Third Country if it Were a Country ...

Facebook has a population less great than those of China and India.

I never (or hardly ever) take Watchtower, but sometimes Awake! which this February had an issue about Social Networks. It gave a few guidelines of Biblical Support for assessing one's proper use of them.

1. Effect on private life? Proverbs 10:19 - well I seldom post intimate details or such as I would myself count as seductive or incriminatory on FB.
2. Effect on my time? Philippians 1:10 - first off, the Bible verse is about quite another thing, like about preferring heavenly rewards to success on earth if you look up the context. But second, when it comes to earthly success, yes, spending time on FB does not deduct from time spent on my employer, since I do not have one. As my business is my production on internet, spending time on a network that has more population than most countries is a part of it.
3. Effect on my reputation? Proverbs 22:1. Spending any time on internet or as much as I would need realistically to do some of my writing incidentally hurts my reputation among people I meet on a daily basis and who think they do me some kind of favour by not looking up my writings on the web. So, FB is a resting place where I have the reputation as a Christian which the networks that I meet more face to face but whose conferences about me or others elude me refuse me.
4. What effect has it on my friendships? Proverbs 13:20. Well, it is on the Internet that I have friends and in real life that I meet my detractors. You could say it is my fault for having so many friends on internet, I could retort that I tried to get friendships in real life, among others showing what I do on internet. If they do not like what I write, why should I presume they would like me as a person? Or why should I prefer friends who dislike me to those who like or appear to like me? It is on the web that I meet this wonderful maronite and Third Order Carmelite, among other things, or this man who wrote "How the Holy Cross was Found".

The day I read this, I was first relieved at any principle exonerating me from sin or stupidity. Not that I believe in tests like that, but I sometimes take them. But I was annoyed about someone having abused whatever spiritual power prayer gave him to pray for me time after time about me getting a check-up and never checking up on whether the check-ups exonerate or condemn my habits. If someone is too much of an hermit to speak to me, he might also do well to be sufficiently hermit not to make plans for my conversion from what he knows not whether it is sin or virtue. It annoyed me and it provoked me to sins of hatred.

Hans-Georg Lundahl
Mantes / BiJ
31-VIII-2012

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