antisocial networking

for lent this year, i gave up twitter. it made me realize how i've wasted space and time, focusing my mind on things that don’t even matter. (guess what princesscourtney67? i don’t actually care that your bichon frise just threw up in your Louis Vuitton heels) it feels like God has given me a way to turn off this news feed that’s been feeding me with news i don’t even need. and if God is always speaking, then I’ve been tuned in to the wrong radio station, listening to nothing but white noise. static, stuck in those moments chronicled in 140 characters or less. for lent this year, i gave up twitter. i gave up the fear of not keeping up with the Joneses in exchange for the fear of God, the fear that i’m gaining the world and losing my soul to social networks, trapped in a spider’s web that's been spun by the ebb and flow of pop "culture" and i’m the prey, God, so I pray, God, that you make a way to turn me away from this odd way of looking at life through an artificial lens-- these fake filters as if this is instagram, (hashtag) no filter there is no filter to the information that inundates us like acid rain, brainwashing us, hacking into our mainframes and replacing personalities with names and faces compiled in our face book, the one book everybody can read because all the pages are blank. we update statuses that reflect the status of us-- shallow and short-lived. and we fall just short of living, leaving behind snapshots of a life that we’ve constructed according to the instructions of an online culture that encourages us to like but never to love, overlooking the emotions that make us human beings not just profiles on a screen or internet machines with bits and bytes flowing through our veins instead of blood and plasma, it's like miasma when we breathe in each new generation of gadgets from the iPhone to the iPad but i’ve had enough of these iFads, and i’m mad because of the fact that we no longer make eye contact. we hide behind shadows of anonymity and i pity us because we’ve got thousands of friends but we’re lonelier than ever. when did social networking become so antisocial? so from now on i am offline, unavailable and disconnected in hopes of reconnecting with You, pressing the reset button on this hard drive that’s been hardened by the deception it sees and driven by a desire to please-- please forgive me God, and let me just log into Your grace once more. i’m done with retweeting and now i’m retreating into Your quiet place. for lent this year, I gave up twitter because in this world wide web of lies the only person worth following is You.