Facebook or Face-to-Face?
What would the New Testament writers have made of Facebook? Now, they don’t mention it in their writings. And it’s not as if you can look it up in a concordance. But I think they would have regarded it as a mixed blessing. Great for keeping in touch, just as letters were in their day (even if they took a little longer to be delivered than ours do), but never a proper substitute for meeting face-to-face.
Here’s how the apostle John finishes his second letter: “I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 12). Isn’t his reasoning refreshing? He wants to see them, rather than writing to them, “so that our joy may be complete.” He feels they’d both be missing out on something good if he merely wrote to them.
Do we, I wonder, have that attitude? Do we believe that there will always be something missing – something called ‘joy’ – if we watch Songs of Praise instead of coming to church, or listen to on-line preaching rather than hearing a live preacher, or resort to written communication when we could do it in person? Now, there is a place for writing – or else I wouldn’t be writing this, and there wouldn’t be a Bible – but let’s never underestimate the power of presence, of ‘just turning up’, whether it’s to church, to fellowship group or the prayer meeting, or simply to see someone…