How Does Facebook Show You How Your Relationships Bind You and Not in a Good Way?

I gotta admit.   It shocked me a little when I heard it.  After all, the whole thing isn’t even fifteen years old.   But that’s all it’s taken.   Christianity took two thousand years to break the two billion barrier.  They did it in 14.   And now, they’re bigger.   Does anyone know what has more members than Christianity has followers, about 2.2 billion give or take?

Facebook does.  One out of every three people on earth now belong to Facebook.    I’m one of them.  I like it.   I still check in there a few minutes every day.   And even if you are one of the new cool folks who’ve grown beyond Facebook, do the whole Instagram thing, don’t worry.  Facebook owns that one too.

Now you might say, ok, whatever.  It’s Facebook.  You share stuff, look up old friends, things like that.   But Facebook can do much more than that.   About six years ago, Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg was talking to his fiancé.   She was in med school at the time.   She shared how more folks needed to become organ donors.   So, Zuckerberg added a little nudge to Facebook.   If you indicated you were an organ donor, Facebook now notified all your friends.  On the first day that feature appeared, organ donor sign-ups increased by over 2,000 percent.

And Facebook had done something similar with voting a few years before that.  And with that little nudge, they boosted voter turnout by over 300,000 people.   And that very same year Zuckerberg did his organ donor experiment, his scientists did another one.   They took 700,000 of Facebook’s users and fed them happy or sad posts.   They wanted to figure out.  Could they change people’s emotions that way.   Do you know what they discovered?  They could.

Now, why am I sharing these Facebook facts?  I’m not sharing it to deliver an anti-Facebook sermon.  Heck, I’ll post this sermon to Facebook a few hours from now.  Facebook might have its issues.  But Facebook did not create this power to persuade.  Facebook only shows you how powerful it can be.  And that power can bind you in ways more powerfully than any Facebook tweak.  In fact, it may be binding you even now in ways of which you’re hardly aware.  So how do you become free of that power?  In these words, Jesus shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what Jesus has to say.

Luke 6:27-38

In these words, Jesus is pointing to a power that binds people in ways they hardly notice.  But Jesus is doing more than that.   Jesus is pointing the way to your freedom.   How does that freedom come?   It comes when you realize that tree freedom comes not from trading, but from giving.  And that freedom will only happen when you realize what has already been given to you.

Jesus gives you all these idealistic commands.  Love your enemies.  Pray for those who curse you.  If someone takes your cloak, give your tunic too.  Give to everyone who asks.   But why does Jesus tell you these things?   What’s the point?     

Is he just giving you some unrealistic vision of life as he’d like it to be, but one that could never really exist?   Is that the point?   No.   In giving you these extreme but actually very possible commands, Jesus is trying to get you to see the way you are already leading your life, and how that way is wrecking you in ways you might hardly see.

What is this way?   As I thought about how to explain it, a clip from a TV show came to mind.   And it makes the point by what happens at the beginning of this dinner out with friends and then what happens at the end.   Watch it for yourself and see what happens.

Now, I don’t know if anyone has ever pulled the bathroom trick on you.  But do you see what’s going on?  Why is the Larry character so upset?  Why may you even sympathize with him a bit?   It’s because like him, you orient most, if not all of your relationships, around trading.   You take me out to dinner, then I’ll take you out to dinner.   You give me a compliment, and I’ll return it.   You do me a favor, then that means I owe you one.  Right?

But in Jesus’ examples, a positive return probably won’t happen, right?  Your enemy will likely not stop being your enemy if you do good to them.  And if you pray for someone cursing you, you can be pretty sure that they’re not going to return that favor.   And when you give to someone who has nothing to begin with, they’re not going to be able to return that favor anytime soon if ever.    Jesus is giving these commands to shock people in seeing how they’re already living. 

That’s why he goes on to ask.  What’s so great about loving those who love you?  Everybody does that, even the “sinners” do that.    And Jesus uses that word “sinners” with irony.   He knows.  The religious folks listening to him think they’re all that because of their generosity or good deeds.   But Jesus is saying.   You have the same trading mentality that you condemn in these sinners.   Even if you give to the poor, you’re doing it to gain a benefit.  You want to make yourself look good or to gain appreciation for your generosity or simply get on God’s good side.  But Jesus is saying when you do that, you are showing how bankrupt you are, how totally empty.

And that same emptiness gives those Facebook nudges their power.   Sure, some folks when they saw the notification that a friend was an organ donor genuinely got inspired to do that.    But lots more did it because well, organ donation suddenly seemed the cool or worthy thing to do.   They wanted to be part of that crowd.    And the same goes for voting.  In fact, I’m sure a few folks even clicked the I voted button even though they didn’t vote at all.  They simply didn’t want to look bad, to be that non-voting Facebook friend.  And what does it say that a few happy or sad social media posts can sway people’s emotions that powerfully?  

It says what Jesus was pointing to in these words.  When it comes to love, human beings have a deficit.   They hunger for more love than they can get.   And so, they can’t give their limited love to their enemies or those who curse them.   No, you’ve gotta keep your love limited only to those who you know can return it.   And if they don’t, if the return love supply dries up, that can be devastating.  

So, you’ve got to do things that keep the love supply coming, show you’re worthy of the love, even from those virtual friendships you find on Facebook.  But do you see what this means?  This love deficit binds you.   It leads you to hold back.  It gets you caught up in worrying about how others see you.  It makes you wonder if they believe you are worthy of love or affection.  You can’t be free to love your enemies or the poor like Jesus asks, because you simply don’t have enough love in you to be that reckless.

A few weeks ago, I was watching this show called SharkTank.  Has anyone ever seen it?  Basically, folks come with some fledging business and do a pitch to get one of five very rich people to invest.   In this episode, these two guys had come up with this idea to write a greeting on a potato and send it to people.  They called it a potato-parcel.  And they wanted a 100 grand from one of these folks to buy ten percent of their company.   And do you know what?  One of those rich sharks bit.   Kevin O’Leary gave them $50,000.00.   By the way, it turned out to be a decentinvestment.  Some folks really like shelling out ten bucks to send a potato through the mail. 

But here’s the big difference between Kevin O’Leary and me.   He could afford to lose 50 grand, if it didn’t pan out.  He’d still be crazy rich.   But not me.   For me 50,000.00 is a lot of money.

And Jesus is saying that when it comes to love, everyone finds themselves like that with a very limited balance, a love deficit even.   So, you can’t give your love to just anybody, and certainly not an enemy.  You don’t have that much love to go around.   In fact, you’re out there hunting for love yourself.  It’s why Facebook can persuade you like that.  They promise a little dose of the love you’re craving. 

But Jesus is telling you here.  It doesn’t have to be that way.  You don’t have to have a love deficit.  When it comes to love, you have access to wealth beyond your wildest dreams. 

After all, Jesus points out, that God is showering the good and the evil with kindness all the time.   God doesn’t hold back.   Why?  God doesn’t need to.   God has unending stores of love to give away.  God doesn’t even need any return on the investment.   God simply loves to love.  And God never gets tired of doing it.   What I say every week is stunningly true.   God does love you no matter what.

And Jesus didn’t simply tell you that.  Jesus showed you that.  For when people killed and cursed him on that cross.  What did he do?  He prayed for them.  He even asked God to forgive them.  Through that horrible agony, he turned again and again to face them with love.   In fact, Jesus came to that cross because you, like all of humanity had become lost, had lost touch with the love.   And so, Jesus came to open the way for you to have that love again.  And in Jesus, God offered up everything to make that possible.

And when you know that love, the infinity of the love God has for you, it frees you.   As you let that love fill you, it frees you to love others, even the most unlovable as never before.   And you find as you give your love, God pours more love in, so much your life can’t even contain it.  It runs out of your lap.   Do you want that sort of love, that abundance of love?   Then simply realize you already have it.   All you need to do is open your hand.