Facebook Religion [karen]

When I finally got sucked into signing up for a Facebook account (after first rejecting the pressures several of those email invites from friends), I caved because I secretly thought my little sister really had discovered something cool that I was missing out on. So I signed in, filled out my profile and discovered the wonderful world of writing on walls and tagging pictures and starting poke wars with my friends. This was fun for about 9 days (okay so it was longer, but the “9 days” thing made me feel coolly aloof). Like so many fun and very useful technological inventions, it’s gotten old. But there’s one part that continues to intrigue me.

What I find fascinating is what people choose to enter in the ‘Religion’ field of their profiles. I’ve seen a wide variety of descriptions, from the more average “Christian” to the vague “Liberal” to “God Exists.” There are others that grab your interest because of their uniqueness, such as “Obsession with the Virgin Mary” and the ones that seem to have stemmed from an in-depth philosophical journey, like “I and Thou as Martin Buber describes it” and “Existential Theo-Humanist.” From the mind-numbing, to the simple “Jesus loves me,” Facebook’s religion status has it all. And that’s not even a cross section of the people who are on Facebook, those are just the people on my friend list.

There are also plenty of people whom I know are religious, but who have chosen, for whatever reason, to leave the religion section off of their profile completely. Some, no doubt, think it’s nobody’s business and don’t want their information out on the internet for all to see; some don’t want to be limited to a single category (read: box), and others don’t exactly know how to express the meaning of faith in a few short words. I fall into the latter two categories.

I refrained from simply putting “Christian” because, in the spirit of Donald Miller (whose refers to his religion as “Christian Spirituality” see Blue Like Jazz), I know that that one simple word (category? stereotype?) could be interpreted in far too many ways, most of them negative. Let’s be honest, the term “Christian” is often associated with hypocritical, close minded, anti-abortionist, right-wingers who inflict their religion on unwilling recipients. Though Christians have been given (and have made for themselves) a bad name, Jesus still seems to have a fairly good reputation. I’ve decided that I’d rather be associated with Jesus than with “Christians.” I was going to put “Follower of Jesus” on my profile, but felt that was a little arrogant, or I worried that people would think me arrogant, since I’ve never felt like I was really good at following him, so I simply settled on “Learning how to follow Jesus.” I’m still not completely satisfied with this description, but as I said before, attempting to condense the meaning of your faith into a few words is difficult task. At least, I haven’t been able to do it in a way that I’m satisfied with.

Through Facebook, I’ve come into contact with a lot of people that I knew when I was growing up. The interesting thing is that the (Christian) category I would have put them in back then is sometimes surprisingly different from what I find as their ‘religion’ now.

I found my best friend from elementary school. We attended a Christian school, back when private schools were few and far between in my city. Her religion status says “God and I had a falling out.” That statement brings up a lot of questions in my mind. What happened? Did she ask something of God? Didn’t he answer her? I wonder what she’s gone through. I only know a few things about her life and about a couple of events that may have broken her heart. It seems that something deep and painful must have happened for her to define her religion as a non-relationship with God.

I’ve also come into contact with a few friends who were a part of an excessively conservative home-schooling group. My family joined this group for a few years, but we weren’t in as deep as many others. Looking back, it was quite cultish. Girls had to have long hair and wear skirts, birth control was evil and the “good” families multiplied like rabbits, having 8-12 or more children. Rock music was evil, and we were to be suspicious of everything worldly. Two girls whose families were in a part of this group are single mothers. I found a support group on Facebook where people were recovering from the religious/emotional abuse that they felt they had endured. Many were not religious, or wished they could be, for the sake of their children, but only felt judgment and pain when they even thought about getting near a Bible. One man expressed that he had finally found freedom and acceptance in Wicca. I felt sad for these people, and lucky that my family hadn’t completely bought into all of the principles of this home school group.

It’s interesting that I find myself on quite a different path than many I have walked with in the past. My ‘religion’ status is technically in the same category it has been for most of my life, though many I know, with similar backgrounds, families and education have gone in different directions, and I’m not quite sure how to reconcile this. Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not looking down at them with pitying eyes, pretending I’m a faithful disciple; I’m not lamenting that they have fallen away. I just wonder why I haven’t. What makes the difference? I certainly don’t attribute it to my unwavering faith – it has been far from consistent. If anything, God has been has been holding on to me more tightly than I’ve been holding on to him.

But that presents a problem. Wasn’t he holding on to them too? How is it that I’ve become comfortable with a religion that is truly my own, and not just left to an existence inside the religious structures around me? I’m grateful. I have to be. I’ve been saved from so much, mostly crap of my own making. I suppose there’s still time, and he hasn’t necessarily let them go. I hope that these people who have been hurt by religion or feel abandoned by God will discover that that he’s still present. I also hope that all these ‘religions’ that have pushed me to think, will lead to questions and conversations about faith. I know that I also need to remember not to limit people to the ‘boxes’ on their Facebook profiles. We are more than we seem to be.