in every things it is it good that genuine, severe social problems become memes on facebook?

in every things it is it good that genuine, severe social problems become memes on facebook?

S ocial news tends become a little fad-ish. Memes and a few some some ideas explode regarding the scene, are every where for a little while of the time|period that is short of}, then tend to drift down into the ether, to never be heard from again. Whenever these memes are pet videos or quotes from a-listers, this appearing and disappearing work doesn’t be seemingly a issue. Exactly what about whenever media that are social are perhaps not adorable and amusing, but horrifying and terrible? About them, and then—only a few days later—the issue has disappeared from our radars again whether it be expressing outrage over the situation in Aleppo or being exasperated by the latest instance of police violence against a person of color, real life situations often take on meme-like status via social media: they seem to come out of nowhere, suddenly everyone is talking.

Regarding the one hand, bringing people’s focus on dilemmas impacting the life of

other people thing that is good.

We often inhabit lack of knowledge of the suffering and pain believed by others within our community or about the entire world. Having some light shed on these problems will help us better love our neighbors—and maybe also think about ways be unwittingly complicit of this activities causing this discomfort. Engaging these problems on can offer a starting place for conversations that start to alter hearts and minds.

The meme-ing of social issues can sometimes reduce complex webs of cause and effect into simplistic “good guy v. bad guy” narratives that make it easy to become angered and indignant (almost always at someone else), but do little, if anything, to change the conditions which led to the problem in the first place on the other hand. Ourselves as the bad guys , and it’s almost never the supposed good guys who are causing the problem when it becomes a story of the good guys and the bad guys, we almost never cast. Obviously, then there isn’t much I can do to fix things—except get mad at the bad guys and try to shame them into changing if it’s the bad guys’ fault, and I’m not one of the bad guys.

in addition to the fad-ish nature regarding the thing that is whole threatens to show other people’s pain and putting up with into fodder entertainment, another product become consumed by

voracious appetite for what’s new. This isn’t to state that people take pleasure in the discomfort and suffering we come across. But even for the sake of our own feelings, it remains largely entertainment, and our indignation at the horrors of Aleppo seem to become one with our sadness at the death of a child on Call the Midwife or our horror at the brutality of war depicted in Vikings or Game of Thrones if we are saddened by what we see, as long as we are doing it. If

anger about innocent fatalities or racial injustice are identical if the victims are genuine individuals or figures for a tv show, we must ask because we care about the issue—or because we somehow enjoy the righteous indignation whether we are paying attention. Do we should make things better—or are we simply hunting for a cause to be elite essay writers aghast at exactly how bad things are?

Needless to say, maybe not everyone—perhaps not many people—engaging social dilemmas on social news does therefore due to their own advantage. But with ourselves and our own motivations as we try to evaluate our own engagement with social issues via social media, we need to be honest. Are we truly being relocated, via social networking, to raised love

neighbor and God’s creation—or are we just shopping for someplace to direct our anger, fear and anxiety? Are we looking for redemptive reconciliation, or catharsis that is personal? Do we acknowledge that individuals are included in the difficulty (the sinful brokenness of creation), and therefore challenge ourselves to engage in the solution—or are we just trying to verify just how terrible the entire world is “out there”, so we are able to be much more smug regarding how nutrients are “in here” (whether “in right here” means because the Church, or as liberals, conservatives, and whatever other team we might hold dear)?

We wonder often about our very very own engagement with social dilemmas on social media marketing.

Why do we share the plain things we share, engage the difficulties we engage, avoid the problems we avoid? Each of us probably has to think more carefully through what we desire to achieve by

engagement:

Am we looking to raise understanding? If that’s the case, with who? Exactly how have always been we framing it making sure that those who aren’t currently alert to it’s going to engage along with it, rather than just tuning it away because that’s not something they value?

Am we desiring community spaces that are safe phrase, discussion, validation and affirmation? If that’s the case, bring into the individuals whom require that community—and keep out the people whom threaten to undermine it? How do you ensure that we myself have always been not someone that is undermining safe community through my words and actions? If perhaps not every post is provided because individuals desire to debate the subject in front of you, how can I understand whenever debate is welcome when it is time for you to remain from it, or when it is instead offer encouragement of review?

Am I attempting to be active in changing the issue or situation at hand? For me personally, this is actually the trickiest one. There are lots of of similar concerns right here as there are with increasing understanding (how can I framework it, that do we share it with, etc.), but additionally, there are the extra concerns concerning changing the specific situation: do we want people’s hearts and minds, and wish that leads to social and changes that are perhaps legal? Do change the rules and/or conditions that are social and hope that specific hearts and minds will alter in the future? In addition, there are questions regarding why We (or some other person) should desire to alter this specific problem, in place of another associated with numerous problems with which individuals might be worried. All things considered, all those problems reveal us places where is crying away for the kind of reconciliation we, as Christians, know can finally just in the redemptive work of Jesus. Consequently, every problem is definitely an opportunity where God’s loving grace is attempting to make things brand new (Rev 21:5)—but also an opportunity where other stuff have actually reached work which could not be pointing toward love, grace, or reconciliation.