Ostriches, Christians, & Culture #Christians #Culture

I grew up in a very sheltered world. I have no regrets for my upbringing because I was sheltered from a host of experiences which many others face at an age no child or young adult should be expected to. I'm very grateful for the parents God gave me.

Some Christians avoid things which may not be harmful but as we think non-believers enjoy it too much it must therefore be something to avoid. I will be the first to admit I've done this before. I despise jumping on a band-wagon merely for the sake of using my leg muscles. I look back at some of the things I've run from and gone, "Boy, I didn't need to run from that." Take Harry Potter as an example (gasp!). As a Christian I thought the books, and by extension the movies, to be evil, wrong, and something non-believers enjoyed too much. Therefore I'm going to stick my head in the sand and ignore them. I can't imagine the conversation starters I missed or the opportunities to share my faith based on the topics which were raised by the series. Or, even worse, the fun I could have had in discussing the series with non-believers and believers alike. As a Christian I have to understand not all culture is wrong, bad or evil. The very mention of culture will not corrupt my soul and I have to believe God loves beautiful and creative things. Whatever you think of the series you must admit it was creative. I can't wall myself away from culture and then expect God to use me to change the direction our culture is going (if that is what you believe).

As I've come to this realization regarding my view of culture I've realized the first look may be deceiving. As an example of current culture, take my perception of The Hunger Games series when it first came out. I was repulsed! Granted, I think you need to read the books before writing off the series, but if you were to tell me you reacted that way before reading them, I'd understand. Dig a little deeper and read the books. The movies will make more sense.

In general, Christians need to stop being ostriches who stick their heads in the sand at the first sight of something. Engage it with an eye for redemptive value and keep on going.

Pitfall(s) of Social Media

Hibernation apologies are bland, boring, and pointless as I can't promise I won't go into blogging hibernation again in the future. Still, most readers wouldn't want to know or care what I've been doing since I last posted in October anyway, so I won't waste your time and attention. But what I can promise is three posts which will be published over the next three weeks. So stay tuned.

Some may have noticed, or you may now notice since I've brought your attention to it, that I have not posted as many official posts to Facebook since the middle of November (a bit ironic since the majority of you will be notified to the publishing of this post by its' presence on Facebook). Yes, I've posted pictures and other shares thus making it appear as if I've been on Facebook when in reality I've been taking an extended break. I learned a very valuable lesson while fasting from FB: I am way too self-centered. Checking into FB became more about what my notification bar looked like rather than seeing what the worlds of others looked like from their status updates and pictures. My motivation for posting things to FB then became how I could grab attention, garner a reaction, or gain as many "likes" as I could. As this insatiable desire for more and more "attention" continued to grow I began to self-internalize my worth based on the responses I would or wouldn't get from my posts. "Well that one sucked because I only received ten likes rather than the twenty-five I've averaged over the last six posts." As silly as it may sound, stop for a moment and consider your motivation for posting to social media sites. If your motivation for posting rarely if ever was to engender a response and the thought never even crossed your mind, then I applaud you. But for those whom this thought strikes a little closer to home, you know where I'm coming from. The more I did it the more lonely I felt.

The rewiring of our brains to focus exclusively on ourselves is the pitfall of social media. Sure, it can be enjoyable, even relaxing. If so, keep it that way and never let yourself begin to believe the lie which whispers "your worth is dependent on the responses you get" because it simply isn't true.