– Justin Long, Elder at M.J. Campus
In case you’ve happened to have had your head in the sand over the past six years, Twitter is a social networking service that enables its users to send text based messages in 140 characters or less, known as “tweets”. Users can track the tweets of particular individuals by choosing to follow whoever they so desire. Tweeters select the users they will follow based on interests, relationships, and desired information about those people. Or, information that those people have access to. Pear Analytics is a research company that has divided all tweets into six categories: news, spam, self-promotion, pointless babble, conversational, and pass along value. Pointless babble tops the charts consisting of over 40% of all tweets. News brings up the rear with less than 4%. Then of course, one must determine whether or not all of this 4% is really worthy to be called news.
Upon reading these statistics, my mind began to wonder if this is a pretty accurate representation to our daily intake of information. How much of our minds are being filled with pointless babble, via sitcoms and talk shows, while we could be meditating on the Word of God? How many conversations about insignificant topics do we mumble through, while we could be conducting productive conversations that build one another up. Finally, if we are taking in less than 4% news, what percentage of this news is the Good News of Jesus Christ, the greatest news ever told? It’s the only news that truly transforms lives, and not just the first time it is heard and believed but it is this same news that continues to transform us into the likeness of Christ. Do we limit this news to less than 140 characters a day? Or maybe even once per week on Sundays? If this is the case it will be very difficult to be a true “FOLLOWER” of Christ. Pardon the twitter pun.
Jesus tells us “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24 ESV) This does not just mean death in the physical sense. More specifically, it means putting off the desires of our flesh which seek to separate us from God. If we desire eternal life, we must be continually transformed by the Gospel of Jesus. Apart from this Good News we have no power against the flesh.
Here is one description of that Good News,
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.” (Romans 8:1-4 ESV)
While this is indeed great news for all who are in Christ, it is only a small portion of the entire Word of God, which is intended by God, to conform all who are His to the likeness of His Son. With that in mind, what percentage of your information intake for the day will have transforming power?
-Justin Long
