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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)
