A Good Christian Testimony? Really?! Are You Sure?

For me, Facebook is a main connection to other human beings. I often go for four or five days without speaking when I am not teaching. And Facebook tells me what friends and relatives are up to. And like clockwork, every Saturday night, the Internet lights up with apparently everyone Christian on there saying things very much like:

Albert Schister just wants to fall deeper and deeper in love with his beautiful, glorious Lord and Savior Jesus Christ the King of Kings and the truly lovely Lord of Lords who he has been devoting his entire summer to serving most productively in various communities! Let me fall deeper and deeper into your arms my savior as I gaze into your loving faithful eyes! Praise Him! 5 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister and Winona Schister like this.

Faith Stadt is truly looking forward to a blessed time tommorrow morning when she can just serve and praise and worship and bless the Lord in our truly blessed Whipstock Repeating Bible Chapel which is full of such wonderful, Christ-centred on-fire Christians! I am delivering a very special and annointed message to the ladies auxilliary rectory so please pray that they will just listen attentively and just really take in this Word From the Lord that I have Been Given! What a Savior! 5 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister and 158 others like this.

Joey Phillips is totally stoked to be going out to Brindlewood tomorrow morning and having his face. Preached. Off! God is awesome! (ps get SerpentCrush's new album "Flow" Thank me later) 10 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister likes this.

Nicole Thom wants 2 say god rawks!!! goin 2 church with my besties beth n jeff n laying down da PREE-aise acts 2 style!!! u go god!!! ;> 10 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister and Roberto Sanchez like this.

Roberto Sanchez wants everyone to know he enjoyed church when he was asked to just give a small talk about evangelism, leadership in outreach ministry and retreat conferences so much last week and spent a very productive week preaching in four prisons and distributing over 400 tracts for God! My God I ask you to warm my heart make me love you more and more as I should you are worthy help me feel it my heart is so cold sometimes but I seek to serve YOU and YOU only and not my own desires!!! Trust in HIM! 15 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister likes this.

Jeremiah Poule says he needs prayer as he is sliping so far frum GOD now i dont even rilly wont to go 2 church sumtimes but i will go enny way tomorrow maybee it will warm my heart with love for HIM pray for me pleese!!! i am SO far from GOD but not as far as rob and sarah pray that tehy will learn that HE is LORD and to stop serving SELF but hate it and serve HIM and HIM ALONE like i told them but they luv the World! Praise the LORD!!! seek to serve HIM! 15 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister and 10,438 others like this.

Todd Wilkenson has a special word he has been asked to give tommorow morning (click for the simulpodcast at http://www.risingmissionstarchallengechapel.com/pdcast/kchristenson.mp4) about how we really need to, as Christians, remember to pray, as God's Word tells us, that Obama not be allowed to totally RUIN our country too much before we can get him voted safely back out again!!! Remember, Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!!! Gay SHAME more like!!! LOL :P What a Savior!!! (click here for an mp3 of my pastor's heartwarming and inspiring ministry for our "All About Him Month" on why The Shack is of Satan and what you can do to get it banned from your city library using the 49th ammendment) 25 minutes ago - Comment - Like - Albert Schister and 2,746 others like this.

(That is my "amplified version" of what they actually type, but they are all real people with their names changed here who really say that kind of stuff.) This all makes me want to slap people. Tell them "Find a closet. And go pray in THERE, rather than broadcasting your homoerotic prayers to your 1, 573 friends on Facebook. Remember who you're talking to, and talk to Him." Tell them "Don't advertise the details of every one of your pious works on the Internet! Your left hand isn't supposed to know what your right hand has done if you do charity work. Some "Jesus" guy said that one time." Tell them "Don't ask God to make you love Him because you think you don't. That's kind of insulting, and again, go pray in private instead of broadcasting it." Tell them "Don't plug your sermons on Facebook like you're selling watermelons or having a sale in your lawnmower dealership." Tell them "Don't try to be a 'Christian Testimony' while dissing people at your church, or the Christian president of your country!" Don't send mixed messages like "Jesus Loves You God Hates Fags." Tell them, "God doesn't have a Facebook account, nor should one text Him."

If I say anything like that on Facebook, of course, five people immediately, rudely tell me off and refuse to discuss the matter at all, and if any are friends, they will immediately unfriend and block me after saying I should be ashamed of myself, and five other people I don't know or never thought to hear from on God's green earth again after all these years will then immediately friend me and say "I agree with you SO much but can't find the courage to just SAY that!" Makes me wonder. What's the what? (as Buffy used to say.)

This sort of thing really is an absolute magnet for abuse from Christians (and, in one notable case, a Muslim, who wrote "u r gay get help for ur anger issues" and when a friend jestingly and inaccurately replied "I am a gay and was quite disappointed with the quality of your post. Please address more gay issues in your next comment" the gentleman duly responded "allah sez gays r evil")

People wonder, "How can you be a Christian and not feel a warm glow deep down in your stomach when you read Facebook statuses that are such clear examples of being a good example to nonChristians who might read them, and Christians alike?!" I think if I wasn't a Christian, I wouldn't care a bit what they say. That's what I think. And I do care. I am mortified. And angry. And confused.

Not the least because I have perfectly reasonable, good conversations, on and off the Internet with them, 6 days out of the 7, and then Saturday night and all day Sunday (or at seemingly random intervals) they bust out stuff like that.  I like most of these guys a lot.  (the guy I based "totally stoked Joey Phillips" on, I directed to check this out and recognize which one was him.  I don't even think he was mad.  He said he didn't think he'd said "face. preached. off" for some time.  It has been months since he talked like that, it is true, but I only put it on here for colour anyway, not because I thought it was a really bad testimony.  And he thinks people should actually check out Project 86 right now, and not SerpentCrush's "Flow", because I just made that one up.  He sarcastically thanked me for "memorializing [him] in the annals of my blaugh" and so in return I thanked him for using both "n"s in "annals.")

So, you like people, and then they suddenly post in tongues on Facebook.  What do you do with that?  They're not idiots.  They know stuff.  So can you have a private word about the impression they're giving?  Dunno, really.