God's Facebook?

Last week, I saw a church sign that read, "God's Facebook is eternal. Are you on it?" Then Matthew Paul Turner posted this and this on his blog.

I wonder what those people were thinking when they came up with that. It looks to me like another failed Christian attempt at being culturally relevant. Facebook is hot right now, and so "Christian" copies are bound to pop up. There are already Christian social sites for those who seek to avoid the heathens in the wider culture. Now we have attempts to redeem cultural things by putting them on church signs and t-shirts and changing a couple of things to make them "Christian" and show that God is hip too.

I see a couple of problems with this kind of thing. First, and most obvious to me, is that these signs and t-shirts bring God down to our level. Yes, God came in human flesh and he calls himself our Father. Jesus calls us friends. There is a closeness we have with the Creator that is amazing. However, God is not our buddy. Jesus is Lord, and there is a certain level of respect that is lessened by things like this.

The second problem is Christians copying things in the popular culture, instead of exercising God-given creativity to make things that transcend culture and lift our attention to the Creator. All you have to do is walk into any Christian bookstore to see numerous examples. We do great harm to the Gospel when we display our faith on t-shirts and bumper stickers instead of by how we live our lives. We damage the cause of Christ when our art and music only serve as poor imitations of what is already out there. We are called to speak truth to the culture, not hide from it, or copy it.

Let's stop trying to be hip by copying what the culture is doing. Let's not hide from the culture either. Instead, let's go out into the world around us and live counter-culturally by loving others, sacrificing ourselves for their good, and doing what Jesus commanded us to do.