Why We Pulled the Plug on Facebook

Yesterday my boyfriend and I made the decision to delete our Facebook accounts. It wasn’t such a difficult decision for us to make. We have been discussing this for a while. The recent social media freak out about the events in the United States was essentially the stick that broke the camel’s back. Well, at least for me it was. Just to be clear, racial discrimination is not a part of God’s plan. Never was and never will be. I have no tolerance for racism, and it should have been obvious from my last post that I have no tolerance for friends and family shaming each other on social media. The only thing people will find in their anger toward one another is hatred. Please remember that. I pray for all of those who have been hurt and affected by this tragedy. Prayer is my call as a Christian and that is why I am not saying anything more about this situation going forward.

Getting back to the point of this blog post – why hit delete? Hitting the delete button for us represents freedom. It gives us the freedom to live a simpler life and to detoxify ourselves of worldliness. There are a couple of Bible verses that inspire me to seek the Kingdom life in all of its simplicity and purity. Here they are:

And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. – Romans 12:2

Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. – 1 John 2: 15-16

Let’s face it. The big 4 (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube) are the embodiment of worldliness. It’s easy for Christians to get sucked into it all in the pursuit of trying to spread the Gospel. There is so much noise being blasted from these platforms that it makes any decent content almost non-existent. To add insult to injury, if you mention God one too many times you can be sure your social media post won’t impress the algorithm. Well, sorry big 4, but there is a better way to spread God’s love and to achieve the aim of moving beyond worldliness to living a simpler life. It’s called living out the Gospel in real life. It’s a bit of a radical concept, I know, but isn’t the aim to live in obedience to Him? This concept is amiss in the world of internet Christianity, where the only Christianity that is acceptable to the big 4 is secularized Christianity. I think Bishop Kallistos Ware nailed it on the head when he wrote the following:

“We are not to restrict God’s presence in the world to a limited range of “pious” objects and situations, while labelling everything else as “secular”; but we are to see all things essentially sacred as a gift from God and a means of communication with Him. It does not, however, follow that we are to accept the fallen world on its own terms. This is the unhappy mistake of much “secular Christianity” in the contemporary west.” – Bishop Kallistos Ware (The Orthodox Way, p.120)

Facebook was the last of the big 4 we were using. It’s gone, and I have to say I already feel better. Doesn’t this mean that we are going to reject all forms of online interaction? No. This blog will stay and we will have a Flickr account. That’s it. I can still write, he can still post his art and we still have e-mail. Digital minimalism suits us just fine. This also gives us a chance to turn our attention to bigger things like trying to fix our sin problems, because let’s face it folks, we all have a sin problem whether if you admit it or not. Again, Bishop Ware speaks to this point:

“All things are sacred in their true being, according to their innermost essence; but our relationship to God’s creation has been distorted by sin, original and personal, and we shall not discover this intrinsic sacredness unless our heart is purified. Without self-denial, without ascetic discipline, we cannot affirm the true beauty of the world. That is why there can be no genuine contemplation without repentance.” –Bishop Kallistos Ware (The Orthodox Way, p. 120)

Denying ourselves worldliness is the first step to living a simpler life. It’s in this simplicity that we can begin to hear God’s true voice in our lives. When we pull the plug on the secular Christian internet boom box, we’ll begin to see what’s really important. We’ll see that there is more to life than the drama of social media.