140 Characters of Faith

What do you think of when you see a little blue bird?
If you are anything like me, two things pop up.

1. The insanely addictive and life consuming game ‘Angry Birds’, which I recommend everyone immediately stop reading and find a way to get.

Or

2. Twitter.

I admit, I was a reluctant ‘tweeter’ at first. My allegiance lied with Facebook. But much like a Sith Lord, the bird slowly swayed me. It started with a simple tweet in October of 2008, and then slowly picked up steam to at least 3 tweets a day. Now…I love it.

People often ask me, “What makes twitter so different from Facebook?”. And it’s simple: I follow who I want, when I want. However, it’s a completely different social media outlet than any other I have experienced or used, and it’s not just because of the simplicity of it. It’s more about how I use it.

This first occurred to me when I ran into someone the other day that I follow on twitter, but has a ton of people who follow them. I’ve never met them in person, but here I am, confronted with acknowledging my own stalkerish ways, or quietly tweeting about them or at them indirectly. I mean, what’s the rule with that kind of stuff? Is it sketchy to walk up and talk to them? Does that automatically make them feel weird or does it give a sense of healthy admiration?

On my end it’s kind of unsettling at first to when you meet someone out of the normal confines of the initial relationship. You almost catch yourself forgetting who they are or asking “What are you doing here?” as if they weren’t allowed in this public forum in the first place.

But back to it, the thing that bothers me about how I use these social networks is how they honestly translate to much of my spiritual life. Often times, it’s like I’m ‘following’ Jesus. I think you know what I mean. I may be secretly adding/dropping Him because He’s tweeting to much, or tweeting things that I disagree with. Don’t get me wrong, I think twitter is a great forum for discussion on a wide range of thoughts and ideas, but how many times have you found yourself saying “If you follow me, I’ll follow you. But if you don’t follow me or give me a Follow Friday shout out, I’m dropping you…that is, until you do give me the shout out, then I’ll just @reply you” Or we treat it as if it’s more important that people are following us than the quality of people we follow.

We treat out faith like a tweet. I know this seems cheesy or whatever, but it’s really true. There’s just enough distance that we can give an impression of vulnerability and openness, yet we constantly hold people at an arm’s length like an older sibling picking on the younger.

“Are you guy’s friends?”
“Well, yea. I mean, I follow them on twitter and they follow me”.

Sometimes, we get more used to communicating with the people in our lives via a social network we forget that they are actually living. Sometimes we treat our faith as a social network or book club that meets on Sunday’s to talk about the thing that happened that one time, or the thing that one guy did, rather than treating it as something that is “living and effective, sharper than any two edge sword.” (<- I stole those words from someone way smarter and holier than I)

You see, our spiritual life is far more than a 140 typed out characters of goodness that we read or say, it’s living out a goodness of character in everything we do. It’s easy to tweet about the Church changing, or needing to live our faith more radically. It’s hard to stop typing and start living. That’s what the world needs: witnesses of faith, not just on a computer, but on the streets.

I’m not perfect at it, but I do try. I pray that this Lent, God moves in me in such a way that I longer just follow online or when it benefits me, but that I actually begin living my love for God in the way I type, eat, live and relate. I pray that other Christian's might join me in never having to wonder what it would look like if I ran into Jesus in modern times at the local coffee shop, because I've already run into Him on the street, and know Him through my relationship of prayer and worship.

1 Corinthians 10:31 ‘So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.’