Cedric Miller of Living Word Christian Fellowship laid down the law in an effort to help marriages thrive.
Here’s the USA Today article link: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2010/11/pastor-worried-about-infidelity-tells-church-leaders-to-quit-facebook-or-resign/1
When I first saw this I thought, “Jeepers creepers. What will we ban next?”
However, as I pondered a little more I began to appreciate exactly where Pastor Cedric Miller was coming from…and I don’t blame him at all. As a pastor myself for 24 years (I retired from my Northeast Bible Church, Garden Ridge, TX, in January to speak and write more), I know what he is talking about. I, too, have counseled with folks who have reconnected with old flames through Facebook. It makes sense that if they didn’t reconnect there wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately, faithfulness in marriage involves a little more than being careful to not make a place for temptation.
The monastic life is the extreme…steal yourself away from the world and being righteous will be easier. Even as I type these words the news of Tony Parker and Eva Longoria getting a divorce is all about the web (apparently Tony cheated…I guess: http://www.hollyscoop.com/eva-longoria/source-tony-parker-begging-eva-for-forgiveness_25783.aspx). I live in San Antonio, so it’s a local heartbreak too!
So, what’s the answer? Commitment for sure. Building a solid relationship, definitely. Staying away from temptation, of course.
Yet, there is a bigger word we need: FREEDOM
This is the heartbeat of what the book Glaen: A Novel Message on Love, Romance, and Relating is all about. Freedom means that we learn to honor one another and completely get off the doomed path of trying to control everyone around us, especially the person we love in a couples-kind-of-love. When we start putting controls on the relationship (any relationship), we are simply engaging in MANIPULATION. All manipulation does is cover up true love.
While the goal is understandable, making it a law is not. ASKING his leaders to volunteer abandoning Facebook is quite different from demanding it. We will never RULE sin out of people, nor will we create enough rules to force someone to love us and be faithful. It’s this crazy GOLDEN RULE (rule = principle here) that will make the difference. Be faithful and grow love because that’s what you’d want! Does that guarantee success? No, nothing guarantees success. But, don’t you want someone to be faithful to you because he WANTS TO? If everyone HAS TO behave, then it isn’t real or authentic.
I know this is an incomplete answer, but we live in an incomplete world (the next one will be perfect!).
If you’d like to hear a free audio message of these wild ideas about true love and authentic relating, then please click here to get it:
Having someone love you because she wants to is awesome. Loving someone because you want to is awesomeX2. Trying to make yourself or the other person ‘behave right’ doesn’t cultivate this kind of love…only FREEDOM does!
God bless,
Fred Lybrand
Pastor Says Quit Facebook or Resign…
Here at World Spinner we are debating the same thing……
a great post! so many need to GET the heart of this message (myself included…)