The Peripatetic Preacher and His Facebook Page

When I first signed on to Facebook some years ago, the general talk seemed to revolve around the number of “friends” one had. I place quotes around friends for the obvious and much-discussed idea that many of these folks who have “befriended” you on the site are hardly your “friends” at all. At best, they are acquaintances and at worst you have no real connection with them at all, save an anonymous electronic one. Still, the struggle to gain the most “friends” was a source of some pride. “I have 754 friends,” one of my real friends said to me, which meant that my paltry list (numbering then about 20, as I remember) paled into insignificance, and suggested to one and all that I was close to being a loser, at least a Facebook loser. I also remember that I cared not one whit about my loserdom, and simply could not see the point of broadcasting my luncheon choices (or whatever) to hundreds of strangers and a few folks who actually knew me a bit. Ah, yes, those were the quieter, simpler days.

Now, Facebook, in the thought of some, has become rather more monster than friend maker. It seems that persons with more sinister notions than that of lunch choice have become the trolls of the wireless world. It has been proven, beyond any doubt, that the 2016 American presidential election was influenced to a lesser or greater degree by certain shadowy figures in Russia or China or both, persons with dastardly designs on our democracy. And since over 2 billion users of Facebook have ready access to all manner of ridiculous or genuine items of news and commentary, it hardly takes an electronic wizard to see the evil that can be spread on the site.

I read just today an article that suggested quite plausibly that it is Facebook, and not the so-called news station, Fox, that has poisoned the well of our national discourse. Fox is hardly innocent in its incessant drumbeat of Trumpism, wherein the orange-haired one can do little wrong, and his opponents are ill informed at best and demonic at worst. After all, in the face of 2 billion users, just how many people are actually watching Fox or CNN or MSNBC? Monday Night Football regularly garners far larger audiences than any of the cable news networks. In fact, when the games get really interesting late in the season, I imagine Monday Night Football outgains all the cable news networks combined. And it is fair to say that while those football viewers are cocking one eye at the big screen, they have the other eye cocked at the smaller screen where the latest conspiracy theory has been posted and shared by thousands.

A real friend and former colleague posted yesterday an interchange he had with himself over a Facebook post. He did not share the post with me, but he did share his reaction to it. Someone had pricked his conscience about one issue or another, and he said that he had rushed to an online source to gain ammunition to rebut what this poster had claimed. But then, while still in research mode, he stopped and asked himself what he hoped to gain by replying to this person. Was there any real hope of swaying that person’s opinion with his well researched, carefully reasoned, and superbly written response to a post that had obviously riled him up? He told himself that his words, neither in heaven or hell, had any chance to make a whit of difference to the original poster, whose words were written with considerable heat and passion. He let the whole thing drop, and felt much the better, much the calmer, for his withdrawal from the fray.

Facebook has become now far less a medium for easy social interchange than a place for safe and largely anonymous bitching, rather more like a bar scene without the booze, magnified thousands of times. But is it in fact safe? I think not. It is actually a place for repeating and sharing misinformation, foolishness, and dark falsehoods. It has become like a Friday night at the local Chili’s, where four acquaintances cram into a booth, and over hot wings and beer share loud ideas with one another about any subject that happens to arise. The difference is, of course, that there are thousands of people crammed into the electronic booth, the vast majority of whom know nothing of one another, whether their interlocutors are knowledgeable or fully misinformed or criminals or sickos or dunderheads or cruel or kind. Facebook has become the spot where any and all “share,” but what they share is too often nonsense or pale reflections of ideas or repeated craziness from some other crazy person, all of which is then “shared” for the befuddlement and brain thickening of all who are listening or participating, better said, since genuine listening is in short supply. I think my friend had it right: bow out gracefully may be the best approach to those all-consuming “threads” that weave their evil into our very souls.

I must admit that I have on occasion entered into these so-called discussions (more like silent shouting matches) and always to my detriment. Even when I try to respond to those who read my blogs on biblical texts, I too often find myself in a fight about who reads the text correctly and thus who finally will find himself in an eternity of heated torment due to his obviously blasphemous misuse of the sacred text. Is that why I read Facebook, to cross verbal swords with people I will never meet, attempting to put them in their places, to vanquish them by the power of my supposed superior intellect? When put like that, the whole process appears to be pathetic and a thorough waste of time.

So what to do with Facebook? I still enjoy greatly keeping up with people who live far away or from whom I have drifted away. There is nothing better than hearing news of someone with whom I once had a close contact but who now has become unaware of me and what I have been doing since last we met, as little as I know of them. I can think of no other way that I might reconnect with such people. I have purposely kept my friend list quite small, only befriending those I have some obvious connection to, either personally or professionally. I might suggest that you look closely at your contacts and unfriend those that do not match either of those two categories.

I have heard some say that they welcome comments and ideas that are completely unlike their own; how else are we to learn about and listen to those who do not think as we think? There is value in this thought, but in my experience, those who do not think as I think too often become enemies, not conversation partners. That fact is as much my fault as theirs. But still it is a fact. Thus, I plan to keep my Facebook account, but I will continue to use it sparingly and only for certain purposes. I refuse to be drawn into debate of any sort; any real debate must be done finally face-to-face, not Facebook-to-Facebook.

Ultimately, I am very glad for Facebook’s existence but I am deeply saddened by what it has become. I am certain that its creators and sustainers never envisioned the site as a place where the foulest and most idiotic foolishness may be passed about willy-nilly and without much check. Yet, so it has evolved. I beg each of you to use it wisely as a connector in your world and not as the source of darkness and division.