The spirit of facebook

Upfront, let me say I hate facebook. (The local newspaper made their sign-on your facebook ID, so I had to have one.) What need it serves, except superficial opinioneering, is hard to see. When I want to talk to friends, I send them an e-mail: when I want to express my thoughts, I write a blog-entry. But that's (evidently) just me.

Nonetheless, no work of man, including facebook, is spirit-free. Even facebook's superficial opinionating is sufficient to show what spirit it rises from.

Doubtless the content we experience on facebook depends largely on who our "friends" are. Most of mine are my long-time (real-world) friends and family, their wives and husbands and children. Most of my friends are like me: in their 60s or older, middle-class, middle-American Christians. Their posts are probably a fair reflection of the spiritual-temperature of that demographic.

It's disheartening. What I see there, endlessly repeated, is violent hatred for anyone my friends consider their flesh-and-blood enemies: Obama, "liberals," Muslims, Democrats. Contempt for the poor, sick (or anyone who dares think "Obamacare" might help the sick), aliens. Every day there are approving re-posts of belligerent anti-government opinion, belligerent assertions of our rights (especially gun-rights), fawning tributes to our military, historical lies a la David Barton, current-events lies a la Glenn Beck, mindless Americanism.

It's all leavened with "Christian" posts. Many are mere sentimentality: some are just nonsense, or worse ("I love Jesus: if your (sic) not ashamed of our Savior, re-post this to all your friends and you will receive a special blessing!!").

If my friends' facebook posts are any indication, the spirit of this time is rebelliousness, lies, violent hatred, nationalism...tricked out with a few pious bumper-stickers to present itself as "Christian." If lies and hate-mongering masquerading as Christ isn't the definition of the spirit of antiChrist, I don't know what is.

May God move our nation and our generation to deeply REPENT its evil spirit !!