Have You Un-Friended God?

George Bernard Shaw said, “Now that we have learned to fly in the air like birds and dive in the sea like fish, only one thing remains – to learn to live on earth like humans.” I started my page on Face Book with an abundance of skepticism but have since grown fond of some of the wit, humor and common-sense thinking that is shared every day. Of course there are some posts that aren’t worth my time which deserve a quick scroll past and one must be careful of sharing some ugly language with others unintentionally. All-in-all it is entertaining, sometimes educational and even uplifting with a spiritual quality I had not expected. Now the spiritual quality has a lot to do with who your “friends” are and my “un-friend” button has been exercised a few times making a choice to rid myself of unsavory characters. That brings to mind a post that says, “Be decisive. Right or wrong, make a decision. The road of life is paved with flattened squirrels that couldn’t make a decision.” I probably don’t have the numbers right, but we are sharing more digital photos of family, in real time every day, than all the personal photos ever taken by cameras that needed film processing. But alas, the closer we are getting to one another digitally the farther we seem to be drifting away from that up close and personal contact we all used to have as a family. Looking around one can see nearly everyone is in their own world struggling to survive without the support of friends or family because most have become untrustworthy. Another FB post reads, “R.I.P. America! You went soft on discipline. You raised the cost of living so high that both parents are at work, rather than spending time with their children. You took God out of the schools. Parents are told, ‘No you can’t discipline your kids’. Kids had rights blah, blah, blah. Well, America, you shall reap what you sow, and we have lost a whole generation turning them into selfish, disrespectful brats who have no respect for people, property or authority! Things need to change!” That generally gets my juices flowing and a few scrolls later I read, “If you find yourself a bit irritated or overwhelmed. It’s a sign you’re spending less time with God and more time with this world.” That’s generally when I log out and turn off my electronic pad to find something else to do rather than worry about the world’s troubles.

[Luke 17:10; Isaiah 64:6] After making a whopping $50 million donation to a gun control initiative, and because of his work against obesity and smoking, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was quoted as saying: “I am telling you, if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in … I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.” The very thought that Mr. Bloomberg thinks he can buy his way into heaven must be very offensive to God. I have to ask, what makes you think you can earn your way into heaven by: Attending worship three times a week; Reading our Bible daily; Giving generously the first day of the week; Helping the poor; Being a good parent or obedient child. Heaven isn’t a matter of attainment, it’s a matter of atonement. We won’t get to heaven because we earned it or we wowed God with our own morality and righteousness. And it certainly won’t be because God is indebted to us. On the contrary! It will be because we are indebted to Him. I cannot repay the debt I owe my Lord and Savior, so: “In Happy Moments, I Praise God; In Difficult Moments, I Seek God; In Quiet Moments, I Worship God; In Every Moment, I Thank God” because everything I have comes from God (John 1: 1-5, 14).