Disclaimer: Please note, by pointing out the following, I do not mean to suggest that I have used social media perfectly at all times. These are simply some observations and lessons learned from my own personal experience.
Pros
- First and foremost, most people enjoy social media because we are social people and we like to stay in touch.
- The tremendous opportunity and potential:
- Our culture is extremely bound up with social media. (If you disagree, you’re living under a rock; sorry.) Therefore, for Christians to abandon this new realm of social media would be, in a large sense, to disengage themselves from a significant sphere of our culture.
- In a similar way to how Christians used the invention of the printing press to advance the Gospel and Biblical thinking, the emergence of social media (obviously less significant than the invention of the printing press, but nonetheless–) provides us with a tremendous tool to do the same–advance the Gospel and Biblical thinking. Social media can be used to challenge and encourage other Christians and articulate the Gospel and other biblical truths to the lost. By simply creating a Facebook account, Twitter account, etc. (and assuming that you have some people who will “add” or “follow” you), you automatically have a “platform of influence,” a “public voice,” at least on some level. Whereas in previous times, to get something in print on a public level was somewhat difficult, now anyone can do it, which is both scary (con) and amazing (pro).
On January 13th I published a post analyzing and critiquing the viral video by Jefferson Bethke entitled, “Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus” (
This week I saw my Facebook flooded with a certain video, so I watched it. I knew where Jefferson Bethke (the author of the poem and individual in the video) was coming from and what he meant by his words, yet I was a little unsettled by this video.
Kirk E. Miller 