Gently Humorous: If God Had Facebook

     After successfully publishing my first novel last month, I've decided I'm addicted to this whole writing thing. I love starting with a blank document and ending with a book. This summer I'm planning to start a new suspense title, and I'm dusting off a (very) old manuscript and trying to get it ready for publication as well.

What's up with this photo?

     This manuscript, currently titled Saving Natalie, is five years old. That may not sound like a whole lot, but it is. Read the following two sentences, and you'll see what I mean:

     Mark flipped open his cell phone. "Hello?"

     I know that I still have to flip open my cell phone, but really? I'm expecting my readers to believe that a middle-class, professional private-school teacher flips his cell phone open instead of swiping on his smartphone?

     A huge part of what I've been doing the last week is getting Saving Natalie a lot more up to date.

• He needed to find out more about her. He pulled up her name on the campus network all her public Facebook pictures.
• She pushed buttons furiously on her cell phone. She tapped furiously on her iPhone screen.
• Jake wondered whom he should call text.
• Jake still remembered how he felt when he got that first email Facebook message.

     All these changes (thankfully) are relatively minor, and not too difficult to make. Most of them have to do with the way we communicate with each other. But if five year-old technology is already almost obsolete, have you wondered how the Bible would be changed if it were re-written to be more "technologically correct"?

     Can you imagine God sending text messages instead of angels to tell Mary and Joseph about the coming of baby Jesus? And what if Pontius Pilate relied on SurveyMonkey, not angry crowds, to determine whether or not Jesus should die?

     Think about the people that followed Jesus, hoping for the miraculous. Can you imagine how fast the YouTube videos would turn viral that showed Jesus healing Bartimaes or raising Jairus' daughter? The Myth Busters would probably have to get involved and weigh in with their opinions whether the miracles were confirmed, plausible, or busted.

     What if God had a twitter account? John 3:16, the most beloved Bible verse in the New Testament, would barely make the 140 character requirement for tweets. (The NKJ version has exactly 138 characters, leaving just enough room for two quotation marks.) I have no idea how God would fit in the entire sermon on the mount.

     If God kept a blog, what kind of trolls would come along and leave him nasty comments? Would he use Google ads? And how would he face a blogger's darkest ethical dilemma - to use copyrighted photos from the internet or not?

     Thankfully, the Bible is quite clear that God's word is unchangeable. Whatever God spoke two thousand years ago still holds true today.

     In a world that is so swiftly changing, I'm glad that some things don't ever need to be rewritten.

Random Fact: My husband was on Facebook two years before I finally gave in and jumped on the bandwagon. He got tired of my friends asking him to pass on messages to me.

Blog Love: This post is part of the Christian Home Magazine, courtesy of Laura O at Day by Day.

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