I have long hated how Facebook has reduced our allegiance to Jesus Christ and His Church to a mere “like” on a cheesy, (usually) theologically unsound post or image. I wrote about this years ago, and yet it seems like the wider world hasn’t heeded my words. (And that post actually had over two-hundred views! Only 6.9 billion more to go to cover the globe.)
And so I was very glad to see this comic from Adam4d:
I think this comic forces us to ask some serious questions, and I’m going to offer some answers for you. Now, before we begin, I’m assuming that you’ve NEVER shared a stupid post about liking “for Jesus” or scrolling “for Satan.” That being said, I’m going to be harsh, but only because I assume (and expect) the best of you.
Question 1: What does it mean to be a Christian?
Facebook posts like these confuse the issue of what it means to be a Christian. Is it merely an assent–emotional, intellectual, and/or volitional–or is it submission to God’s sovereignty and the confession of our spiritual poverty? We need Him to be our Savior, and so we serve Him as King. He does not need us to “like” Him. Reducing Christianity, which is, at its heart, allegiance to the Resurrected King and a kingdom not yet revealed, to a simple assent makes the whole thing cheap.
Question 2: Who empowered us to lower God’s standards?
I just finished listening to this sermon by Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones tonight, and he makes a very compelling point about the first problem with the Pharisees: they lowered the standard of God. What makes us think that the power denied them lies within our grasp? The first and greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with whole being. Anything else is damnable. It’s a simple and stark and scary as that.
So, when we share posts like this, what are we doing but encouraging the reduction of God’s standards and the sort of damnable thinking that justifies giving God less than what He expects of us? How are we any different than the Pharisees?
Question 3: What is the purpose of hell?
The purpose of Hell is tricky. Who created it? Who’s in control of it? Is it a prison within the wider spiritual world or is more like a nation unto itself? Having never been there, I can’t answer any of this authoritatively, but I’ll hazard some guesses, leaving hell’s purpose to the last.
Since God creates and the devil merely perverts, we’ll attribute hell’s existence to God. And yet, how could God, the epitome of love, create hell? Perhaps it’s better to ask “how” He created it? To my mind, God created hell by carving out a place/space/dimension where He refuses to be. God is omnipresent–able to be everywhere at all times–but is He bound by His ability? Can He not, in His sovereignty, create a place that even He will not go? If He could/did, I’d call that “hell.” You see, we were created to be in relationship with God: it’s our greatest need, no matter what Maslow said. We need God, but we don’t want to submit to Him. So we choose to run from Him–a foolish undertaken according to Psalm 139 and the story of Jonah–but we soon find that we cannot run from the omnipresence of God. Thus, God, in His beneficence, created a place for us to finally have what we want: freedom from His oppressing presence. We call that place “hell.” If I can, I’d like to pass the pen to CS Lewis, as he has best expressed this in The Great Divorce:
”There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
Thus, hell is not a prison so much as it is merely a place create by the absence of God’s presence, and in that fact, in its very origin, is the torture that the Bible describes with the images of unquenchable fire, insatiable worms, and granting teeth. We humans were created to be in God’s presence, and yet, hell, by its very nature, is the one place where we’ll neither find nor feel Him. In fact, for the first time in our lives, we will be truly alone, and that will be the most unbearable punishment of them all: eternal solitary confinement. The worst prisons in existence can’t compare with the experience of being removed from the omnipresence, of being placed alone, stripped of all our “coping mechanisms,” which are in some way designed to hide our true, impoverished self from our conscious mind. Thus, at the end of our terrestrial life, those who choose to leave God’s presence will be forced to face their own existence squarely, eternally, without the justifying covering of grace.
What could be worse than that?
Question 4: Why is our faith so weak?
If you call yourself a Christian and you’ve liked one of these posts, can I ask you why? Was it because you actually thought that to scroll past would offend or upset God? Did you truly believe that refusing to “like” a picture or post about Jesus would cost your soul? Does Adam4d’s comic expose your deepest fear? Or did you think that passing on a post like this could count as digital evangelism–”e-vangelism”? Too far?–and that letting others know where you stand religiously in the least costly, least sacrificial, least personal, least effective way at your disposal might accomplish something?
What has happened to us, Church? We claim to love Jesus and the Bible, and yet we choose some of the most unbiblical ways of telling others about Jesus. I mean, think about it: we’re telling them to choose Jesus or Satan. In the end, that’s not the choice. Satan chose self or Jesus, and he tempts us to choose the same. That’s why I think that these types of post serve Satan well. We “like” or share these posts because others see it; they don’t see our quiet allegiance or rebellion. They see our social media assent, and that gives us satisfaction, that feeds our self, and that gives Satan a stronghold.
Conclusion
Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me about all of the many people who have gone to hell for refusing to testify on Facebook. Conversely, tell me about the scores of people who came to faith because you dared to share a crappy image or cheesy post.
Tell me I’m wrong.
Or unfriend me. Then, we’ll both be happier.
[Comic – “Where did I go wrong, Lord?” via Adam4d.com / Arm wrestling image made from the original found here.]
Speak your mind...