Holidays and Facebook

Facebook really annoys me.  I enjoy some of the things on it, like keeping track of birthdays of friends, relatives, coworkers, friendly coworkers and total strangers.  It has also allowed me to reconnect with old friends, classmates, ect. And gives me a way to easily share in some of their important moments and let them share in mine.  It also makes griping, bitching, moaning and being sarcastic easier than ever.  It does annoy me though, first I hate the resent redesign, I really hate how it now determines what is important enough to make my news feed and slaps everything else onto a tiny ticker in the corner, unless I am lucky, I have to visit each friends homepage to see what happens since it seems to miss a lot of interesting stuff.  I am not even going to venture into the stupid little games.  But two of the biggest gripes I have involve my friends.  Apparently as we gotten older a great many of them have found faith and I am very happy for them and wish them the best.  I do however get annoyed at their method of displaying their faith.  I don’t like religion.  That being said, no I am not an agnostic or an atheist.  I have made my proclamation of faith, confessed my sins and invited my savior into my life.  I do belong to a church and I do believe in God and the word of God.  I consider faith a deeply personal thing.  I won’t be making hourly, daily, weekly or monthly posts proclaiming that unless I copy and post this message I am a bad Christian or I don’t love Jesus or something.  First, if I remember my Sunday School lessons right, that could be considered passing judgment on someone, and I’m fairly sure the Bible says that’s God’s job.  Second, that’s a very negative way to witness, and again, I thought that while the Bible stresses the importance of witnessing, it also states you should avoid any actions that might lead others astray or prevent them from accepting Jesus as savior.  Do the people that post these really think spamming the social network equivalent of a chain letter is going to convert a non-believer?  If you want to post that God is wonderful, more power to you.  If you want to post that God has made a beautiful day, good for you.  That might lift my spirits to read.  If you want to make a post about how your faith helped you through a difficult time, that’s inspirational.  If you post about being at a particular church or enjoying the company and fellowship of friends, those are good.  They let me know you are enjoying your life and faith.  They show witness in a powerful and positive way.  And they let me know that your faith is real, and not a copy and paste note.  Faith is a deep and personal thing that makes you stronger and wiser, religion, to me, is a tool used by people to do horrible things to other people. 

Part two of my rant:

I hate the posts that proclaim saying anything other than “merry Christmas” is somehow leaving Christ out of Christmas.  First “Christmas”  means “Christ’s Mass” or communion, or the Lord’s Supper.  Second, Jesus wasn’t born on or near December 25.  The Bible doesn’t state exactly when Jesus was born, but it does say he was born 6 months after John the Baptist.  Based on evidence in the Bible, John was probably born in early April at Passover, This is based on when Zachariah would have been serving in the temple and encountered the Angel who made the announcement of John’s conception.  If Jesus was born 6 months later, assuming a normal term of pregnancy for Mary, he would have been born in September. The birth of Jesus was not considered an important event to celebrate by the early Church, which was more concerned with the death and resurrection.  When Charlemagne decided to make Christianity the national religion of Rome, there was an issue.  The new Christians tended to continue to celebrate the Pagan holidays, particularly the winter Solstice, December 25.  Since taking a holiday away was likely to result in revolt, they cooped the “bad” holiday with a good one.  Later, in the US of A it was determined that since the Christians stole the holiday from the non-Christians, it would be okay to steal it from them, so they added a fat guy in a red suit with flying livestock and turned it into a contest to see who could spend the most money they didn’t have while pepper-spraying the most competitors.