Categories: uncategorized
Date: 04 December 2007 14:01:20
Well, it had to happen eventually. Someone I know from work friend-requested* me on Facebook.
This caused me some minor palpitations, as *gasp* people from work could soon get to know that I use facebook. And then *horror* the secret might get out that I don't spend every second from 9 to 5 doing work-related activities (before you condemn me as a lazy good-for-nothing, look at my time owing sheet, he says smugly).
Aha! But of course, Facebook have thought of this problem already. I have the option of letting her see my limited profile. So I don't have to ignore her friend request, which would be a major faux-pas, but I get to control what she sees of me.
Alright, I'm boring you. You know all this already. What's my point?
My point is that it's more secrets. Our lives are hedged about with secrets, and we go to great lengths to control what people know of us. For example, I am concerned to make sure that no-one from my work (past, present or future) can trace this blog to me. I have friends in whom I will confide in about some things, but whom I would not confide in on other issues. The rules that govern who we tell about what are often exquisitely complex. What a tangled web we weave.**
It put me in mind of a preacher I once heard, who said that the goal of the Christian life is to have no secrets.
Think about it one mo. Sounds stupid and naïve, doesn't it? But maybe it isn't. Jesus says that if you light a candle, you don't put a cover over it. You can't hide a city on a hill. And maybe if we were living a life of real integrity - where all parts of our lives were a coherent, integral whole - we wouldn't care who knew what about us. Maybe it's the tangled web we weave around ourselves that traps us in, dampens our witness and suffocates the breath of God in us.
Boy is that a risk though - to untangle the strands of that thread, in contravention of the social norms we inherit. To stand loud and proud, and out our true selves. Can we take the discomfort and rejection? Or should we just do it as Christ's disciples, and follow his example?
*To friend-request, verb.inf. To ask someone to be your friend on a social networking site. An ugly, nasty word that we'll have to think up something better for, or our language slides further into the abyss.
** As Mr Google said to the Chinese president when barring Chinese people from access to any pro-democracy sites. Little bit of politics there, ladies and gentlemen.