My farewell note on Facebook...24 days early

Facebook and Me

Moving Toward February 28

This note is an explanation of why I will deactivate my Facebook account on February 28, 2011.

If you have not yet read my previous note, “Missions and Me,” then please do so before reading this one. Reading that other note is an essential preliminary activity to understanding this one well.

First, Facebook is a good thing.

No other venue allows me to reach so many people so easily, so quickly, with so little (read ‘zero’) expense. Through facebook, in the last few years, I have made posts and sent messages that have brought several students to Christian schools, led several adults into full-time ministry positions, recruited a score of student canvassers, solved immense logistical nightmares. I have, through FB, been reconnected with hundreds of individuals from my past. Relatives, class mates, past students, I have enjoyed fellowshipping with these.

And as a means of finding someone on this planet, facebook has worked better than any other service. It is international. And it is intuitive. When I type “Sally Butler”…though it knows of 52 Sally Butlers, it knows which one I intend because we have a mutual friend in Timbuktu.

Facebook has, in a similar way, allowed perhaps 2500 persons to find me. (For I think that of my 2867 friends, I can not have added more than 350 of them.) Whether to ask perplexing questions (an OK thing), or to send an encouraging note (a wonderful thing), or to just keep tabs on my life (a sweet thing), or to take advantage of my page to promote some theological idea (varies…but never a good way to promote even a good thing), these people have received a service from facebook.

And for professional advice, FB has been tops. Via facebook I have been saved thousands of dollars and more than one medical emergency has been recognized and dealt with. Our dear friend, Melissa Allen, for example, might have been diagnosed with cancer several months later than she was had it not been for FB. Today she is cancer free. Would that have been true if she had been diagnosed months later?

Facebook is good for my photo-loving mom. I don’t take pictures. I don’t care to talk about pictures here. But a couple hundred pictures of me are on facebook and that is my mother’s only and best opportunity to see pictures of her son and of his travels. So, as I said, FB is good for my mother and makes her life more pleasant. (Now I have to figure out how to print some of these and send them to her before February 28. If any one of you wants to do that for me, I will send you money for the paper, ink, and postage.)

Facebook has been an excellent venue for reporting canvassing experiences. It seems that the good reports have cheered a great many people and Ellen White said that such experiences should have a place in our papers where they would inspire others to do the same work.

And there is more. But I did not intend to write a eulogy for facebook, so that will have to suffice.

This side of the coin is bright and shiny, and gold-tinted, much like an Ausi $2 coin. Admire this side as long as you care to. And when you are ready, turn the coin over.

Most of the nudity (mostly images of topless women) that I have seen in the last five years have been on facebook ‘friend’ requests. These (three or four of them) came mostly in a one-month period so it seems that FB may have successfully solved most of this problem. I say ‘most’ because just a few weeks ago one of my ‘friends’ changed her profile picture to that of a topless old woman. I could have avoided the latter problem by not accepting any friend requests from persons I do not know. But that would not have helped the first cases. As a male, I was created to be attracted to my wife’s uncovered body. That is not a weakness, it is an appropriate strength. And I should avoid situations that turn that strength into a weakness. More than this, I do not want to be a venue for men to be made weak by what they see on my page.

But this is not even the largest reason I will deactivate facebook.

Facebook is disheartening. I need all the courage I can get. God, in His kindness, has not given me the ability to read hearts. Nor has He given me an ever-present ability to be in a hundred places at once. These two kind weaknesses protect me from an overwhelming discouraging collection of facts. People I know and love and care for are watching movies and listening to music and playing FB games that are destroying them. And they let the world know through FB. They have a right to. I am not faulting them for promoting their values. But to do God’s will best, I need courage. And to see how many persons who I thought better of are cherishing the world, hurts.

Such hurt is a good thing in the contracted sphere where I should feel it. It is right that I be touched and saddened by the struggles of those near me. But as a human, I was given strength to bear only a finite amount of such sadness. FB expands my view irrationally and thus overwhelms.

But neither is this the largest reason I will deactivate facebook.

Facebook provides a playing ground for false ideas and false teachers to ‘befriend’ unsuspecting persons and to infect them. By having a large collection of mutual friends, they appear safe. So, for example, “Elijah Message” seems to be a friend of thousands of unsuspecting persons.

And FB has also been a means of bilking persons of their entrusted funds. Several friends of mine have been ‘spoofed.’ (That is, a fake profile of them appeared on FB and began requesting money.)

But neither is this the largest reason I will deactivate facebook in less than four weeks.

I will deactivate facebook primarily because I am swamped by it. (My wife would say ‘addicted.) Though I don’t play any games, though I don’t take quizzes, use apps, respond to requests, the incredible access to people (ok, that is my most earnest felt need, to have access to people) brings me to facebook too often. I have tried various methods to control this, efforts to keep the shiny side of the coin always up.

And after all, I realize that I just can’t have access to so many persons that I care for without endangering my own spiritual development. To try to control this right eye or this right hand might seem sensible if the stakes were not so high. But the game of life is too serious for taking risks. And so facebook, a good thing, must go.

Let me elaborate briefly. I want to serve others and to meet their needs while preserving my health so that I can serve others and meet their needs tomorrow. But I am not God. And when I try to serve too many persons and give my ear to the needs of distant people, rather than serving more and better, I just serve more and worse.

That is, I serve hundreds in a business-like way rather than twenty-five in a personal way. As a human I wasn’t made for this. Facebook has weakened my ministry to the persons around me, my students, my fellow church members, my fellow staff. I know some facebook heretics better than I know some of my fellow-workers at Ouachita Hills College. Why? Because the heretics are more present, more demanding of my attention, apparently more needy and in a more desperate state. But then, again, I am not God. He will bring one of his servants to help those that need help. He bids me take care of a little flock. And that is the flock that is near me.

So this begs the question (I am almost done), why wait four weeks? The answer is “Courtesy.”

There are people that need a chance to note my email address (canvassing@canvassing.org.)

And there are people that need a chance to read my final messages (this is how I will “let your light so shine before men” that they can see these works.)

And I need to get some pictures for my mom.

And I need to collect some email addresses myself.

And I need time to think of what other things I need time for.

And, as persons addicted to tobacco have heard, it is a good idea to make a date for doing a difficult good thing and to talk about it and etc. So that is the 28^th.

So if you haven’t read the note “Missions and Me”…read it.

And if I really know you, and/or if I really see you once a year or so, and/or if I really work with you in the Lord’s vineyard, email me after I deactivate facebook. I want to keep in touch.

But if you added me to FB because you were blessed by some scripture statement shared in one of sermons, then I bid you a fond farewell. When Paul was about to depart friends he would never see again, he did it this way:

Ac 20:31  Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears. 32  And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.

He expressed that they were ready to get their spiritual meat directly from the Source. They were not to be crippled on account of his departure. God and the Word would build them up.

And it will you.

Be faithful,

Eugene Prewitt