Social Media

11 Lessons College Teaches Beyond the Classroom

I have worked in college ministry for a decade. My wife teaches at the local university. We were talking about things we see people learn in college outside the classroom. There are many many more things that could have made the list, but here are 11 that came to us pretty quickly.

1. No one but you is going to wake your lazy butt up every day.

2. Time is valuable. You can spend it well or waste it worthlessly.

3. Laundry doesn't do itself.

4. You're responsible for your own actions.

5. Some people like you. Some people don't. Sometimes you'll change that. Sometimes you won't.

6. Math is important. Intro to Film is not.

7. Money doesn't grow on trees, puppies, or hubcaps.

8. The Internet lies, especially Social Media.

9. Choices have consequences and the future is real.

10. Friends that tell the truth, even hard truth, are better than friends that don't.

11. There are more important things than homework, but not very many.

The Right and Wrong Response to Tragedy

In times of crisis we regularly see people's hearts respond to God in remarkable ways. They promote generosity, kindness, compassion, and cooperation in ways that should make any ardent believer offer praise to our Heavenly Father. Danger, uncertainty, and loss cause us to look toward safety, certainty, and permanence. I believe that tragic moments actually cause us to lay aside our own shellfish rebellion and embrace what we know to be true about God and His goodness.

I am really saddened when I see this process cheapened by a harsh reaction from people who claim Christianity. To be fair, I have seen an incredible response from many believers. Responses of support, outreach, and genuine love. What baffles me is when people who follow Jesus weigh in on the situation with their notions of haughtiness. Let me explain what I mean.

In tragic situations responses like: "This is God's judgement." "We brought this on ourselves." Are not ok. These kinds of pronouncements are ridiculous. They are shameful. They might sound pious and pure, but the overtones of condemnation are an affront to the life-giving Spirit of Christ.

When our neighbors are distraught we should reach out to them lovingly. We should welcome any attempt they make to reconnect and be reconciled to God. We should welcome any attempt they make to reconnect and reconcile with each other. It is not a time to parade I-told-you-so's like a trophy of supremacy. If anything it is a sacred and holy opportunity to humble ourselves, to set aside our own differences of opinion about previous actions, offenses, and attitudes and lovingly display Jesus to a whole lot of people who are suddenly more interested in what he has to say.

You can read my initial thoughts about the tragedy here.

Good & Evil

I am a thinker by default. This does not mean that I am always very good at thinking as a discipline. It is merely the written observation that I often think. When tragedy strikes, as it did today, I think. I process both emotionally and rationally.

Like so many of you I found the news surrounding the tragedy at the Boston Marathon today to be horrendous. It is a very terribly sad thing to see so many lives so completely altered by the conscious vicious actions of another person or group of people. It is sobering, right down in your soul, to see the work of real evil manifest itself. I'll never be able to comprehend how a person/people rationalizes such willful hate against other human beings.

Times like these bring up a lot of questions about the nature of good and evil. It is an ancient quandary that I simply have not the time, nor energy, to wrestle with at this late hour. But I will say that I absolutely believe in the overwhelming goodness of God. In fact, days like today draw me closer to God's goodness rather than push me away.

My wife and I were eating at a local restaurant as much of the news began to unfold. And I was captivated by the sheer number of people running toward the danger. People wanted to help.

Yes, evil is real. Yes, it showed its ugly face today. But goodness is also real. And goodness gripped the heart of every man or woman who tossed aside their own safety to walk toward danger, debris, and disaster. I am thankful for the goodness of those who do the hard deed to see the hurting and helpless cared for. I am awed when I see the awesome kindness of God reach down in the midst of such reckless hatred and devastation.

Edit:Check out this blog about my opinions on a right and wrong way to respond as believers.

Pressing Mat

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/62283018 w=500&h=281] Mat's early years were marked by obesity and abuse. This led him to embrace alcoholism and drug addiction during his formative years. Hear him discuss hitting bottom, and battling back from the brink.

Motley

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/61459541 w=500&h=281] My latest short film is about Brandon. He is a family man, pest control technician, champion mixed martial artist, and Jesus. See what he has to say about fighting, faith, and pursuing your dream.

Memphis Lights

I'm pretty excited about finally being able to share the new short film with you guys. After hours and hours of work here it is.... [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljLuja369Gw&w=560&h=315]

 

Poverty and homelessness are prominent in parts of Memphis, TN. This is the story of one church's effort to share a light in the darkness.

 

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here's an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 3,300 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 6 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

Search Engine Queries

Search engines are great. You can type pretty much anything you can think of into one and it will probably connect you with something that lines up pretty well with your query. My blog host allows me to track all of the web searches that result in a hit on the site. This is a list of some of the humorous 2012 web searches that lead to nathanology. They are only funny because they are completely removed from the context of the article they arrived at. I hope you enjoy. These are completely unedited. 1. the face book post about hanging jesus for being a hippie liberal

2. slacktivism christianity

3. God hiking

4. where do liberals hang out on facebook

5. oh you have swag i bet that looks great on a resume

6. merica

7. what does "situation number 2" mean in storytelling?

8. huckleberry finn moral maturity

9. things that can be learned from spiderman

10. exploded brain

11. what in the heck is a doily

12. blistering sword

13. windows8 eats your soul

14. comic character in speedo

15. know me for my idiosyncrasies

16. football is idolatry

17. picture of the people walking with problems

18. who is francis chan going to vote for

19. they are just humanity’s way of trying to rationalize our own selfishness

20. people who pick up trash

Slacktivism and Christianity

Have you ever heard the term "slacktivism"? Perhaps not, but it is essentially a mash-up of slacker and activism. It is the common practice of taking a stance on a somewhat controversial issue or throwing your digital weight behind a cause via your social media accounts. In principle it is the notion of investing in a cause with little to no risk to yourself. We see this kind of thing crop up regularly in our fast paced social media driven culture. Already this year we've witnessed Kony 2012, No Shoes Day, and with the 2012 Presidential race under way, we will no doubt be subjected to at least a few dozen more before the ballots are cast in November.

In my opinion slacktivism is mostly harmless, it's silly, but it's pretty harmless. But the principle at work behind it is why I'm writing tonight.

I can't even begin to count how many times in a day my social media feeds are clogged with this same kind of feeble carbon copy content regurgitated into the world wide web by purported Christians. "Jesus Memes" are the worst. They take some kind of important theological truth, simplify it to the point of silliness, and blast it onto the wall of every well-meaning believer that is not quite up to par with their social media etiquette.

Who are we trying so very hard to convince with all that wanton posting of flowers, lambs, and Jewish caricatures? Its cheap, it cost us nothing. What's worse, it's so poorly contrived and pitifully rendered that it reinforces every ugly stereotype that exists involving the inherent inadequacy of "Christian art".

How about instead of just rehashing someone else's goofy pic, or groan inducing creed, we spend a few moments in quiet reflection and actually do something that will draw us closer to the Father. If we really love God so much maybe He deserves a little more out of us than a placeholder pic on our timeline or to be "liked" on Facebook.

The Christian faith is much more than a passing activist cause. It requires, and offers, more than a temporary connection for allegiance. It's price, is a paradox of worth, deserving of our undivided allegiance, and total investment.

10 Annoying Social Media Quirks

Life usually doesn’t fit into nice neat little lists, but that doesn’t keep me from trying.  Welcome to my Tuesday 10, where I try to fit the messiness of life into a list of ten. Social media is dominant in our society.  Facebook is quickly approaching the 1 billion accounts mark.  Most of us use it and love it, but not everything is great.  Some things people do or say on social media are just incredibly annoying.  Here's my take on ten of the things that annoy me most about social media.

1. Profile pics: The "Bathroom Mirror self portrait." Really?!? The "This is my cute kid, but not me," "This is my favorite sports team," and "this is my political affiliation" profile pics. No, it's supposed to be a picture of you. Use your cover pic for the rest of that crap. Actually, no, don't do that either please.

2. Facebook social game apps.

3. People who cry every time there is an update or change. Seriously guys, timeline is not the end of the world.

4. People that try to be clever, and fail in a way that's not funny enough for the rest of us to laugh about.

5. Creepers.

6. Shared accounts. Please, please, please, MrandMrs Sharedaccount, just stop. We all know it's really Mrs that does all the posting anyways. It's kind of confusing and weird. When Jesus said you would leave your mother and father and become one flesh I'm pretty sure he didn't have Facebook in mind.

7. My Space, LinkedIn, and Google +.

8. Slutty Twitter whores that unexpectedly follow you and tweet random virus riddled links with your name in them.

9. People who comment on trending topics just to show up in the feed. Even worse, people who double dip by putting multiple trending topics in one statement.

10. People who actually think online drama is real and then threaten to delete their Social Media accounts in order to gain attention. This really is the "grown up" version of running away.

Facebook Statuses are the New Christian T-Shirt

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

I am a very opinionated guy. I try to hold this in check (sometimes) but do not always succeed, ok,ok….. so I probably rarely succeed.  I’malso a college pastor.  It’s my job toshare the good news of the gospel with, well pretty much everyone.  I’m also a campus missionary, which means Iraise funds from people who believe in what I’m doing in order to support thework that I do, and that I need to communicate those happenings with them on aregular basis.

When you add all of that together you get a recipe for aconstant stream of religious content making its way onto my facebook profile.
Social networking is an interesting phenomenon.  We now have these tools at hand to postcontent, which hundreds of people can see the very moment we press [ENTER].  And pretty much everyone is doing it.  Opinions fly, poorly drafted diatribespersist, text speak abounds, and somewhere in the midst of all of that is acontinual stream of religious spam.
Amongst believers the facebook status has become thisgeneration’s equivalent of the Christian T-shirt.  It is something akin to that happy smileeveryone puts on Sunday morning when they get to church.
This new platform, which isn’t really that new anymore,gives everyone the opportunity to suddenly broadcast their thoughts into theonline arena of public discourse.  Butshould they?  When does it cease to bemeaningful communication or thought provoking engagement; and become socialspam.
I use facebook constantly. The window to my feed is open for upwards of eight hours a day, andsometimes, much, much more.  It justdepends on what I’m doing in my office on a given day.  For me, and my work, it is a constantstreaming opportunity to communicate with those who are incredibly important tome.  It is a chance to initiatemeaningful conversations, humorous exchanges, and opinionated arguments.  However, more than anything else, it is achance to keep up with what’s going on in people’s lives.
The point to this, now too long, post is that I amtired.  The constant attempts by mybrothers and sisters in Christ to one-up each other with the sheer epicness oftheir Jesus friendly broadcasts are exhausting. Truly, there are a few people who’s posts always hold relevance, insight,and encouragement; but honestly… a lot of it, most of it, I just skipover.  I’ve already read my Bible thismorning, thanks.  Or as one friend said,“anything that sounds like Lord of the Rings dialogue I can do without.”
I know.  I'm really not one to be pointing any fingers.  I'm as bad about this as anyone.  Worse even, probably; but I do try to at least weigh the worth of what I have to say.  This is certainly an area where all of us of the faith couldlearn, and apply, the old saying, “Less is More.”

Today

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...Image via CrunchBaseWhat does your day look like today?  Mine is busy.  Reeeeaaaally busy.  It's that good kind of busy that I often look forward to it, but that doesn't make for any easier of a day, just one that I will most likely enjoy more.

I couldn't even begin to tell you how often I open Twitter on my iPhone to see people railing about how terrible their day is.  It's no different on facebook either.  Some people are just always endlessly whining about something that has ruined their day.

Lately I've just started removing those people from my news feed.  I'll either unsubscribe, unfollow, or just block someone that is always whining.... always.  There are a few people I went to high school with that are especially like this, and it sort of serves to remind me why I didn't really care to be around them way back then.  Of course, there are several newer acquaintances that get the sharp side of the unfollow-axe too.

My days are usually fairly busy and even though I know I'm probably not always Captain Happy (Jamie would probably be quick to agree) I don't have time today to sort through all the incessant moaning and complaining.

Today is too short to fill it up with ill-influencers, negative news, and rotten-egg attitudes; plus, today is probably better than you think it is.

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