Let’s Replace the Cyber Farms with Prayer Forums

A fascinating theme threads its way through many reviews of the movie ‘The Social Network’. Roger Ebert seemed to lead the way (makes sense) and here are a couple of representative quotes:

“To conceive of Facebook, Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) needed to know almost nothing about relationships or human nature (and apparently he didn't).”

and:

“…programming languages and techniques are widely known, but it was Zuckerberg who intuited how he could link them with a networking site. The genius of Facebook requires not psychological insight but its method of combining ego with interaction. Zuckerberg wanted to get revenge on all the women at Harvard. To do that, he involved them in a matrix that is still growing.”

Even the name of the film, “The Social Network”, is cold: it has a post 2000’s computery feel to it, like “The Matrix” but without the chance of anything blowing up (besides Facebook’s bank account). Imagine – the largest structure ever devised to bring people together in a social scaffolding was constructed by someone who essentially had no insight into relationships or human nature. How can this be?

It’s simple, actually. Social networks are as inherently emotional as highway concrete. They are a WAY to socially interact, a route to a goal sent through a router, and not to be confused with the warm glow of friendship or the murmur of good conversation or the firm grip of a handshake in and of themselves. It is the people IN the social network that transform it (or not) into something worthwhile and interesting.

Much of Facebook has devolved into the random sputterings of the frustrated or time-wasting games involving cyber farms and invented personas. Facebook users have increasingly fallen for the easy trap of thinking that any interaction that makes them feel good automatically must BE good. The meaningless action of posting supportive ‘statuses’ has become a secular (and virtually toothless) form of praying for somebody. But this form of praying only works in bulk, like buying a box of good vibes from Costco. As Mark Zuckerberg intuited, it is quantity, not quality.

It is incumbent upon social networks to up the ante in terms of doing real good, and websites like PrayerGroup.org (http://www.prayergroup.org/) are stepping up to the plate. The amazing thing about a prayer request is this: only God can answer a prayer, but you can answer a prayer request. Any Christian can. By providing a forum where prayer requests can be met PrayerGroup.org and other sites like it bring real and selfless action to a field that can so easily just be empty words and statistics. Your ‘status’ for the day doesn’t change – your day is still good or bad, your weather is still fair or poor, your team either just won or lost. But you are praying for someone, in detail, for the glory of God. It’s not ‘combining ego with interaction’. It’s infinitely better than that.

Christian Social Networks Are an “Evolution” in the Way We Think and Communicate

doesthissentenceseemwierdtoyou?itshoulditsmakingmyspellcheckfreakoutaswell. So there were two things wrong there – one, no capital letters and two no punctuation or spacing between words. Hard to read, huh? Luckily things don’t look like that nowadays, and the reason is… Carolingian miniscule.

What in the world is Carolingian Miniscule you ask? It dates from the ninth century, and it was invented in the court of Charlemagne. It was a small, easy-to-read font that also systematized the use of spacing between words and capitalization. It is the ancestor of this font you’re reading right now in fact. You see, back in the ninth century, literature (spiritual and otherwise) was disappearing faster than tickets to see Charlie Sheen have a nervous breakdown on stage. Since it was so hard to copy manuscripts legibly, there were almost no copies. That meant that if one burned or fell apart or got whatever the ninth century version of coffee was spilled on it that was it – the text vanished and there was no other. Carolingian miniscule led to an explosion of copying (especially of Christian tracts) – and no more lost texts. It was an explosion of permanent and accessible information, and it was motivated by the desire to remodel and instruct society along Christian lines through Christian teachings (the first thing Charlemagne had put into Miniscule was Saint Augustine’s City of God).

There’s an automatic prejudice against easy things. Things that are easy seem unimportant. But sometimes making something easier IS the most important thing to do for it. Getting feedback on ideas used to be hard and time-consuming. You could go weeks or months before you ran into a friend receptive to certain ideas with the time to listen and respond to them. Worldwide social networks have changed that completely. It is now so easy to reach out to someone you know across town or across the globe and find out how they feel about an idea or a thought you’ve heard or had. At first this was viewed suspiciously by religiously-minded people. It seemed too easy, too quick, too facile. Look at the Christian social network, PrayerGroup.org (http://www.prayergroup.org/). It is operating in nearly 100 countries (maybe more by the time you read this – as I said, social networks move fast!). On this end of the telescope here in America, that seems impressive – 100 choices of cultures to reach out to and bounce ideas and experiences off of. But from the other end of the telescope, the miniscule end so to speak, it is even more impressive. There are Christians in severe minorities in distant lands who are grateful to be able to interact with even one friendly ear from miles away. And if you share a good idea or a pious thought you have in essence copy and pasted it into someone else’s mind or heart. See how easy that was? And lasting? And game changing? Just because it happens fast doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly. Like that tiny, ancient font, it can help remodel and instruct the world.