For What it’s Worth…

I love Facebook.
I love Twitter.
I love Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone no matter where I am in the world (almost)!

But I’m a little worried.  To tell you the truth, I’m a lot worried.  I’m worried about what’s going to happen to a whole generation of young people when Facebook catches up with them.  If you’re under 20, you’re a member of the iGeneration, who along with us GenXers, could also be called the Facebook Generation.

If you use Facebook, I wonder how much thought you’ve given to what impact the information you post on your profile and on other people’s walls will have on you later in life.  Remember last week when Facebook asked you “What’s on your mind?” and you wrote that funny comment (or so it seemed at the time)?  Just because that comment has slipped off the bottom of your wall, doesn’t mean that it’s gone forever.  In fact, it almost certainly hasn’t. Think also of your comments on other people’s walls or photos; even if you close your Facebook account and formally request Facebook to delete your page, these comments will remain, since they are information that you have “shared with third parties.”

I thought that as Clayton’s name was all over this blog and it claimed to be from “two guys”, I, the silent partner, had better speak up.

I have been working on “lust” this week – to be precise, before I get buried under your pastoral concern, I have been working on what Jesus says about it [Matthew 5.27-30] and why it is NOT GOOD.  Funny enough, the Basement group last night looked at the same passage last night.

What struck me this week was that sin can kill ‘Christians’.

Many of us love the great doctrines of grace, atonement,  predestination – and we rest our assurance on the work of Christ for us alone.  I stand ONLY on what Jesus did and NEVER on what I do.  But Jesus tells us that unless we are radical [in the sense of getting to the root] in dealing with our sin our eternal fate may be a bit hotter than we anticipate.  Does Jesus expect perfection – well [the good Anglican answer] yes and no.  Yes – “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect”.  No – this is a goal we will not reach this side of judgement.  BUT IT MUST BE OUR GOAL

It’s impossible to do justice to such a significant topic in a limited space, but we can think of God’s holiness as being both his unique ‘otherness’ in terms of power, authority and glory, and also his perfect purity. There is none like our God! Because of God’s holiness, the New Testament urges Christians also to be holy, (ie 1 Peter 1:15), that is to be ‘separate’ in the sense of distinctive, and pure.

In his letter to Titus, pastor of the church in Crete, The Apostle Paul identifies God’s desire for holiness among his people as the reason for Christ’s life, death and resurrection, “to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good” Titus 2:14.