Posted on 03/16/2015 9:02:46 AM PDT by NYer
Social media is ubiquitous in a way that the lives of previous generations never had to deal with, and everyone from the high and mighty to the lowly and rowdy are learning hard lessons.
Here are some spiritual truths that are reflected in social media scandals.
1. We cannot rid ourselves of sin.
“To uproot sin and the evil that is so imbedded in our sinning can be done only by divine power, for it is impossible and outside man's competence to uproot sin.” —St. Macarius, Homily 3.4
Hillary Clinton’s email system is teaching her a lesson many have learned online. Her use of a separate server may have made good sense at the time, but she also seems to have skirted the Freedom of Information Act and other regulations in the processm and now is criticized for the way she deleted emails.
Emails are federal records, which is why Lois Lerner of the IRS is in trouble for deleting emails.
They are learning in their public roles what social media is teaching people in their private lives: Our choices are real, with real consequences, and we can’t make them go away. Sin won’t go away on its own. Ever.
2. Nothing you do is secret.
“There is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light.” -Luke 8:17
Parker Rice and other SAE frat members at Oklahoma University learned this the hardest way possible. They gleefully performed an ugly, violent racist chant on a bus. It was posted on YouTube, went viral and earned the condemnation of every single person that saw it or heard about it.
In apologies, both protested that they were not racists, but were repeating a traditional chant they had been taught. One can imagine that there is some truth to what they say: We can all remember saying or doing things in college that we regret. But those things probably fell short of leading a group in a chant that made light of lynchings.
Meanwhile, a woman is pressing charges against the rapper “50 Cent” because after she allowed nude videos of herself to be given to him, he posted them on YouTube.
One imagines she probably has a solid case. One also imagines that she probably wished she hadn’t consented to the embarrassing videos in the first place.
But both cases are a reminder for each of us that what we do is not really ever private. “Each of us shall give an account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12).
We can be grateful for that, actually. Jesus is a much kinder judge than our fellow human beings. Which is why we must …
3. Beware the accuser.
“The accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night.” —Revelation 12:10
Justine Saaco was on a flight to Africa and tweeted jokes about the annoying aspects of travel to her 170 followers. When she landed, she found that one of her jokey tweets—an ill-advised quip that she was not afraid of getting AIDS because she was white—had gone viral and made her the villain of commentators worldwide villifying her joke. The sad tale is told in the New York Times’ “How One Stupid Tweet Ruined Justine Saaco’s Life.”
It is certainly true that Saaco should not have sent an offensive tweet about AIDS and race. It is also true that the offense should not be punishable by international infamy.
In the same way, it is unwise for teens to use Instagram to share their every movement, but it should not be punishable by attracting predators, as it so easily can be. And worse than unwise, it is downright sinful for teens to share naked pictures of themselves, but that should not be punishable by becoming part of a child pornography website.
Horror movies act by positing the existence of an evil force in the world that uses your every weakness to destroy you. There really is such a power: The devil. And his merciless hounding of us for our sins is the dark mirror-image of Christ’s healing rays of light.
4. Be prepared for hostility for your belief.
“Do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord … but bear your share of hardship for the gospel with the strength that comes from God.” -2 Timothy 1:8
A New Jersey Catholic school teacher took down her Facebook after being targeted by a petition criticizing her opinions against homosexual marriage there.
Patricia Jannuzzi is called a loving, caring teacher by her students—but one day she posted her frustration over homosexual marriage laws advancing across the land. “Real Housewives of New Jersey” cast member Greg Bennet, a 2004 graduate of Immaculata shared her post online and called her a “nightmare dumpster human.”
That’s right, she is the one being accused of hate speech, not him.
Meanwhile, Fred Hammond is the latest Christian evangelist who accusing Facebook of censorship. Christians feel censored and some say they can prove it.
Believers clearly do not have the same free speech rules as everybody else, but we should never let that stop us from speaking the truth.
It should make us very careful though, because social media is an unforgiving master.
Tom Hoopes is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.
Here is the blogger's comment:
What is sin is based on the individual concerned. What you consider/treat as sin or wrong will not be a sin for me or for other people. People are educated now and his/her thinking/understanding of the world is totally different now.American/European persons have different views on each subject which may not be the same for people of Africa or Asia. Sin is also like that. In the past, say a 100 years ago, divorce was something unthinkable for most people of the world especially for Catholics but the situation has changed. It is very common for people to divorce and remarry in Civil courts and live happily. The Church may not approve it but no body bothers about the Church. There was no internet/fax/telex or any such communication facility a hundred years ago. No body could think of people going to Moon. No body could think of parents or other older people being sent to old age homes or other such institutions. It is 2015 and the God almighty understand human beings well. Christ said "you think of the Kingdom of God" and that is it.
Relativism is a poison. It attacks our most human capacity, the capacity to seek and know the truth, including the moral truth. A dictatorship of relativism imposes by real cultural force (and even by political force) a no-standard standard, a command that all must imbibe this poison.
As Cardinal Ratzinger noted in his Truth and Tolerance, “relativism … in certain respects has become the real religion of modern man.” It has become, especially in Europe, but now increasingly in America, the religion that stands at the heart of modern secular civilization in the way that Christianity defined the heart of Christendom.
It is the religion, Pope Benedict insists, which the Church must combat in the third millennium for the sake of civilization itself. A civilization built upon dogmatic relativism is one that ensures its own destruction. It is also a civilization in which Christianity — challenging dogmatic relativism with the proclamation that Jesus Christ himself is the Way, the Truth and the Life — must be persecuted.
Catholic ping!
“4. Be prepared for hostility for your belief.”
There’s some good advice.
Thanks for posting this.
[[1. We cannot rid ourselves of sin. “To uproot sin and the evil that is so imbedded in our sinning can be done only by divine power, for it is impossible and outside man’s competence to uproot sin.”]]
You can’t uproot it totally of course, but you CAN put a serious damper on it by ENFORCING laws against sin- or take it a step further, there was little open sin in biblical times (not that anyone is suggesting we go back to such harsh cultural laws)- and people were actually ashamed of sin back I n those days because they KNEW society looked down on such shameful acts- Sure, there was still sin, but it wasn’t nearly as public and brazen and shameless as it is today- the only places it was, was in societies back then that had no morals- much like today’s society
Even then, it can be touch-and-go for the committed believer. The old nature has to be starved.
There’s some good advice.
Nah. Piece'a cake!
Doing it without BEING hostile...now there's the rub!
well that’s the problem, the left are FEEDING the nature, by making sin acceptable- and so people lose their shame about sin because society ‘accepts’ it in large enough numbers that those who object are now seen and portrayed as ‘haters’ and ‘old fashioned’ and as ‘fundamental right wing extremists’- Satan surely is conditioning society to become one that the bibles describes as ‘loving sin and hating the light’. Heck, it’s even become the norm for men and women to casually ‘hook up, and for a woman to murder an infant inside her womb because the child would be an inconvenience and a hindrance and impediment to their deviant lifestyle- whereas 20-30 years ago women and men were ashamed for having a child out of wedlock. Live a deviant lifestyle, then murder the results when it happens, and people just shrug their shoulders? Thanks to the left, that is now how society works- The left have lost the ability to even feel shame any longer, Yet they try to shame people of morals into giving up those morals? What a sick twisted society we’;ve become!
Fine article. And postings like this remind us to remember that Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants are more alike,,than -any- of us are similar to the pagan elements in our society.
Yes. That means we’ve got a job of holding the Word of Truth out to those who will take a look at it.
“We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.”—Pope Benedict XVI
I can’t disagree with that, as I witness the truth of it constantly while talking to people about “judgmental” stuff. They resist God’s righteous judgments, as if He needed to clear them with “how people think today” before executing them.
C.S. Lewis just popped into my head with his essay GOD IN THE DOCK. Good piece if you can find it.
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