If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em?
So far I’ve been resisting Twitter. I have an account, and as of this afternoon, 11 followers. I signed up several weeks ago but until this afternoon had not posted a tweet.
When I invited pros and cons on a recent Facebook post, cons outweighed the pros by about 7:1. My schedule is pretty full and I’d rather build in some margin for my soul than follow hundreds of my friends’ latest meal selection. I’m an early adopter, but tech still has to earn its way into my calendar.
Enter Pastor John Piper, who I know feels far more strongly and deeply about media intrusion than I do. Yet, Piper says he’s going to Tweet:
I see two kinds of response to social Internet media like blogging, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and others.
One says: These media tend to shorten attention spans, weaken discursive reasoning, lure people away from Scripture and prayer, disembody relationships, feed the fires of narcissism, cater to the craving for attention, fill the world with drivel, shrink the soul’s capacity for greatness, and make us second-handers who comment on life when we ought to be living it. So boycott them and write books (not blogs) about the problem.
The other response says: Yes, there is truth in all of that, but instead of boycotting, try to fill these media with as much provocative, reasonable, Bible-saturated, prayerful, relational, Christ-exalting, truth-driven, serious, creative pointers to true greatness as you can. [more]
Still thinking about it. Convince me.
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