Saying Yes

Have you ever had something you've said or written come back to get in your way when you want to do or say something else? That happened to me this week, but it was actually a really good thing.  I'll explain.

You see, over the years, I have located a lot of amusing, random and even positively worthwhile (although representatives of this last category are much fewer and further between) content on the monstrous website we all know as Youtube.  Every now and again, I'll go to make a joke or a reference to one of these videos I like, but then no one has ever seen it and my joke just falls flat.  Or even worse, I'm laughing and no one else is--they're just standing there awkwardly, perhaps offering a slight polite chuckle, trying to affirm that my sense of humor is valid while knowing that they never plan to watch the video in question (or if they do plan to, that they'll never remember what it is when they go to look for it).

My solution to this problem?  If you're thinking "stop making jokes based on obscure time-wasting internet videos?" I have to commend your logic, but perhaps you don't know me very well.  No, I had a much more comprehensive solution in mind: Compile a list of every crazy Youtube video that I might possibly want to reference or joke about, then post it on my blog so that all my friends at least everyone who reads that will understand and be able to laugh when I want to talk/post about these things.  Because all of you would instantly devote your next several hours to watching all of them as soon as I did that, right?

Yeah, it sounds kind of dumb when I write it all out like that--which brings me to my point, really.  One of the benefits of writing things down is that it helps you clarify what's important and worthwhile.  Another benefit is that if you write down the good things you learn, they can help convict you and get you back on track later when you're about to do or say or post something stupid.

In my case, I had just written at length about how we're going to die and we don't know when, so we might as well use our time for things that actually matter.  I was seriously about to directly follow that post (see below) with a giant list of Youtube videos.  Just think about that for a second.  To use the internet term, *facepalm*.

As some of you may know, I have just a bit of an addictive personality.  It's a strange combination of being very easy to amuse, difficult to distract, and able to tune the whole world out and focus on one thing.  I tell people I can't have ADD-- no way I have a deficit of attention, I have a surplus.  It may be a disorder though... anyway, suffice it to say that almost anything can get my attention and hold it for longer than most people would imagine, sometimes even at the expense of eating, sleeping, conversing or other necessary life functions.

So imagine what Youtube does to me.
I can't even begin to tell you how much of my life has been flushed down that drain.  I'm really not sure why I would want anyone else to experience that.  Certainly me seeming funnier is not a good enough reason.

And really, mindless waste of time is one of the best sides of Youtube.  There's a whole underworld of darkness and inappropriate content on it as well that they don't advertise, but they know it drives a huge portion of their traffic.  You just have to look at what kinds of videos have the most views.

Anyway, I didn't really write this to bash a website.  I know Youtube can be used for good things too, like learning how to do things.  My church's worship team uses it to help teach people new songs because pretty much every song in the world is posted on it somewhere (most illegally of course, but that's a topic for a different blog).  As with almost all our greatest human inventions, though, our greatest blessings become our greatest curses too.  After all, pretty much any problem or benefit you can point out with Youtube also applies to the Internet at large.  Clearly, the issue here is not Youtube.

The issue is me.

More specifically, will I say yes to God's will even when it means laying down my plans or frivolous enjoyments?  (both of which are perfectly illustrated by my Youtube list/plan)  Underneath that, one level further down, will I trust that God's plan for my life will be the best, most fulfilling one in the end?

By not posting my list, I'm saying I will.

It's interesting too that as I am willing to submit myself in this way, God is giving me new ways to deny my own will and live for his, some little and some larger.  For example on this blog, I took down my poem of the day gadget even though I love poems because some of its content was questionable/depressing. I also took down my movie list because... it reminded me way too much of the Youtube list.  I'm not going to lie, some of this can get a little frustrating!  Sometimes I can get all like, "really? you're not letting me have this?  Now my blog sidebar won't be nearly long enough to line up with my posts!" or some other such ridiculous thing.  My order and my plans get challenged by his order and his plans (by the way, when I say not letting me, I refer not to a physical prohibition but to the way my peace of mind and spirit start to evaporate when I consider doing said thing).  Even if it's a bigger thing (like fasting, for example, which seems huge to me at least) the peace that comes from listening to that still small voice is worth whatever I have to give up.

One step further: I believe it's the only way for me to grow into the things I need to become in this season of my life (and live in the way I suggested in my last blog).  I don't have to figure myself or my life out!  I'm thankful for that-- I don't know which one of the two would be harder to decipher.  What I do have to do is trust enough to slow down, listen to a God who desires to speak, and then say yes.

Not maybe, not later, not yesbut, just yes.  After saying yes, then I just have to do the yes.  It's no good to be the son who pays lip service but doesn't do anything!  Better to be one who says no but then does the yes, actually (see Matthew 21:28-31).  I can plan my course, but I want to let God determine my steps (see Proverbs 16:9).  It's very simple, but that doesn't mean it's easy.  It actually takes God's strength to say yes to God, which is a whole other level of confusing that I don't have time to go into right now because I've been focused on writing this blog at the expense of eating, as I mentioned that I tend to do.  I only bring it up to say that it requires we depend on him, not on ourselves.

Trust. Listen. Say Yes. Do Yes. Repeat.

The rest is up to him.

10 reasons I don't have a Facebook

I am becoming more and more aware that I am part of a distinct minority among people of my generation. That's right, I'm a Facebook resister.

As the members of said resistance grow fewer and fewer, though, people seem increasingly quick to mistake my refusal to make myself a Facebook page for a generalized hostility toward the Facebook phenomenon itself (or towards its members). However, I intend no such hostility. In fact, I even have a link here on my blog that lets people share it on Facebook! Many of my friends are devoted Facebookers, and I don't even taunt them (too much) for it!

So just to set the record straight, I thought I would take a brief moment of my day to explain the real reasons why I do not now maintain, nor do I ever expect in the future to possess, a Facebook. Note that this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, but it should cover most of the important issues as I see them. I also don't claim any of this as fact, just my own opinion. If you think I'm wrong, let me know! I'd be really happy if all this did was spur thought and discussion on the issue. So, I'll count down the top ten reasons I don't have Facebook, from least important to most important. Here we go:


10. My mom has a Facebook. Mom, if you're reading this, I love you and I mean no offense by it. It's just that your membership is a.) the reason I know so much about Facebook without actually having one, and b.) a great example of a larger trend I'm getting at. Namely, I feel that Facebook has become something my generation never intended it to be. Originally, it was just a cool way to keep in touch and share pictures (which are, by the way, the only things I'd use Facebook for if I had one and are undeniably useful and beneficial) among college students and other young adults. Then high-schoolers started joining. Then parents came to check on them. All of a sudden, they were also commenting on pictures and writing cheesy status messages. Before anyone could say "1950's," it seemed like the whole baby boomer generation had Facebook. End result: Facebook just isn't as cool anymore, and has much less of a draw for me.

9. Little kids have Facebook. Like, really little. This is kind of a corollary to #10, and it's disturbing for all of the same reasons, with the added twist that a lot of things happen on Facebook that really are not appropriate for little kids to be hearing and thinking about. Now, I don't think I'd have anything to hide, but I have some friends with significantly different standards of morality than my own and I'd hate to have to shelter kids that might look at my page from them. I love hanging out with little kids, but they certainly aren't my friends in the same way. Why do they have to grow up so fast?

8. I have no real desire for up-to-the-minute status updates on my friends. In fact, this whole thing kind of freaks me out. Except for my very closest friends (who I talk to plenty without Facebook's intervention), I'm not even interested in what people are doing or feeling moment by moment. Even for my close friends, there are still many things I don't need to know. That might sound horribly mercenary, but if you really think about it, I imagine the same is true for you. Sure, taking in a lot of banal information about what people are doing might make you feel like you care about them, but in essence it's just voyeurism.

7. I have even less desire to give constant status updates on myself. If you know me well at all, you probably realize that I usually play things pretty close to the vest and often prefer to keep my opinions and plans to myself. Now, this has been a problem for me in some ways, since I haven't always let people in to what the real me is like. I'm working on it. The thing is, Facebook is a really bad solution to that problem, because trivial status updates are in no way the same thing as being truly real with people. I suppose status updates could be used for good purposes (for example, my pastor has Facebook, and some of his that I've seen are challenging and personal), but this is certainly the exception rather than the rule and I doubt I'd be any better. In any case, I'd rather apply my efforts to real life, or to this blog. I like talking about big issues and hard topics, and I don't hear very much about that happening on Facebook, whereas my blog already provides me with a great space for this kind of thought. Also, I feel like most anything really true or profound on Facebook is just quickly drowned in the sea of immaturity. That's why I chose to keep my blog separate in the first place.

6. I can get all the real benefits of Facebook without having one. For example, because all my friends have one, if any of them post anything truly remarkable or abnormally hilarious, one of the others is sure to tell me about it. Alternatively, because my mom is Facebook friends with most of my actual friends, she also keeps me updated and lets me use her account to look at their pictures sometimes. That wouldn't even be necessary though, since Facebook members are still able to email me the link to their albums, which I can then look at if their privacy settings aren't on some very restricted level. Also, I can use email to get in touch with all my friends at once if I so desire. This works because Facebook users often like checking their email to see how many "notifications" they have. It makes them feel important. And finally, if I feel the need to express myself or have a personal profile page, this blog can serve that purpose quite ably. So in psychological terms, I guess you couldn't say I have a "felt need" for Facebook.

5. Farmville. This one should really be pretty self-explanatory, but I can't resist moving past it without saying this: Farmville is a pestilence in the land. Whoever unleashed this monstrosity should be tied down and forced to listen to its theme music until he repents and erases it from the world of Facebook. It shouldn't take that long; the whole "song" is basically a 4-measure loop of horribly twangy sounds that could pretty much reduce anyone to insanity in a matter of hours. (Can you tell that a certain unnamed but aforementioned family member of mine enjoys this game?) On a more serious note, this particular app is also pretty exemplary of the general trend of immensely time-wasting applications on Facebook. This just seems to me to be the most obviously pointless example, but actually the combined force of all these apps produces a powerful life-consuming time vortex in a lot of people's lives (see my post on video games for more on this). I feel like Facebook would prove to be an unnecessary temptation for me in this regard.

4. People accept Facebook without thought. One of the most disturbing things about Facebook to me is that no one seems to question anymore that this is what social interaction in the 21st century should be like. It bothers me that no one is really thinking about what Facebook really is and whether or not they want one. Most people who sign up for it are just blindly following the trend because they crave friendship and interaction, and being heavily marketed to and media-saturated all the while. I'm not abstaining from Facebook just to be somehow cool by breaking the trend and not doing what everyone else is doing. I've thought about what it is and decided that I don't want it. I've been recognizing lately my need for real friendship, and I don't think I can meet that need on Facebook. Now, I doubt anyone else would say they could either, but they might be unaware of how the shallow interactions they constantly engage in are muffling their true desire for deep relationship, truly knowing and being known. Just something to think about.

3. I'm scared I'd get addicted to it. I realize, of course, that it is quite possible to have a Facebook and not be addicted to it. However, I've heard far too many stories of people who hate how much time they've spent on it and wish they had never started. I've also heard many more stories about people who don't even realize how addicted they are to it and how much power it has in their life, which is even scarier. In any case, I feel like I have much better things to do with my time. That's why for me personally, Facebook is scary because I tend to be a little bit obsessive about having things perfect and organized and also about collecting things. I don't feel like I could ever be satisfied with Facebook if I hadn't collected every single person I know as a "friend." I'd want all my settings and profile perfectly in order, and I'd probably want to be the best at all the games too. Again, video games and I have a storied history that I never want to go back to. So all in all, I feel like I could end up wasting enormous amounts of time and really forgetting about letting God make all my decisions (which is my goal), and I don't even want to open the door for that to happen.

2. It's too late. I've been a Facebook resister and a fairly vocal critic of it for so long now that I can never get one. I don't think I'd ever be able to live it down, and I'd feel really stupid for saying all those things and then getting one anyway. I think it's safe to say I've passed the point of no return on this one. I'm in this for the long haul :)

1. I don't want "Facebook friends." Honestly, this is my biggest beef with Facebook. I really feel like it promotes shallowness and superficiality as the solution to the much deeper problems of our generation. We don't need status updates, we don't need to know what Disney character we are most like, and we don't need to express our true personality through our "pieces of flair" (although some of them are legitimately hilarious, and joking around online is great fun). What we need is real friendship with real people. How else are we expecting to "spur one another on towards love and good deeds" (Hebrews 10:24) or help heal our broken city? To do those things, we're going to have to get face-to-face and side-by-side and be much realer with each other than computer screens allow. (And yes, bloggers need to watch out for superficiality too :) I'm trying my best to practice what I preach and use my blog mainly as a tool for sparking real-life discussion and interaction with my friends.)

Now, obviously we can't have deep, hugely significant relationships with all the people we cross paths with. Even Jesus had different circles of friends: the multitudes followed him, but he placed special importance on the 72 he sent out, and the 12 disciples were his inner circle. Even within that, Peter, James and John were his three really close friends. So, Facebook or not, I think that's the example we should try to emulate. You know what? It's ok to have shallower, "Facebook friend" relationships. We just need to know where our real friends are, and we need to be real and really present (physically and emotionally) in their lives, even though that's hard. You know what else? It's also ok to have less friends. I just feel like the effort to fill the "friends list" causes too many people to have a set of "friendships" a mile wide and an inch deep. That will never satisfy a generation, a city, a nation looking for real love. We need real brothers and sisters and parents, real friends. "A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother" (Proverbs 18:24). Can we learn to be that friend?

Lists and Randomness

As I predicted in my first entry, it turns out that sometimes I don't have much going on in the way of serious or meaningful thoughts. But, this is my blog and I'm free to post whatever random stuff I come up with, so in that spirit I've added some lists to the right-hand sidebar of the blog. I noticed that due to my general long-windedness when talking about serious subjects, there was starting to be a huge chunk of boring white space underneath the information over there on the right, so this is the beginning of my efforts to fix that.

So, the first list is of my favorite (read: most used) websites, sites that I think are exceptionally useful, fun, or well-made. Basically, anything I link to in any of my posts will show up there, so that if you like one of the links in the posts you won't have to go searching through all the entries to find it again. Believe me, this will be much more important someday when there are more than five posts here. (As a side note, I bet that a pretty fair percentage of blogs started on free sites like this never end up with more than, say, 3 posts on them before people quit/lose interest. However, I'm not one to do things like that, and I'm in this for the long haul. Someday there's going to be a heck of a lot of text on this blog, and at that point you really won't want to search through all my rantings to find one stupid link. I'm just planning ahead.)

Second, we have a running update on the bands (in order) that currently find themselves in the honored position of having all their cd's in my main case. This is subject to change based on my whims and tastes, and based on whether I ever have enough money again to buy cd's. All of these artists are very anti-bubble (see previous post) in my mind... a lot of them are Christian bands, but ones that are more outside the Christian system and on the indie side of things. A lot of people will not have heard of a lot of the stuff there, but that's fine by me. Check it out if you want, as it's all quality music first and foremost (and by music, I mean music and lyrics. I find that the music that I really like over a long period of time always has interesting/meaningful words, not just creative instrumentation).

Finally, and probably most controversially, I included a list of my favorite movies ever. Not what I think are necessarily the BEST movies ever, just my favorites (which is an important distinction: otherwise I'd have no justification for having Citizen Kane lower than Mystery Men). And yes, these are generally in order, so you can see my rankings. However, the ranking process was far less than scientific, and it may be prone to gross miscalculations and glaring omissions. Those situations are where you should post a comment and remind me of important movies I may have forgotten and/or campaign for movies you like to be moved up or movies you hate to be moved down the list. I welcome all manner of comments about this.

By the way, this list was created with a great deal of help from IMDb, another amazing website now appearing in the links list. (http://www.imdb.com/) This site is definitely the most comprehensive website on the net for information about movies. Ever see someone in a movie and be like, "I know I've seen him before, who is that??" This website can tell you, in painstaking and beautiful detail. It's fantastic. It also has information on objectionable material, so you can avoid a movie with stuff you don't want to see. In fact, by way of disclaimer, that may come in handy with my list, since even though these movies are very clean for the most part, there's a few movies on there with some stuff that you might want to skip. I know I skip certain parts of some of these movies when I watch them, so don't take my recommendation as proof that there's nothing bad in there. Be wise and skip it. Also, feel free to let me know if there's something you think I should remove from the list.

And with all the lists, feel free to suggest sites/bands/movies that I might like that aren't currently on there. It's always fun to see what other people think is the greatest and why. That's all for now... stay tuned for more poetry coming up soon.