Throughout Scripture we read time and time again about how the people of God inappropriately engaged and incorporated the practices of the culture around them into the life of Israel.

These mistakes led to some painful seasons in the history of Israel. You could say…these were some serious faux pas.

A faux pas is defined as “a blunder; especially a social blunder.” Over the past several weeks at SFN Church we have been talking about how social media has overtaken our culture. For example, according to Business Insider, 96% of Americans use Facebook and there are 10 million comments posted on the site every 20 minutes. We are a Facebook nation and that includes us as Christians as well.

The question for us as Christians is how do we engage this cultural phenomenon in a way that is glorifying to God and avoids all of the evil that our culture uses it for? How do we avoid making some serious faux pas? Well, we started out with some helpful tips from Josh Veach and Aaron Dicer but moved on to address some potential faux pas.

Faux Pas #1: Christians shouldn’t use social media.
Social media is amoral, meaning it is neither good nor bad. But because there are people who use these tools for evil things Christians have often determined that the best rule is to completely separate ourselves from these things and declare that they are “of the devil.” Take movies for example. For years the church told us “don’t go to movies. Movies are of the devil.” And for decades the church neglected a tool that could have been greatly used to influence our culture. Finally, the tides have begun to turn and people like the Kendrick brothers and Sherwood Pictures have begun to make movies like Fireproof and the new movie Courageous that are taking advantage of the medium to influence our culture. By the way, Courageous was #4 in the country opening weekend and has brought in over $25 million.

I tell you that to say that I think it would be a serious faux pas for Christians to neglect the use of this tool that is having such an enormous impact on the culture around us. It made me think of the Apostle Paul who said, “To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.” I believe that Paul would have been burning up Twitter and leveraging Facebook for the sake of pointing people to Jesus.

Faux Pas #2: How I use social media has nothing to do with my Christian faith.
This is a serious faux pas as well! Our use of social media has serious implications on every area of our Christian lives, from our marriages, to how we parent, to the effectiveness of our witness. To fail to think intelligently about how our use of social media impacts our faith is a serious faux pas.

The difficulty for many comes in the fact that the bible does not specifically mention social media, such as Facebook. It didn’t exist! But the bible does have a great deal to say about how we relate to one another as human beings and as Christians. And those principles apply whether we are relating to one another in person or online. I think if we will apply the values of Ephesians 4:29 and 2 Corinthians 5:20 we will be certain to honor God and avoid many of the faux pas of the culture around us:

• “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” (Ephesians 4:29)
• “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.” (2 Corinthians 5:20)

To hear the message in its entirety and my answers to many of the questions I have fielded over the past couple of weeks, click here.

-Pastor Brandin