Where oh where has our joy gone?
I mean Facebook used to be for connecting with people you care about who might live far away… and for watching funny videos. Twitter, it should be a place where you can follow your favorite sports teams or ministries, and then there’s Instagram, well, I’m not sure there’s much to be redeemed there.
Now, Facebook is where people spout off ill-informed opinions and argue back and forth with neither side really doing any scholarly research. To quickly argue something, people use sources like Wikipedia and some no-name blogger to support their assertions. And twitter, well every wanna-be has a wisdom quip. Now, Instagram is a place where we let selfie likes define our value and our self-assuredness.
All of this information, and yet we are more depressed, more unstable, and I would argue, more clueless than ever before. How could this be? Why?
Even though this is radio, I want to take a second to speak to my family, my fellow Christians here. Cut it out. Just cut it out. Stop debating things you aren’t trained to debate. Stop freaking out over stuff you know little about. Stop fitting scriptures into arguments rather than arguments into Scripture. Stop talking about loving everyone one day and then blasting people like Jerry Falwell Jr and Donald Trump because they aren’t what you want, it’s inconsistent and hypocrisy. You want to debate apologetics, go get trained. You want to exegete scripture, go get trained.
These new platforms have made it so easy for all of society to blast opinion to the masses. Before this, people had to be trained before they spoke on a subject. Experts on business, spoke on business. Pastors interpreted God’s word. Now it’s up for grabs and man is it easy for us to get egg on our face.
I think this is where the joy has gone. There is so much pressure to be somebody, to be brilliant on all things, to make everyone bask in our brilliance. Everyone needs to relax and just stop it!
Take a moment. Be slow to speak. Enjoy the beauty of life. Laugh. Stop counting “likes.”
Get your joy back, stop putting so much pressure on yourself. You don’t need to be an expert at everything and you don’t need to change the world through your social media page. Be still for a while, know that he is God, know that he is in control and that the pressure is not on you. It’s his world, you’re just living in it and he loves you. Relax in that!
– Brett Larson
