Life Without Facebook...again

Since last Friday I haven't been on Facebook. That's six days now. Six! I won't lie. It hasn't been easy. Curing this "healthy" addiction isn't all its cracked up to be. But I gotta try.

So why did I deactivate my account? Lots of reasons. One big reason was that it seemed to consume my free time. Am I bored? Spend 15 minutes browsing people's pictures. Another reason was that it didn't seem healthy. I would infer things from Facebook. You can infer lots of things really, some which are probably true and others that are not. So if I could infer about others, certainly others could infer about me.

But besides wasting time and coming to conclusions without much basis, the real thing that bothered me is that it's not as good of a social tool as it's made up to be. I didn't bond to anyone while I was on Facebook. My relationships didn't grow deeper with any of the 108 people who listed me as their friend.

Oh I know, I know. I'm missing the point. And I am sure I am. But if I am your friend, truely your friend, then their should be more to our relationship than leaving two lines posted on your wall.

So I'm rebelling. I'm 26 going on 60. I'll be back on next week, I'm sure of it. Leave me a post!

Conditional Love

I've been reading Blue Like Jazz lately. I loathe that book. It convicts me everytime I read it. Sometimes it convicts me more than the Bible. It certainly convicts me more than going to church.

In almost every chapter something sticks out to me that I need to work on. Tonight it was the idea of conditional love. I realized that I give love out based on only selfish reasons. If you talk to me and give me your time, I'll love you. If I have something to gain from having a friendship with you, I'll love you. If you are a good person, I'll love you. However, if none of these three conditions is true than I'll be nice to you. I'll placate you. But forget getting "true love" from me.

While this sounds awful and shallow, there is even something worse than that. I view God's love as conditional. If I'm a nice person who goes to church and helps out, God will love me. If I sin and mess up, God will hate me. Or at least that's what I think. Which explains why I don't feel like God loves me too often. Because I'm not that good of a person. I don't deserve His love.

And I don't. Yet He loves me anyway. So I must start to love others whether they have "earned" my love or not. If someone hurts me I need to love them anyway. If I'm disappointed I need to love them as well. If I seemingly have nothing to gain from someone, I will love them as well. To do that I'm going to have to learn true love. Perhaps removing the conditions on love is a good place to start.

Popular

There are a lot of people in the world. Way over six billion, I think. And there are always people coming and going, keeping that number in flux. I decided this past week I can't be friends with all of them.

You see, I realized over the past few weeks I've stretched myself too thin. I have lots of friends. I don't say that in some self-congratulatory way, or in a way that cries out from low self-esteem of a person wanting to be popular. I say that as a statement of fact. I also think it is ok to have lots of friends. The more people you know, the more people you can help in this world.

But at the same time I know very few people well. Of my close circle of thirty, very few know what I did this week or how I was doing each day. In fact, none probably do. That is no fault of their own; they are certainly great friends. It's not like I know what any of them have been up to either.

So I decided I need to get off the popularity kick. It's not really me. I like to meet new people. I like to make new friends. But thinking that I need to be friends with everyone is a little vain. Not everybody needs me quite like I think they do. But a few do. And I need them too.