When Tweets Clash: Paradoxes of internet truth

So many wise and inspirational sayings are shared on facebook.  So many “if you love Jesus, then you will forward it with ten friends” chain e-mails going around.

Do these bits of wisdom motivate you?  They motivate me to unsubscribe or hit the delete button more often than not.

Today, a blogger (nukelearfishing) I follow wrote a great post on what happens when these proverbial shares, likes, and tweets clash:

An example would be the proverbs, “Many hands make light work”* and “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” If we saw either of them on their own we might say that they are true, but when you put them together there is at least a creative tension between them, if not a conflict. We either have to decide that one is right and the other is wrong or be prepared to live with them as a paradox. For the most part we are very happy to do that. It’s like some optical illusions where the same picture can be seen in two ways.

The blogger goes on to make the point that while most people can deal with the seemingly contradictory sayings of the internet, they aren’t so quick to live with the paradoxes concerning God, such as

• God’s discipline and love
• Jesus is simultaneously and fully human and fully God

Christian faith has more than a few paradoxes.

• With Jesus the way up is down or becoming lowly.
• The way to save your life is to give it up.
• We are to crucify self and love our enemies.

Living in tension while trusting that God knows best is part of having faith in the first place.

You don’t have to understand how it is true to trust God’s truth.  In my experience, God rewards those who choose to walk in faith by giving them more understanding only after they take their first steps.

If you are a sharer of internet philosophy, take a moment to consider if what you are saying holds true all the time.  How would a person in various circumstances practically apply what you’re saying.  And for goodness sake, please take a moment before you try to guilt people into passing this truth along only “if they love Jesus.”