Tag: FACEBOOK

THE FACEBOOK PROVERBS

THE FACEBOOK PROVERBS

I can see it now, an ad headline on Yahoo or Youtube: SECRET BIBLE CODE PREDICTS HOW TO ACHIEVE FACEBOOK SUCCESS! We are such suckers for looney lines like this that it would likely get a million clicks. The surprising thing is that the headline is true, from a certain point of view.

I discovered this by doing something else you will no doubt find looney: Reading Proverbs backwards.

Before you call for the guys in white jackets, let me explain. I read the Book of Proverbs through two or three times a year. Every time its accuracy and insight fascinate and instructs. But the phrases and cadences have become so familiar that I found I was just passing through, ignoring the scenery the way you do on an oft-traveled road. So, I decided to read the book in reverse order. That’s when things started to pop, especially regarding Facebook.

I am a daily Facebook visitor. Sometimes it is a time waster. But other times it is, as it was designed to be, a great facilitator of relationships. Given the shredding of our sense of community in the last fifty years social media is increasing our ability to stay connected across the artificial divides created by our suburbanized, isolated, hyper-mobile car-culture. It is the electronic front porch where neighbors stop briefly for a friendly chat, share helpful information, and strengthen the bonds of civilization. That’s a good thing, usually.

Then there’s the dark side of Facebook, the crude comments, political rants, and thoughtless posts and re-posts that with neighbors on one’s own front porch, we wouldn’t normally utter. Facebook can’t recreate the proximity that prevents us from disgracing ourselves and as a result people have lost friends, jobs, opportunities, careers, and reputations, sometimes permanently. As a result, most large employers now have strict social media rules in place and restrict access on their in-house networks.

That’s why The Facebook Proverbs are so important. They were written long ago for a people trying to achieve honorable community in the land of Israel. Their composer and compiler, Solomon, was one of the most wise and successful leaders who ever lived. Using them as a guide to all of our social posts will help us achieve that rarest of cultural commodities: courtesy. They are marked in the margin of my Bible with a large F and now that this post has grown so long, I will only share a few in hopes that they will whet your appetite to look for more. You will be amazed at how relevant they are.

A fool finds no pleasure in understanding

but delights in airing his own opinions. Pr. 18:2

 

A fool’s lips bring him strife,

and his mouth invites a beating.

A fool’s mouth is his undoing,

and his lips are a snare to his soul.

The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;

they go down to a man’s inmost parts. Pr. 18:6-8

Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud,

but humility comes before honor.

He who answers before listening—

that is his folly and his shame. Pr. 18:12-13

The first to present his case seems right,

till another comes forward and questions him. Pr. 18:17

From the fruit of his mouth a man’s stomach is filled;

with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied.

The tongue has the power of life and death,

and those who love it will eat its fruit. Pr. 18:20-21

This last is not from The Book of Proverbs but from the late L. R. Barnard, my mentor and professor of Historical Theology: Cultivate courtesy gentlemen; it is the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization.

Can We Hear Them Now?

Can We Hear Them Now?

Facebook, 2018: A young father shared the moment he felt his daughter in her mother’s womb.

“I’d only briefly felt this baby move before. I tried to feel her move again and again to no avail. But finally, lying there last night next to her mom, snuggled up close because of the cold, I felt kick after kick. Long after my lady had gone to sleep, there was our little one still kicking away. There ain’t words to truly describe what my heart felt.”

I read that post and smiled, remembering what it was like to be a young father many years ago, when before my daughters had voices they spoke to us with kicks.

Another story I saw this week took me back even further, to the moment the world stopped hearing the voiceless words of children in the womb.

Dr. Richard Selzer, an enlightened surgeon, fully committed to the latest medical philosophies, and desiring to learn the best techniques, wanted to watch a new procedure. He’d heard of it, but never seen one performed so he asked a fellow physician if he could attend.

The patient was 19 weeks pregnant, lying on the table, prepped for the procedure. The surgeon took a syringe filled with a prostaglandin solution, sank the needle up to its hub into the woman’s belly, pushed the plunger down and left it there for a few moments.

Selzer described what happened next. ““I see something other than what I expected here. … It is the hub of the needle in the woman’s belly that has jerked. … Once more it wobbles, is tugged, like a fishing line nibbled by a sunfish.”

Slowly, the desperate fight for life faded. The needle stopped jerking. The voiceless screaming ceased, but not in Selzer’s head. “Nothing can argue against the truth of what I saw that day.”

That story, “What I Saw at the Abortion,” originally appeared in Esquire in January 1976, and appeared most recently in Marvin Olasky’s World Magazine interview with pro-life feminist Frederica Matthews-Green.*

The trajectory of Green’s life was changed by that brief paragraph in Esquire. Up until then she sported a bumper sticker that read, “Don’t labor under a misconception. Legalize abortion.” Now she is known by her most famous quote: “No woman wants an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.”

Would that the trajectory of the world had changed with her.

Ideas have consequences and, as John Stonestreet says, they also have victims. The two greatest victims of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s were women, who lost the protection long afforded to them by traditional mores and the covenant of marriage, and children, who lost the protection not only of a two-parent home, but of the womb. Both suffer in abortion. Both need our help.

The women were voiceless until 2017, stifled by fear, or powerful men, or both. Now they are speaking and the nation is listening. Maybe in the context of so much truth-telling those other heretofore voiceless victims will also speak.

Can we hear them now?

*Marvin Olasky, “Path to Pro-Life: Overcoming Pro-Abortion Peer Pressure with Facts.” Interview with Frederica Matthews-Green by Marvin Olasky in World Magazine, January 20, 2018. https://world.wng.org/2018/01/path_to_pro_life

THE FACEBOOK PROVERBS

Courtesy is the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization. L. R. Barnard

I can see it now, an ad headline on Yahoo or Youtube: SECRET BIBLE CODE PREDICTS FACEBOOK SUCCESS! We are such suckers for looney lines like this that it would likely get a million clicks. The surprising thing is that the headline is true, from a certain point of view.

I discovered this by doing something else you will no doubt find looney: Reading Proverbs backwards.

Before you call for the guys in white jackets, let me explain. I read the Book of Proverbs through two or three times a year. Every time its accuracy and insight fascinates and instructs. But the phrases and cadences have become so familiar that I found I was just passing through, ignoring the scenery the way you do on an oft-traveled road. So I decided to read the book in reverse order. That’s when things started to pop, especially regarding FACEBOOK.

I am a daily FACEBOOK visitor. Sometimes it is a time waster. But other times it is, as it was designed to be, a great facilitator of relationships. Given the shredding of our sense of community in the last fifty years FACEBOOK, and mediums like it, is increasing our ability to know and understand one another across the artificial divides created by our suburbanized, isolated, hyper-mobile car-culture. It is the electronic front porch where neighbors stop briefly for a friendly chat, share helpful information, and strengthen the bonds of civilization. That’s a good thing, usually.

Then there’s the dark side of FACEBOOK, the crude comments, political rants, and thoughtless posts and re-posts that in a public setting, even with neighbors on one’s own front porch, we wouldn’t normally utter. FACEBOOK can’t recreate the proximity that prevents us from disgracing ourselves and as a result people have lost friends, jobs, opportunities, careers, and reputations, sometimes permanently. As a result most large employers now have strict social media rules in place and restrict access on their in-house networks.

That’s why THE FACEBOOK PROVERBS are so important. They were written long ago for a people trying to achieve honorable community in the land of Israel. Their composer and compiler, Solomon, was one of the most wise and successful leaders who ever lived. Using them as a guide to all of our social posts will help us achieve that rarest of cultural commodities: courtesy. They are marked in the margin of my Bible with a large F and now that this post has grown so long I will only share a few in hopes that they will whet your appetite to look for more. You will be amazed at how relevant they are.

A fool finds no pleasure in understanding
but delights in airing his own opinions. Pr. 18:2

A fool’s lips bring him strife,
and his mouth invites a beating.
A fool’s mouth is his undoing,
and his lips are a snare to his soul.
The words of a gossip are like choice morsels;
they go down to a man’s inmost parts. Pr. 18:6-8

Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud,
but humility comes before honor.
He who answers before listening—
that is his folly and his shame. Pr. 18:12-13

The first to present his case seems right,
till another comes forward and questions him. Pr. 18:17

From the fruit of his mouth a man’s stomach is filled;
with the harvest from his lips he is satisfied.
The tongue has the power of life and death,
and those who love it will eat its fruit. Pr. 18:20-21

One last one is not from The Book of Proverbs but from the late L. R. Barnard, professor of Historical Theology:

Cultivate courtesy gentlemen; it is the oil that lubricates the fine machinery of civilization.

Now, I wonder how many clicks this title will get. 