Hymnals and Hyrnals

So, a few months ago a new website popped up called the Babylon Bee.  The Bee is a Christian satirical news site that posts fake, satirical versions of news stories, very similar to The Onion, but from a Christian perspective.  Needless to say, the stories produced at the Babylon Bee are hilarious and incredibly creative.  Some of my favorite stories from the Bee are here, here, and here.  And, as all good satire does, some of the stories have made me squirm a bit before I could chuckle at them.  Take, for example, this article, and this article.  Admittedly, you have to be a part of the Christian subculture to really appreciate the stories, but trust me: they're spot on.

The Babylon Bee also accepts reader submissions, so one night about a month ago, when I didn't have anything better to do, I thought I'd try my hand at a satirical article.  I typed it up and sent it into their submissions department, and that was that.  The submissions page on their website states that if they're going to use your submitted article, they'll contact you.  If they're not going to use your article, you won't hear back from them.  Time went by, and I never heard back from them, so I assumed they weren't going to use my article.

But then, this morning, I received an email in my inbox from the Babylon Bee with the message, "You're up" in the body of the email with a link to my article on the Bee site.  Have a look for yourself.

The Bee published my article on their Facebook and Twitter pages right away this morning.  This goofy, made up, satirical article is by far the most widely read thing I've ever written - including anything I've ever written on this blog.  In fact, if you counted up the views for all of the things I've ever written on this blog, that's still probably less than the number of people who have read my article at the Bee today.  After all, they have 27,000 followers on Facebook and about 7,500 on Twitter.  As I write this, the article has received 1,700 "likes" on Facebook and almost 500 shares, while on Twitter it has been retweeted almost 50 times.  The comments on the article on Facebook (of which their are 124) have been fun to watch unfold, as some people riffed on the article and made some more jokes, while others are horrified because they have yet to learn that the article is satirical.

So thanks to the Babylon Bee for publishing my article and making this an interesting day, as I've been able to watch people enjoy my article in real time.  Now that I've broken the ice on satirical Christian writing, I think I might try my hand at a few more.

An Update, and Some Facebook Withdrawal

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you'll have noticed by now that I haven't posted to it in, oh, about four months.  But since there aren't any regular readers of this blog (including me), you likely haven't noticed, and have just stumbled back here coincidentally.

Welcome.

Why no posting for such an extended period of time.  Most of the reason can be summed up in this word: summer.  Another word that describes the absence is: work.  In truth, there are several reasons why I haven't posted for a while, even though I had good intentions to do so for some time.  Oh well.  What's that they say about good intentions?

But a recent development in my life is affording me the opportunity to post more.  What's that development?  As of yesterday, I'm done with Facebook.  Done.  If you look at the right side of this site, you'll notice that the Facebook widget is not emblazoned with an image in my likeness, but instead merely reads "Facebook."  That's because I've deactivated my account.

Why did I do away with Facebook?  Quite a few reasons, actually, most of which are related.  Here are a few:

1. It had become apparent to me that I spent a lot of time on Facebook.  I never really posted much, but I ended up spending a significant amount of time reading the posts of others.  Over the past few months, I have felt more and more like reading posts from people I neither had regular contact with, nor would have contact with in the future, wasn't an efficient and valuable use of my time.

2. I was more convinced of this after reading this convicting article by Tim Challies that Facebook wasn't likely to be in my future much longer.  I tend to think that when I write my own "Things I Don't Regret Doing With My Kids" post, it won't include a bullet point talking about how much I don't regret spending time on Facebook.

3. I'm sick of overshares.  Let's face it, there are far too many people who share far too much information about themselves on Facebook.  It's stuff I don't need to know.  I know that I could just block them in my newsfeed, but if I do that, then what's the point?  I didn't see one.

4. The forth reason is like the third, and is potentially the most significant reason.  Facebook was affecting the way I relate to people in face to face contact, in what I think was a negative way.  The more I learn about people on Facebook, the less I feel the need to relate to them personally.  Additionally, the more "dirt" I get on people via Facebook, either intentionally or unintentionally, the more that influences the way I relate to them personally.  This has not been a positive trend in my life and ministry.  So it was time to cut it out.

The withdrawal symptoms have been more significant than I was expecting.  A couple times today I caught myself, seemingly subconsciously, moving my fingers to type facebook.com into my browser.  I resisted though, convincing myself that it was simply force of habit.

So as to not completely remove myself from the social media world, I've opened a Twitter account for myself.  I have no intention to tweet, or twit, or whatever it is.  I merely want to stay in touch with the media organizations I frequent in order to get continual updates to content - mostly theological.  I'm not saying I'll never go back to Facebook, but I plan to take a long break.

So here's to more blogging and no Facebook.  I guess I'll see where it takes me.