A few weeks ago, my brother sent me this article about Facebook (he is extremely anti-Facebook himself):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook
Now I have many problems with this article, which I'm not going to go into here. For the most part I think the writer's own extremely subjective, perhaps Marxist worldview has got in the way of objective reasoning, not to mention he completely discounts human autonomy and our ability to think and make choices for ourselves. But now is not the time. Paul has blogged about some problems with it and there is some more discussion on the Guardian here.
Despite my criticisms of the article, though, I have to admit that today Facebook has deemed itself guilty of some of the author's accusations. Each day on Facebook there is a new 'gift' you can give to one of your friends. When you first join FB, you get one gift you can give for free, and thereafter they cost $1 each, some or all of which goes to charity. They come up with all sorts of bizarre pixellated presents, such as Santa outfits, piles of turtles and cakes.
Today's gift is a 'Fat Tax Return'. This would be suspicious enough given the leanings of FB's board, but what is more, you don't have to pay for it today: it is FREE!
You may be shocked; you may be scandalised. I think it's quite amusing as it is so blatant. But then again, it's no surprise that the world's most powerful people like money is it? and I don't think it should be any reason to stop using Facebook, when the rest of our lives are run by corporations like Microsoft. Okay,I don't agree with the neo-liberal politics behind it, but that doesn't mean that because I've seen that Fat Tax Return on Facebook I'm going to rush down the street and pick up a copy of Hayek. And neither should you...
Friday 25 January 2008
Wednesday 23 January 2008
The light of dawn
Search the Scriptures has now moved onto Proverbs, and this verse stood out at me a few days ago more than it ever has before:
Proverbs 4:18 - 'But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day.'
Now I got to thinking about this and came up with all sorts of different ways of looking at it, some of which are more helpful than others. But the one thing that really struck me, and encouraged me, was the absoluteness of this statement. It shines brighter and brighter until full day... this is a fact. The light will not flicker one day as life goes through ups and downs. It will not be extinguished by the hard times. No, if we are walking in God's ways then we are walking nearer and nearer every day towards his glory and being made like him. How encouraging! So next time you have a bad day just remember that even that day has been one more step towards 'full day'.