The Christian Facebook Group

Look at me, trying to do anything but finish my assignment on The Person of Christ. It's like that time I learned how to play Snakebite Boogie by Clive Carroll, just to avoid doing my final year project. And let me tell you, there are few more difficult songs to learn than it. I've known how to play it for two years now, and I can still only manage to make it sound about 60% right, which kind of sucks actually. Because even though what I'm doing is in reality very difficult, it just doesn't sound quite right, so it's difficulty is lost on people, and I don't look as impressive a guitarist as I should. In other news, I'm both proud and self-seeking.

Anyway, my quick post here is in relation to that Facebook group that's doing the rounds. It's called The Great Big Christians In Ireland Experiment (Christians on Facebook). The 'experiment' is to try and get all the Christians in Ireland, who are also on Facebook, into one group. Well, I've decided not to join this group for a couple of reasons:

1 - I think it would be cool to be the only Christian in Ireland (who is also on Facebook) not to be in the group. I mean I'd basically be the reason for this experiment failing. That sounds like a good conversation piece in any Christian setting.

2 - I'm really stubborn.

3 - Here's my real reason. I just feel like it's slightly misleading. There are 1007 people in the group now, but who's to say they are all Christians? I have no reason to believe they aren't but I have no reason to believe they are either. The only ones I know to be Christian are the ones that I know personally. That's not to say you can't know someone is a Christian if you don't know them personally. It's just to say that a mere profession isn't exactly worth much. I mean if you ask every American whether they're Christian or not you'll probably find a significantly large portion say they are, yet the behaviour of American society in general would seem to suggest otherwise (not to pick on America or anything [?]).

A group like this just reminds me of those forwards that say 'Pass this on to all your friends if you're not ashamed of Jesus' or something like that. What's the point? Jesus obviously isn't overly concerned about lip service and such. Maybe I'm wrong, but I happen to think that His goal for the Church isn't one big Facebook group with every Christian on it. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's just something...off about that picture, but maybe it's just me. I mean what's next? A Facebook application that provides you with your daily devotional?

I know the point of this experiment isn't to show our non-Christian friends that we're Christian. This group was probably started out of a good heart, and most people join it not to prove that they are Christian, but because they are Christians, they are on Facebook, so why not accept the invitation? The whole thing just seems a bit pointless to me, but hey, if people are using this group to pray for each other and encourage each other and so forth, then far be it from me to diss it. From the 'Recent News' section however, it seems like a numbers game so far, but there's one number you're not going to get Mr Nelson!