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| Courtesy of #BigBible |
Further to my comments yesterday, I also pondered on as to how social media relationships are bound up in a balance. As I can 'dispose' of my ether-friends, so it is that I too can be disposed of. Accepting that such disposals are broadly temporary, I am reassured.
However, there is a facet to all of this that is manifestly un-balanced, and it is closer to home than I would have first imagined.
Let's talk tacks. Twitter is, to my mind, a device where people communicate with other people. It would seem to be a mutual gathering of 'give and take'. In addition to this, Christians are commanded to follow Jesus, pray to the Father and all that jazz, not gather disciples for themselves. Sling in a little Pnuematological expression into that and you have a church.
I discovered, with some surprise and even more amazement that there are Christians who have tens of thousands of followers and yet they barely follow a soul. The few I have seen either bill themselves as archbishops, pioneers of something or other, or else are just too important to bother with me.
If Twitter is a place for important Christians with important jobs to say important things like pronouncements, then it is not a place I wish to be. If Twitter is a place where disciples are as one, together, without the hierarchies of ecclesial frameworks, then count me in. If they are too important to read what I (or anyone else who loves God too) have to say, then something is very wrong. If by not following this humble priest states that they are better than me, then they are wrong. To be sure, such one-sidedness and apparent supremacism vexes me intensely.
Putting it bluntly, I follow Jesus. If I follow you, it is as an invitation to mutuality, not so that I can sit at your feet in wonder.
Enough said.
(I ought to mention that there many bishops, writers of courses and so on who do not fall into this category, and they are highly to be praised)
I know what you mean, I follow loads of people who don't follow me back. Perhaps some deleting is in order.
ReplyDeleteGood mind distraction activity.
Hmm, I see what you're saying, but I think for some of those people, the problem is that they're *so* famous there's no way they could follow everyone who wants to follow them. (That is, if they did follow all their followers, they still wouldn't have a "relationship" with any of those followers, because they'd get lost in the Tweets from tens or hundreds of thousands of people.) Does that mean the famous pastor has nothing to say to me?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid if we waited for a response, or even any evidence that our blogs were being read, some, not all of us, would die waiting.
ReplyDeleteNot everything even the most interesting writers have to say will appeal to all and sundry, and there is no earthly reason why one should offer a response to something which does not appeal, however, reading others' offerings is a must if you are really looking for a mutual exchange of opinions and ideas.
I don't find twitter the back & forth area you so describe but then I am much much older than you & may of course be doing it all wrong (tee hee). Twitter to me is like standing on an orange box just speaking out loud for anyone who is passing to listen to if they want to. I much prefer the back & forth of the threads on Facebook, much easier for me to follow. However that is not an open thing.
ReplyDeleteAnyone who just tweets and does not follow(or read blogs)is surly in danger of becoming stale and not growing in anyway. If someone doesn't like or want to embrace the modern forms of communication and are just going through the motions to try & stay current are in my opinion in danger of being in a very isolated spot. I may not tweet often but I do read and take other opinions on board, just not often all that brave to say so :-) I am a Luddite paddling furiously trying to keep up......wait for me!