Recently I asked someone when they were going to join Facebook. The response was that they are a private person and that Facebook is too public.
That got me to thinking about our "right" to privacy. In this age of identity theft, it is in our best interest to keep a lot of information about ourselves private and off the "information highway." You and I both know people who should keep their lives more private. We don't always want to hear every nitty gritty detail of someone's life.
It was said to me recently that Facebook and MySpace were created for the "me" generation - the generation that thinks it's all about me. If you've never been on those websites, you should take a look sometime. I know people on there with hundreds of friends. I may know that many people but how many of them do I have the time to keep in touch with or with how many of them do I really want to keep in close touch. It amazes me that people have the time it takes to keep up with Facebook or MySpace. You can easily eat up hours of your time trying to keep up with your friends and keeping them up with your life. It is interesting to see what people are up to and I do spend a few hours a week catching up on the lives of my friends/family - especially those that I don't get to see on a regular basis.
On a spiritual level, James 5:16 says "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective." So, how private should we be about our lives? If we keep everything private, including our sins, I think we can miss out on some things that God wants to do in our lives. I'm not saying that we should confess all of our sins to everyone we know. Confessing our sins to other christians, especially those who are more mature in their faith, gives us access to more prayer power on our behalf. It allows us to not feel alone and defeated by our sin. In many cases it brings opportunity for discipling and allows us to grow and mature. On the flip side, as we grow and mature and learn from our sins, we have the opportunity to help others going through the same experiences.
Choose wisely the times to be private and the times to be transparent. Rely on the prompting of the Holy Spirit.
1 comment:
Excellent post, Bev! You really made me think. And I have been pondering a lot lately about how we as sisters and brothers in Christ need to be free to share our concerns and sometimes our sins with others so that they can pray effectively for us and encourage us.
Maybe we could start a trend here. Not be the me generation - but the "it's all about Him generation!"
Love to you and prayers.
Post a Comment