The Church Sofa

Since September last year, The Church Sofa blog has been reading through Soul Survivor Bible in a Year reading plan. It didn’t seem that bad at first and then we got to the end of October. Maybe it was balancing life with a new born with life at work, but maybe the book of Leviticus didn’t help.

Possibly because I was fairly sleepy at that time, and that’s its arguably quite a dry read, I guess I found Leviticus a bit of a struggle. If you also struggle with it, can I recommend this post by @lucymills, particularly the following section:

Culture is not an easy thing to explain and identify, however much we talk about it. Because we are immersed in it. We don’t just look at culture, we look through it. Culture is not merely a picture, it’s a lens.

Israel was called to look through a different lens. Not the one of the Egyptians. Nor the one of those who had lived in Canaan before them. The laws in Leviticus were so specific because they were reacting to something specific – something happening in one of those other cultures. Something that spoke of other practices and other gods. But Yahweh was different. Yahweh was not confined or hinged to one place or that. Yahweh was not like the other gods, bickering amongst themselves. Yahweh was holy – purely distinctive – and his people were to reflect that.

We’re called to be distinctive, but how are we meant to be distinctive with our activities online? I’m going to look at four different approaches.

Do you limit your access? A recent book from Tim Chester entitled “Will You Be My Facebook Friend?” (Amazon Link), seems to take a cautious approach to Social Media, and particularly Facebook. He raises concerns about Facebook’s effect on how people spend their time, present their own image, and its effect on their local relationships. As such he seems to suggest taking a cautious approach to time taken on social networking. Do you take a careful approach to how long you spend on Twitter / Facebook etc? Is there a difference between spending a lot of time on a site like Facebook, compared to GodTube, Christian Chirp, and Believers Space?

I don’t know what your news feeds are like, but I do occasionally see some quite strong images and ideas. Do you share positive and encouraging sayings and Bible passages to lighten other peoples lives?

I was struck by this article on churchmag the other day: “Can Christians Influence the Internet Culture?“, which quotes Wikipedia with:

In Internet culture, the 1% rule or the 90–9–1 principle (sometimes also presented as 89:10:1 ratio)[1] reflects a hypothesis that more people will lurk in a virtual community than will participate. This term is often used to refer to participation inequality in the context of the Internet.

The site itself includes a diagram that shows these sorts of figures quite simply, but the numbers make a good point. What if more Christians were actively engaged online in either conversations or creating content? Is there anything that the current creators of content can do to encourage more people to get involved? What if a mark of Christian distinctiveness online, was simply being involved?

I guess personally I try and follow this simple advice from #CNMAC12:

Share your life online. Someone may be better off because of it.

What simple guide lines do you have?

This post originally appeared on The Big Bible Website.