Category Archives: Theology

It is Monday, January 31, 2011. It has also been three days since I last signed on to facebook. I think I’ve successfully completed my weekend “fast.”

But now that I can actually sign back on to facebook, I am in no rush. I am also making some changes. That is, I’m creating a schedule where I will only be on facebook for a total of 1 hour per day (and even that seems like a lot), including the time that I take to read other posts. This also means that, I will be unsubscribing from various news sources and groups, and re-evaluating my “friends” list to make some adjustments. This can include removing some “friends” or hiding them from my feed. No offense to some of you, but this is simply a case of IO, that is Information Overload. There’s no need for excess information to be competing for my attention when I’ve got a pretty tight schedule. 13 credit hours of grad school or seminary work plus 36 work hours hardly leaves room for anything else, particularly spirituality or God.

Anyway, from my last post, I asked the question, “Are social networks such as facebook and twitter a religion?”

Well, let’s first define what we mean by religion since there are multitude of answers. Following are some definitions given by both Christian and non-Christian folks.

Ludwig Feuerbach: “Christian theology has tended to interpret the externalized image of “feeling” or self-consciousness as a wholly other, absolute essence, whereas in fact it is a self-feeling feeling. Religion is the projection of human needs, an expression of the uttered sorrow of the soul.”

Karl Marx: “The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.  It is the imaginary sun which seems to humans to revolve around themselves until they realize that they themselves are the center of their own revolution.  God is simply a projection of human concerns. Religion is therefore the result of a certain set of social and economic conditions.”

Sigmund Freud:  “Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.  Illusions are not deliberate deceptions; they are simply ideas that arise from within the human unconsciousness, as it seeks to fulfill its deepest yearnings and longs.”  God therefore is viewed as a “wish-fulfillment,” arising from repressed, unconscious infantile longings for protection and security.

Karl Barth: “Religion including Christianity is an obstacle and must be eliminated if God is to be discerned in Christ.”  And it is idolatrous, in that it involves people worshiping a human construction.  Religion as a human construction is contrasted with divine revelation.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Argued for a religionless Christianity- meaning that “faith which is based not upon untenable and discredited notion of “natural human religiosity,” but upon God’s self-revelation in Christ.  An appeal to culture, to metaphysics, or to religion was to be avoided.”

John B. Cobb: Argues that the argument about religion is pointless.  “There is no such thing as religion.  There are only traditions, movements, communities, peoples, beliefs, and practices that have features that are associated by many people with what they mean by religion.”

And, in other popular definition, religion is defined by the four C’s: Creed, Code, Cult, and Community.  But what is more important to remember is that each religion’s goal is different, such as redemption, liberation, enlightenment, heaven, salvation, etc. This also means that we shouldn’t be qualifying, validating, and judging other religions based on our criteria. Or in other words, we shouldn’t be playing a universal “truth” game since different rules applies to different games.

Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I think that based on some of the definitions above, facebook is a religion. So just how committed are you?

I now return to my original post from Friday, which stated the purpose of this “fast” as a class assignment, and with the following question. Through the discipline of fasting, did I gain greater control over my life and allowed God to gain access and redirect and heal me in body, mind, and spirit? I will only say that at this point, I am making progress.

*Note: I am aware that all definitions of religion listed above are from male perspectives, but it is with intentions since that is how, traditionally, culture has viewed forms of authority.