Monday, October 22, 2012

Like ME

We look for love in all the wrong places. Few things expose this more than the Facebook status or photo. Today my city includes the Facebook community that I connect with regularly. We all fall prey to the inner vultures that seek the rancid emptiness that cries, "look-at-me-and-love-me." Our social media posts are often quite revealing here. Many posts are updates for "friends" to peer into our day's activities and our heart's opinions. This is as valid as two friends connecting and catching up over coffee. But some posts (though we may not know exactly which ones) put our inner hunger for love on display.

We can too often post for our own self-promotion. This can come in the form rants and jr. philosopher talk (like this blog, perhaps). It can come in provocative moral-shock posts or the Cosmo-cover looking webcam photos in tight clothing or lack of it. What are we really saying? Is this a cry for love drenched in to acid rain of our culture?

Some of this can be labeled a type of vulnerability. Some vulnerability can be healthy in a mutually agreed relational circle of grace which includes wise feedback and "speaking the truth in love" (Bible: Ephesians 4:15). Most of us lack such a safe family atmosphere. Few have the tools to communicate our feelings (or track our emotions and their underlying causes) in appropriate safe and life-giving ways.

Churches are supposed to become those love-one-another places that help the growth of the person. God is the one who can teach us the wise grace of letting people view our inner status in a way that is healthy for everyone. We really do have a God-shaped vacuum that we are trying to fill. Beware the vultures.

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