THANKS TO FACEBOOK, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, we are now connected to friends and family worldwide. Some of those relationships are with people we’ve never met.
With one click we can like or share what we’ve seen, and if a phone call interrupts us, we’ve always got voice mail or the prepared text message that says, “Can’t talk right now.”
And we wonder why we are alone.
What was meant for good has turned against us. We have grown dependent on technology, and like any substitute for intimacy, it separates us from flesh and blood where real life occurs.
Like all addictions, we cannot see the harm until we are trapped, controlled, and otherwise enslaved by the belief that we cannot function without our electronic gadgets.
If you don’t believe you’re addicted, try to go on vacation as your grandparents did in the old days without your computer or smartphone.
“Heavens, no!” you say, “that’s too long.”
Okay, how about trying to leave your phone at home tomorrow and trust that your friends can find your work number if they need you?
Did you stop breathing?
Relax. I only asked a question.
Electronic connections are not friendships. They are merely connections, which give a false sense of security, a false sense of importance, a false sense of belonging.
Friendships are quite different.
Friendships require more than thoughts and platitudes delivered in sound bites. They require the heart to heart contact and your eyeball-to-eyeball time.
And that, my friend, is becoming more frightening today than it ever was.
Go into any restaurant, movie lobby, airport, or coffee shop and notice how many people are not talking, but are staring into their gadgets. It’s not that they don’t crave intimacy—Into Me You See—because they do, but it is because they don’t know how to be the possibility for intimacy.
If you are alone, even when in the company of people, and you would like to be known, really known, try to be the possibility for intimacy with someone.
Get off your gadget and get interested in the life of a real human being by listening to the answers to the questions you ask.
This is the beginning of all friendships.
Care and concern for another person break through the breastplate that hides the heart and creates the opportunity to connect to yours.
Aloneness is the result of an inability to trust people.
Loneliness is the result of an inability to trust God.
Both people and God would like to connect with you, but you must make the choice to trust them with your heart.
You must be willing to be the possibility of intimacy and trust that you will not die by being vulnerable with your own heart.
You may feel awkward, but you will not die. Rather, you will find people and God have been waiting for you to muster the courage to come out of hiding and join the real world, forsaking the virtual reality that will never deliver what you need.
Intimacy is as contagious as addictions, but intimacy satisfies the need to connect while addictions separate you from the living.
Give it a try and you may soon find you don’t have time for social media as you once did because you’re busy building trustworthy relationships.
And then remember to thank God for using you to be the possibility of intimacy in another life.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. –Jesus (John 15:13)
Proverbs 18:24,Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, Proverbs 27:17, 1 John 4:7
As always, it is my intent and hope that my words may encourage you wherever you are in your journey.
If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.–Jesus (Mark 4:23)
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What a tremendous message!!!! …and so VERY true!!!