One of the downsides of twitter, facebook etc. is the growth in accessibility of sound bites, especially when we are limited to 140 characters. Each sound bite or slogan can seem so plausible, and maybe readily accepted, unless you take time to think a little more deeply into them. An example of this would be a tweet I read last year which confidently stated that "If it is not miraculous then God is not in it!" ... which might sound great but the more you think about it the more one realises that perhaps God is, in fact, very much present in the mundane things of life.
Another quote that I have been thinking about recently is this "A crisis is really an opportunity" ... Now, when crises present themselves to us we do have a choice as to how we respond to them - and rather than respond as helpless and hapless victims, we can respond in faith or rather in trusting God, who is good 'all the time'.
However, when this type of statement is made by Christians it can sometimes cause us to appear to be quite glib to the realities of crises, which can shake the entire foundation of someone's world. ie The rapid evacuation of a whole team from an area of the world, which necessitates the leaving behind of all friends, possessions etc without the opportunity to say goodbye is traumatic and we should acknowledge this. It may well be that, in the course of time, we are in the blessed place to understand what 'opportunity' a particular crises created - but all too often we are not and are left only with the ambiguous loss that crises so often create.
Anyway, this is really an appeal to all Christian 'tweeters' to be 'real' for those both inside and outside of the community of Christian faith ... life is complex and little sound bites don't really cut it when people have real questions.
PS - I am probably the worst hypocrite of all, so feel free to challenge me whenever my tweets sound like glib sound bites.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Another quote that I have been thinking about recently is this "A crisis is really an opportunity" ... Now, when crises present themselves to us we do have a choice as to how we respond to them - and rather than respond as helpless and hapless victims, we can respond in faith or rather in trusting God, who is good 'all the time'.
However, when this type of statement is made by Christians it can sometimes cause us to appear to be quite glib to the realities of crises, which can shake the entire foundation of someone's world. ie The rapid evacuation of a whole team from an area of the world, which necessitates the leaving behind of all friends, possessions etc without the opportunity to say goodbye is traumatic and we should acknowledge this. It may well be that, in the course of time, we are in the blessed place to understand what 'opportunity' a particular crises created - but all too often we are not and are left only with the ambiguous loss that crises so often create.
Anyway, this is really an appeal to all Christian 'tweeters' to be 'real' for those both inside and outside of the community of Christian faith ... life is complex and little sound bites don't really cut it when people have real questions.
PS - I am probably the worst hypocrite of all, so feel free to challenge me whenever my tweets sound like glib sound bites.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
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