Online Social Networking as the Servant, not the Master

This is part deux of my most recent blog post. Though I learned quite a bit about myself— including about some obsessive patterns—during my online slow-down, I am in no way suggesting we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Telling someone to stop emailing or Facebooking because they do it too much would be like saying that if a person talks on the phone too much then they should smash their cell phones and rip the land-line out of their wall.

As technology progresses, we have a responsibility to choose how to use it for good. What I have found in my own life, however, is that when new technology arrives, I tend to uncritically dive head first into a full embrace of its use without first determining how it needs to work for me as a tool. In other words, I end up giving it a measure of control over me instead of making sure I am controlling it.

This all reminds me of something Jesus says in Luke 16:13 “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”

Money; Career; Technology…I can probably swap a number of words here and remain true to Jesus’ meaning. These kinds of things are designed to serve us as we live effectively and freely in the Lord. If we start serving them, they become idols.

I am also drawn to something that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:12 “Everything is permissible for me”—but not everything is beneficial. “Everything is permissible for me”—but I will not be mastered by anything.”

As a Pastor and a Dean of Students at a College, I find online social networking valuable. As a friend to many who use these tools I find them constructive to relationship. There are people who I’ve reconnected with and encouraged (and been encouraged by) through this technology that I would have missed otherwise—and that would have been a real loss.

But I don’t want to ever be controlled by anything, even if that thing is permissible…even if it is beneficial. If I find myself unfocused or distracted or mastered by anything, then I need to re-assess its place in my life and regain mastery over it. If I am a slave to anything, I have lost control, and that is not the stance of a person who has been liberated in Christ.

Or, as the poet Bob Dylan sang, “You’re gonna have to serve somebody”!