Thursday, February 11, 2016

How strong is your faith?

I've been musing about how strongly people actually take their faith.

Facebook is often bombarded by images, supposedly of Jesus (though looking nothing like what scientists believe would have been his appearance) with the caption "Do you love me?" or "Will you praise me?", etc.

The idea seems to be that you show your faith by sharing the image.  I'm not clear what the purpose of this is - do they believe their God monitors Facebook to see how many people share these images?  Do you get priority in Heaven for more than 10,000 shares?

They do it anyway, but isn't it all too easy?  Anyone can Like or Share a Facebook posting, but  that's not really a good test of anyone's faith.  I have a better idea.

The Romans used to throw Christians to The Lions.

Anyone who recanted was freed - the rest had to face being torn to pieces.  Now that's a real test of faith.  How many of our Facebook God-squad would stick to their faith if the choice was between recanting or dying horribly?  Very few, I'm sure.

Catherine tells me that actually throwing Christians to The Lions would "raise certain Human Rights issues" so maybe we can't do it for real, but I challenge everyone who wants to Like or Share a Facebook Jesus meme to ask themselves this simple question - if Liking or Sharing this would get you eaten, would you still do it?