Namely, the oldest photo depicts and goofy, careless junior-year high schooler enjoying a week at camp; the most recent shows a groom walking down the aisle with his bride.
Like I said: spooky.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
The Frightening Chronicles of Me
You know how they say a picture is worth a thousand words? Corny, I know. But looking through my FB profile picture album (a showcase that, arguably, demonstrates important snapshots of one's recent life), I found it downright spooky how well it chronicled the past 5 years and how much drastic change has occurred.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Facebook Makes Us Miserable
by
The reason so many of us have considered giving up on Facebook is that it makes us miserable. A recent paper in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin looks at a series of studies involving how people evaluate moods—their own and those of others. The study itself is not as interesting as the implications. What the study found is that people tend to underestimate how dejected other people feel and that this in turn increases a person’s own sense of unhappiness. Put otherwise, we all believe that others have better lives than we do and this makes us feel bad about ourselves. That’s strangely significant.
Where do we find this phenomenon in clearest form? On Facebook, of course. We log on to Facebook, look through the photographs and status messages our friends post, and believe that everyone is happier and more successful than we are. And when I have spoken to friends and family members who have considered giving up Facebook, this is exactly the reasoning they have given. They look at other people and feel miserable in comparison.
What an interesting phenomenon. It seems clear that Facebook is exposing something, some ugly little corner of the human heart. Facebook is all about making life seem joyful—we “like” one another’s happy status updates, not the sad ones; we post photos of our parties, not our funerals; we use it to celebrate births and marriages and new relationships, not to mourn deaths or remember break-ups. Facebook is meant to be a happy place for happy people. But it doesn’t seem to work out so well. We all think everyone else is happy, but we don’t feel the joy.
And it strikes both ways—when we portray ourselves through social media we do so on our own terms. And of course this means that we present ourselves in the way we want to be perceived, whether or not this is an accurate portrayal. So even while we put only our best foot forward, we look at others and assume that their portrayal is more accurate than our own; we believe that we are the only pretenders, the only ones stretching and exaggerating, trying to keep up. We resent another person for being happy—“She has an amazing life and I don’t!” Or we resent her for being falsely happy—“I know her and I know that her life isn’t all that!”
Either way, we all end up miserable. We all end up trying to be something we are not and believing that everyone else has a better life. Libby Copeland spoke to the author of this paper and he quoted Montesquieu saying: “If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” We do not want to be happy—we want to be happier. It becomes a competition, a point of comparison. But we can never be happier because we constantly drag ourselves down by believing that we are the only ones who are miserable.
What a ridiculous lot we are. What a sad, jealous, envious, idolatrous lot.
Facebook makes me believe, even stronger, in the value of the local church, in the value of true, deep fellowship, or genuine community. This is just one more reason that we need to live in community—in real community with real people. When I mediate my life by Facebook, I am the one who controls it all. I curate it by tagging the photos I like, by offering up the statuses I like, by making myself who I want to be rather than who I am. But when I live before others, when I live a real life in the real world, well, that is where people see who I really am. And they love me on that basis. In fact, they love me more on that basis.
The fact is, we want to love real people and we want to be loved by real people. Facebook is fiction. Local church is fact—the most real community we can experience this side of eternity.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Exegetical Malpractice
Another failure of a major journalism outlet to do...well...journalism.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
What Is Love?
This is excellent. With the exception of the latter third of the writings being especially for married couples, all Christians can benefit from a reading of these reminders.
Here is Paul Tripp’s definition of love: “Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving” (What Did You Expect? p. 188).
In the following he unpacks the definition (pp. 188-189):
Love is willing.
Jesus said, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). The decisions, words, and actions of love always grow in the soil of a willing heart. You cannot force a person to love. If you are forcing someone to love, by the very nature of the act you are demonstrating that this person doesn’t in fact love.
Love is willing self-sacrifice.
There is no such thing as love without sacrifice.
Love calls you beyond the borders of your own wants, needs, and feelings.
Love calls you to be willing to invest time, energy, money, resources, personal ability, and gifts for the good of another.
Love calls you to lay down your life in ways that are concrete and specific.
Love calls you to serve, to wait, to give, to suffer, to forgive, and to do all these things again and again.
Love calls you to be silent when you want to speak, and to speak when you would like to be silent.
Love calls you to act when you would really like to wait, and to wait when you would really like to act.
Love calls you to stop when you really want to continue, and it calls you to continue when you feel like stopping.
Love again and again calls you away from your instincts and your comfort.
Love always requires personal sacrifice.
Love calls you to give up your life.
Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another.
Love always has the good of another in view.
Love is motivated by the interests and needs of others.
Love is excited at the prospect of alleviating burdens and meeting needs.
Love feels poor when the loved one is poor.
Love suffers when the loved one suffers.
Love wants the best for the loved one and works to deliver it.
Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation.
The Bible says that Jesus died for us while we were still sinners. If he had waited until we were able to reciprocate, there would be no hope for us.
Love isn’t a “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” bargain.
Love isn’t about placing people in our debt and waiting for them to pay off their debts.
Love isn’t a negotiation for mutual good.
Real love does not demand reciprocation, because real love isn’t motivated by the return on the investment. No, real love is motivated by the good that will result in the life of the person being loved.
Love is willing self-sacrifice for the good of another that does not require reciprocation or that the person being loved is deserving.
Christ was willing to go to the cross and carry our sin precisely because there was nothing that we could ever do to earn, achieve, or deserve the love of God. If you are interested only in loving people who are deserving, the reality is that you are not motivated by love for them but by love for yourself. Love does its best work when the other person is undeserving. It is in these moments that love is most needed. It is in these moments that love is protective and preventative. It stays the course while refusing to quit or to get down and get dirty and give way to things that are anything but love.
There is never a day in your marriage when you aren’t called to be willing.
There is never a day in your marriage when some personal sacrifice is not needed.
There is never a day when you are free from the need to consider the good of your husband or wife.
There is never a day when you aren’t called to do what is not reciprocated and to offer what has not been deserved.
There is never a day when your marriage can coast along without being infused by this kind of love.
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