Perhaps those who
ridiculed Columbus were right. The world is flat, they said. And today, we tend
to agree with them. At least Thomas Friedman does, and he’s not a nobody. I think
most people today agree with the idea that the world is flat. Physically it may
be as spherical as ever, but socially it is flatter than a 2-liter of soda left
open in the refrigerator. With the advent of Facebook, social media became the
primary form of communication. It eliminated the boundaries of time and space
taking away the distance between peoples, cultures, and countries. And once the
box of Pandora is open, there was no turning back. Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogspot,
Stumbleupon, Mashable, Wordpress, Flickr, Google+ and so many other avenues of
sharing, building contacts, writing, networking, finding new people, marketing,
sharing resources and life experiences developed and continue to develop. It
seems the moment you join another new social network, 5 more pop up and you are
once again left behind the trend. Though the benefits of social media have been
outrageous for businesses, families, friends, and even cultural understanding,
there are some downfalls particularly when it comes to faith and religion. For
one, the pace of social media is completely counterintuitive to the pace of
religion. Where social media leaves no time to even breathe, religion requires
silence and nothingness. Social media enables us to use every second
efficiently, faith requires a stillness that can take hours to maintain. The
world of social media is rapidly taking over, and the question of faith is
being left behind. Can the two mutually exist? Must we choose one over the
other?
Social media is
one of those forces that you either love and can’t live without, or can’t
stand, don’t understand and don’t care for. This perhaps is due to the
generation gap between the typewriter generation and the multimedia generation.
The effect of industrialization started fast but has sped up exponentially
resulting in a deep divide between those who cannot live without social media
and those who abhor and misunderstand it. And then there are those who have a
love-hate relationship with social media; fawning over the virtues of communicating
across the seas one minute, and then panting in frustration when all of a
sudden the field of social media doesn’t work the way it should. In this way it
is exactly like religion. You have the truly devoted that see no problem with
their faith. They find religion to be the only answer to all the problems of the world,
even at the expense of rational thought. As long as these types are told
precisely what to do and how to live their lives, it doesn’t seem to matter if
it’s rational or not. As if the God who created us, gave us a mind that we are
not allowed to utilize.
On the other side
of the spectrum there are those who critically undermine every element of faith
as if their reason is perfect and nothing can exist if they cannot comprehend
it. The world, to them, is only that which they can grasp with their rational
thought, though time and history have proven over and over again that human
reason is fallible and ideas once accepted as absolute truth have proved to be
absolute false. Then there are those who love faith when it is convenient, but
when it comes to conviction of practice they resent religion as old-fashioned.
In this way both the realms of religion and social media provide connection
with something outside of ourselves, yet a need to believe in the power it
offers. Though similar in service to the human race, social media and faith
cannot be likened as two peas in one pod. There is a critical difference in how
each attempts to shape the human experience. One is about the depth of purpose
and realization of a reality beyond the world, and the other is obsessed solely
with the world, its forces and implications of societal interaction. One is
about the reality beneath the appearance, the other about the appearance over
all substance.
As our world begins to depend more and more
on the force of social media, will we be replete in living solely on the
illusion of appearance?
