link to some educational resources. I have numbers from this very blog on the engagement made with certain posts. Trust me, people are not really running the numbers up on the posts I did listing links to autodidact resources... Don't believe me? Here is what my Most Viewed Stats show as of today:

Not one education resource shown

The Number 1 post is a silly one I did poking fun of people being less than adult-like in their behaviors. That has been in the top spot from about a month after it first posted. It's not even that well-written. All the other spots are taken by product review posts. We want to laugh and be beautiful more than we want to learn something, I guess.

(By the way, if you are interested,

you can use the Search at the top left

of the blog to look up "educational" 

for those resources.)

I say all this just to remind everyone: Make the internet and social media work for you and not the other way round. Let it be nutrition to your life and not just empty calories. (Yeah, corny, but you know what I mean.)

Peace

--Free

P.S.: I just re-read this and I am very pleased if I say so myself. I am not usually able to put out anything as coherent as this post. My brain was feeling great today and I was so motivated. Maybe I should get this mad more often and see if it helps alleviate my sarc symptoms. 

We Need to be Reading our Bibles

 In the past 2 weeks, I have had a chance to share the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs on social media. Once, I was having a comment battle with someone about politicians and religion. They were very riled up and being, in my opinion, ignorant about so many civil issues. I didn't have the energy to argue with them so I just fired off verses from Proverbs. (There really is so much compact wisdom in that book.) Later I was on Twitter - where I rarely go - just tweeting verse after verse. 

After watching a YouTube video the other day (an American Greed episode), I made a comment and then had some responses to comment on.

Click the pic or 
read my typed version below

My comment that started the thread

 I cannot believe how many of my Christian brethren fall for the "God wants you to be rich" line. The Bible discourages us from pursuing wealth. I don't know when that message got twisted into the whole "prosperity gospel" shtick. And listening to their pastors and bishops like they are more than human. Sometimes they are just wolves... I won't badmouth or name names but... SMH 

One person responds

 I will- Eddie Long, Joel Osteen Joyce Meyer, John Hagee and the worship state of Israel scam, anyone on TV- you don't get on "Christian TV" w/o being zionist. 

My response to the above

 As a Christian - follower of Jesus CHRIST, a Jew, I am a zionist (zionist: a supporter of Zionism; a person who believes in the development and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel.) So there's that. 

 Another person responds 

So you’re saying it is God’s desire for us to be poor? 

My response to the above

It's God's desire for us to be saved. Having money is not the problem; pursuit of money is. We were never promised material wealth. How many of the apostles were rich? I don't need to be rich to be saved. And I am not counting on wealth in this life because I could so easily go broke tomorrow. (Who am I kidding? I'm broke as I type this! LOL) Seriously though, if we worried as much about depending on God for our needs and being thankful for what we have as we do trying to get rich... (Because typed comments don't always convey true intent, I want you to know that I say all this in love and fellowship, not being snarky or judgmental. This is just what I believe.) 

I felt okay about the comments from folks. We were at least engaging in a civil way. Before I even watched the video, someone else mentioned that they "just stay home and worship". I feel that way myself but I know that we are supposed to engage in fellowship. It's just hard to find fellowship these days. The kind o fellowship that is about Christ and being Christians. I always find that churches are too politicized and involved in social issues that draw us apart as a Christian family instead of encouraging us to draw others towards the Gospel. This situation has gotten so much worse in the past few years. 

So I guess I just hope that we all get back to studying what the Bible says about things. We need to be in prayer and looking to the Lord for guidance instead of getting caught up with which candidate we support. Satan is crafty and he finds all sorts of ways to distract us from the Gospel and our salvation.

Stay prayerful people. Keep your noses in your Bibles as much as you do Facebook or someone else's business! LOL

Peace

--Free

P.S. - While reading Proverbs in the eSword app, I discovered the Easy Read Version of the Bible. I prefer the NASB, ESV, and KJV for serious study, but the ERV would be great for a person who wants to be introduced to daily Bible reading - or who has trouble reading. I like to read the ERV when I am just reading to be reading. I haven't seen many U.S. copies on the usual big box sites but there seem to be some on specific Bible seller sites. 

Here is a snippet I copped from a Got Questions article on the ERV:

John 1:1, 14 – “Before the world began, the Word was there. The Word was there with God. The Word was God. The Word became a man and lived among us. We saw his glory—the glory that belongs to the only Son of the Father. The Word was full of grace (kindness) and truth.”

Order and Perfection and Belief

 Reading part of the Bible - especially recently at the end of 1 Chronicles - I am again amazed at God's order and perfection in everything. I felt this way while reading Genesis and Numbers.

The way that God had Israel order everything from the way the citizens lived, the kings ruled, and the commanders led the army. Everything is about order and efficiency.

Also, once again, I am reminded that while many men do not believe in God, they inherited His sense of order. Scientists especially like order. They want to define things in sets and species and types and so on. Do they ever wonder where they got this from?  Do they think that they just "evolved" to be this way?

Everything about our intricate beings comes from God. How can it all be coincidental or accidentally or evolutionary? Evolution had to start somewhere. Time had to start somewhere. Life and thought and beauty and intelligence - it all had to start somewhere. And some people believe that all came from an accidental "bang"?

My mother used to say that some people were so smart that they were stupid. 

The other day, I was watching an episode of The Naked Archeologist. It was on language and the alphabet. It was exploring ideas and opinions about where language - written and spoken - came from. Where it started. It's this kind of thing that is a wonder to me. That man doesn't want to believe that it started with a Creator God. That we somehow all just came to be and came to be smarter and came to be more and more advanced as life forms. Out of what?

Even a (hopefully repentant) Nazi got it

I find it so amazing that people who criticize faith in God don't study His Word the way they study other things. Most scientifically minded people wouldn't debunk a theory without poring over it carefully. I suppose the only thing that amazes me more are people who choose to disbelieve even after studying the Word of God. And not always but usually that has to do with their ideas about either their own brilliance or another man's stupidity. 

The most amazing thing to me is that some of the same people who don't believe in God, will dabble in or go all out on believing in things like ghosts, aliens, magical-mystical long-lost cities, and civilizations. 

SOURCE: Chapman University

I have known people who have never read the Bible who believe in the ghosts of their dead loved ones. When I have pointed out that there is no such thing as ghosts but there are such things as evil spirits... Well, I was called gullible and weird. Really? 

So, once again, I am marveling at God and the wonder of all He created. Again, I marvel that there are men who still refuse to believe.

I am sure I will spend many more hours pondering all this. I just wanted to share the burden!

Peace

--Free