Facebook vs. the Good Book: Which Is More Popular?

FACEBOOK is ten years old, and the social media giant is celebrating—offering minute-long videos commemorating its users’ experience on-line. The Facebook videos are popular this week, with people commenting on what they’ve learned about friends they know only through the Interwebs. Facebook has an estimated 757 million daily users—some 143 million in the United States and Canada.

One interesting factoid uncovered by Associated Press:  About 400 billion photos have been shared on Facebook. That, writes Seth Borenstein in the AP’s “Big Story”, is “a lot of selfies.”

THE BIBLE, meanwhile, is two thousand to four thousand years old (depending on which book you’re talking about). Who reads it? A Barna Group study reports that one in five American adults have read the Bible from cover to cover; but most Christians who own the book don’t really read it much.

Associated Press has taken notice of the hubbub, and has just published an article asserting that Facebook is bigger—much bigger—than the Bible.

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I can’t help but think back to John Lennon’s epic 1966 assertion that the Beatles were “more popular than Jesus Christ.” Lennon thought that Christianity was in decline, just at the time when the Beatles were at the top of their careers. His bold statement, which was printed in the American teen magazine Datebook, prompted angry protests here in the United States.

Lots of folks—myself included—do spend a certain amount of time on Facebook every day. Does that mean that it has a greater impact in their lives than does the word of God?

Nah.