"Overheard" on Facebook This Week

Although I plan on someday writing a post about some of the hypocrisy that I see from professing Christians on Facebook, today I thought I would share something edifying that I read on Facebook yesterday. If you're not familiar with Facebook, it's a social networking site in which you have a network of "friends". You can post a "status update", and your "friends" can comment underneath your status.

I saw this status message yesterday that I thought was VERY interesting... and apparently I wasn't the only one, since as of right now, there are 34 comments underneath it, and 40 people have clicked the "I like this" button.

If you ask a man under whose authority does he place himself, or to whom in his life does he answer, and he says, "I [only] answer to God;" let it be known that he is not telling the truth. For a godly man places himself under the godly authority of the leadership of the local church--God's Church. The man who refuses to submit to the authority of godly leadership refuses to submit to the authority of God in his life.

(Although the point of his post was the need for believers to be under the authority of a local church, the first thing that came to my mind when I read this statement was the people that I have encountered in life (either in my own life, or those that I have seen on Facebook) who live openly sinful lives, and are fond of saying to anyone who dares to comment on the sin in their lives, "Only God can judge me.")

The following are two GREAT comments that were posted under that status update:

"It's like telling your supervisor you'll only take orders from the president of the company."

"Amen to that!!! This is why we have all these 'Mavericks' running around with their copy and paste theology and zero accountability."

Wow! I liked the original statement, and I LOVED these comments. I know someone who could be described perfectly as having "copy and paste theology", and so this comment really resonated with me. This whole conversation was a great reminder to me of the danger of relying solely on the internet for bible teaching... and that even though the internet can be a great resource, it can't take the place of being under the authority of a local church.