Facebook & God

I can be a bit of a luddite when it comes to new things. I love gadgets and technology so a mobile phone became a must but for a long time I preferred a phone call to a text conversation!  How things change, when I started into chaplaincy at Glasgow Warriors  the principal form of primary contact with any of team apart from my weekly “being around” is text to their mobile phones.  The same applied to computers, great for word processing, dealing with figures, editing photos, searching for information on the internet and even using e-mail but social networking that’s another thing.   So it was only recently that I decided I ought to catch up and set up a face book account (you can find me at facebook.com/geoff.redmayne).

I am fascinated how people use it. Some folk seem to diarise their every moment and status comments can range from the banal “I’m bored” to the really interesting “I am a new grandmother” through the informative “stuck in hospital” to the ridiculous “the best”. On the other hand some folk never write anything about themselves but are clearly watching what other folk write and are quick to comment. Others still I suspect simply watch what everybody else is doing.  That said it’s been great to catch up with some old friends from way back.  Someone I worked with back in the 80s found me and we caught up on colleagues we had worked with. A couple of Sharon’s friends from schooldays have also turned up and it is good to keep up with them. It’s also been great to share in folk’s photographs of various travels and events, some of them posted as they travel. So all in all my experience to date has been positive.

It has got me thinking, however, if God had a Facebook page what would it be like?

The first thing to note is that your own privacy setting would not be a lot of good.  Folk by their very nature are selective about what they share on Facebook. Even those who seem to write a minute by minute account of their life in their status updates aren’t sharing everything.  To be honest whether on Facebook or in our day to day encounters we all tend to let people see the person we want them to see.  We’ll share some experiences with them but others we’ll keep firmly in the drawer marked “private”.  Nothing wrong in that necessarily, some things are private and rightly so, just so long as we are not being two faced about it!

The point is that God sees right past our “privacy” settings. Somewhat unfair perhaps but he sees right inside you and sees the real you.  Your joys, your sorrows, your pain, your heartache, your emotions, your desires (both for the good and not so good), your ambitions, your successes, your failures, your true potential and more, these are all an open book to God. He actually knows you better than you know yourself, he knows what makes you tick, he knows what you need and he knows what is best for you.  You can lock the “Book of You” or assign parts of it never to be read but God knows every letter on every page, even those you may have hidden away from yourself!  Scary thought perhaps but it should also be a comforting thought, God knows you...as a mother knows her child, as a shepherd knows his sheep.  You don’t have to “add” God as a “friend” for him to see everything there is to see. You don’t have to “add” God as a “friend” for him to know you.

So what about God’s page?  Well he certainly hasn’t locked it away behind privacy settings. Everything there is to know about God is in the public domain. Some of it can be deduced from creation, some from human nature and even more from the pages of the Bible. God has revealed himself to us, perhaps, no more so than in His Son Jesus Christ.  That said it helps to “add” him as a “friend”.  When you do all the information you ever needed to know about God just seems that much more accessible. When you “add” God as a “friend” you will find the story of His great and wonderful love for you. Not a fairytale story but a real story. A story that begins before the beginning of time yet a story that is set in time and history. The story of a God who is love. The story of a God who gives of himself that you might know and experience that love for yourself.  Once you add him as a friend he will constantly post on your “wall” letting you know that he is there for you. His “status” updates will simply state “God is love”, for there can be no better description of God and His activity.

So to conclude Geoff Redmayne is “in my study putting the finishing touches to my March Covenanter article hoping that folk will start to get an inkling of just how much God loves them…”

Watch out for the mad March hares and the glory of daffodils as winter finally gives way to spring!

Geoff Redmayne