Reality vs. Anti-Social Media

I think it's safe to say not one person, ever, has decided to switch political parties because someone called them stupid online.

However it remains a strange time for our culture right now.

So much of our lives aren't being lived in reality anymore, but they're being played out on social media. 

This is a great letdown because none of us have a reality that stacks up to social media.  

Now I don't exaggerate my life on social media, but I do strive to keep it positive. Not because I want people to think I'm perfect (just spend some time with me), but because I think there's enough negativity online. I make an effort to only share things that are fun or funny or encouraging online. I have no desire to share my worst moments with the entire internet. *not that I have a lot of 'worst' moments. Earlier this summer I shared that I had been let go from a ministry position that I loved. But even in the midst of that negative event I worked awful hard to not overshare my confusion and hurt. Lots of people showed up in my life to pray with Shannon and I face to face, and even more reached out in the form of phone calls and messages to lift us up and encourage us. And all of that helped in a huge way. It made it easy to share something funny on Facebook. My heart genuinely breaks for people who don't have PEOPLE to share with like that.*

In fact very few of us have a life that measures up to what we post on social media. Most of you don't look like the selfies you post. Most of you don't really live the Bible verses, inspirational quotes, positive memes, or motivational sayings you share daily. 

Sometimes that's because we just want to keep our pain private (or in a tight circle of family and friends) and be a positive person in public. But all too often it's because we feel the need to conform to the culture we see.

Having spent so much time with teenagers I can attest to the power that peers have to override wise decisions with an almost addiction to fitting in. And this scares me because those people often turn into adults who surrender their ability to choose to what the people next to them are doing.

And we love to see people make bad choices with us. We somehow suspect that our sin won't count if it's watered down with an entire group chasing that sin.

Look at the online backlash that Yvonne Orji is facing after confessing that at the age of 33 she's still a virgin and is saving herself for marriage. The social media claws came out. It's almost like people are angry that she's making a moral choice that they're not.

So what do we do? How do we cope? My best advice would be to unplug. Uninstall those apps on your phone and just go to those sites and log in if you NEED to. Set aside some time each day to catch up with family and friends online, and stop checking in constantly.

What if you spent an entire week and didn't share things that other people had written or didn't share/forward pictures or memes that someone else created? What if just once a day you WROTE what you wanted to post and then logged off?

What if you took all those minutes and invest them in reading your Bible? Or talking to your mother? Or doing pushups? Or drawing a picture?   

What I HATE

It seems that hate is in the news a lot this week. 

People hate racists. People hate statues. People hate the President. People hate people who hate the President. People hate people who don't hate the President. People hate people who don't publically declare their hatred for racists on social media (if you're relying on social media exclusively to show you what sort of character your friends possess you might not know them as well as you should). 

So I thought I'd chime in and share with all of my readers (both of them) what I hate.

Here we go:

I hate when I gather up laundry and take the hand towels out of the bathrooms. Not once in my life have I ever remembered to put a clean towel in its place. I end up standing at the sink with freshly washed but dripping wet hands.

I hate that my phone rings only when I've just sat down to eat. 

I hate the ads in front of YouTube videos. 

I hate that I've never made a shopping list and remembered to bring it to the store with me.

I hate that that biggest reason I have for going to the store will be represented by the one item that I forgot to buy.

I hate that our dog can sleep through a dream that causes her to bark, especially since it nearly gives me heart failure at 230am. 

I hate that the people most likely to text during a movie always decide to sit in front of me. 

I hate that whenever I confess to my wife that I can't find something she can locate it in 8 seconds. 

I hate that so many people in our country care more about statues coming down than they do about children living without enough food, clothes, or shelter.

I hate that the less likely a news item is to be true the more it's shared, retweeted, retold, and referenced as fact. 

I hate remembering trash day after I've already left the house.

I hate paying for cable and then spending the entire night watching reruns of stuff I own on DVD. 

I hate that my grandmother died before I gave my life to Christ.

I hate papercuts.

I hate trying to figure out how to load the dishwasher, since my wife has explained it to me 14,000 times, and I've done it wrong 14,000 times. 

I hate that we more easily interact with the world through a filter of what we hate instead of what we love.

I hate reality tv.

I hate big hairy spiders. I hate the little ones too.

I hate trying put furniture together with those silly directions they give you. 

I hate calling any customer service hotline. 

Fear, Love, and Loss

I write. A lot. Fiction for children and for young adults. And movie and TV reviews, but nothing too contemporary. If you're a fan of an old TV show though there's a chance you might have read one of my reviews of it. 

And a popular writing exercise is to find a random question and start writing the answer. It's a way of getting words flowing and getting your brain out of its own way.

And I don't share much of the personal stuff I write because I mostly use social media to be positive and share stuff that encourages me or makes me laugh. 

Even when I feel like the world is falling apart, I'm not too likely to mention that on Twitter or Facebook. The idea of several people feeling sad or sorry for me isn't comforting.

Of course in my real life I have a handful of people that I can share anything with, and I often do lean on them in that way. And I'm surrounded by people who will pray for me at any time. 

So having gotten that disclaimer out of the way, let me tackle the three questions that I often go back to get my brain out of second gear. 

I will answer them honestly, and beyond that, all bets are off.

1. What are you afraid of?  2. What do you love?  3. What have you lost?
And I'm answering these questions for ME for TODAY for RIGHT NOW. I could answer any one of these tomorrow and have an entirely different answer. So don't take these to the bank :D. 

What are you afraid of?

I'm afraid of our culture. Not in a way that makes me want to hide under my bed. At least not mostly.

But I'm afraid about how obsessed we seem to be with things that don't matter. We sit in restaurants and stare at social media instead of across the table at whoever we're with. We get so caught up in whatever cause seems to be the media's chosen distraction of the moment. (Mid-August of 2017 it's confederate statues, and I'd be hard pressed to believe that those statues are the biggest thing going on in the life of 99% of the folks losing their minds about them on Twitter or Facebook). We spend more time thinking about what other people think of us than what God thinks. We get less sleep and exercise than we need so we can devote time to things that don't give us anything healthy back.  

I'm also afraid that I've missed chances I'll never get back to share God's love with people. To tell them how much I appreciate their presence in my life. To apologize to people that I'm not even aware I hurt. And to forgive those who have hurt me. 

What do you love?

I love God. I love my Bible. I love to sit on our back porch while it storms. I love playing with our dog. I love cheeseburgers. I love making new friends. I love sitting with a friend and solving all the problems of the world over a cup of coffee. I love early morning walks with my headphones plugged into Pandora. I love getting out of bed in the morning waiting to see what God's going to do today.

Specifically I love the woman I married. I have never once felt like I wasn't good enough for her (although I most likely am not!), and I've never once felt like she's regretted choosing to spend her life with me (and we all know I've handed her several chances to do just that). 

What have you lost?

Time. I'll never again have yesterday, to avoid mistakes and the mismanagement of my time, or to say the things I was afraid to, or to unsay the things that hurt people.

This summer I lost a job I wasn't ready to say goodbye to, and with that I lost several relationships that were important to my wife and I. It's hard to hurt when one of the things that's hurting you is an inability to spend time with those you would reflexively run to when life is hurting.

I've lost patience with people who are so focused on how things should be that they're refusing to acknowledge how things really are. (I think of this mostly in a ministry setting. While it's true that things are getting worse in the 'real world', time spent whining about the fact that we're not living in Mayberry anymore isn't helping us live where we are RIGHT NOW.)