so yesterday we lost a rugby match. like a game. i hear there’ll be another one in a few weeks time. in four years time there will even be this kind of one. we won it before. a different team will win it this time. the world will continue to turn.
within twenty minutes of us losing the game i was completely bummed. not because we lost the game, but because naturally facebook statusville became the dumping ground for peoples emotions. which is fine. i was bummed we lost and posted a status of ‘aw’ or something [i am a bigger cricket fan than rugby so maybe that blunts it a little] and a more hardcore ‘robbed’ or something on twitter. but then i thort about it for a quick moment and had a perspective ‘it’s a game’ moment and so changed it to something more happy or pleasant or something.
and then i started seeing the updates. which started with people being bummed. and progressed to people being really bummed. then the south african’ness kicked in and people started being bummed with the ref. [cos clearly with 80% possession it was really only his fault that we lost the game] and then i started reading statements about how the ref should be high fived in the face with a brick and how someone else if confronted with Hitler and the ref and two bullets would shoot the ref twice or something [there’s some great perspective for you] and i just heard the ultimate extreme of ‘What do South Africans and the USA have in common? They both faced tragedies of 9-11’ [being the score we lost by as opposed to the date some planes were directed into buildings killing thousands of people]. Wow. Really?
back in the day i would have probably jumped on to a whole bunch of statuses [stati?] and taken people on and challenged and so on [but my wife rightly says i do that too much and so i am trying to be better at doing it more selectively] and so i tried to rather focus my energies on creating positive statuses [stati?] on my own page to channel a different kind of energy [altho i did make a ‘bummed’ twitter tweet at it which was not appreciated by someone]. tbV posted a challenge status and people started taking her on [as they do] and so i tried really hard to not get involved in that one.
am i saying don’t be bummed by the fact that we lost the rugby world cup match? not at all. be bummed. but try and keep it in perspective.
but the real point of this blog goes beyond that. it is the reaction to Val’s statement and the kind of reaction that arrives strongly any time you try and call someone publically on some public stance they make on facebook. i have had people unfriend me because of it. “how dare you challenge me publically on a public statement i am making?”
the current reality of it is that facebook statuses [stati?] and twitter feeds have become a place where people feel the freedom to dump emotionally without any form of accountability… so cowards feel the freedom or bravado to ‘say’ things they would never say to people and no-one is held accountable or generally appears to want to be… all people want is to be able to say what they want to say and screw anyone else [that sounds pretty harsh but i honestly believe that’s where we currently find ourselves]
and it is not healthy or good – as good friends to each other we should have accountability especially to speak into the lives of those we are really close to and need to really challenge each other on how we speak and live and status update… and it needs to be mutual. and we need to take it seriously. ESPECIALLY if we identify ourselves as Jesus followers.
think before you speak [i know, i know, i far too often struggle with mouth-moves-faster-than-my-brain’alism] and realise that when you facebook status update or tweet you are in fact speaking. people are listening. people are reading. people are watching.
where is the iron sharpening iron?
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Irresistibly Fish 