choose wisely

good things over at the shepherd press blog concerning choosing friends and social networking sites like facebook. facebook and friends is a great, biblical treatise on what is a real friend. i refuse to do facebook (introvert that i am) for the very same reasons that my brother/others *do* facebook (we can look up kids from 3rd grade! every person we ever dated can catch up with our lives as middle aged people! all 400 of our closest friends can know our status at any given moment!). but i let my kids do it to alleviate the guilt i occasionally feel for making them move 5 times in 13 years. it's a great way for them to keep in touch with cousins as well as friends, and it sure is fun to log in on their accounts and see those pictures of my brother that his 3rd grade friends still have around and have scanned in.

however, i have many concerns. i can't possibly police every comment written on their walls, or that they write on their friends' walls. i don't know many of their contacts. and is it a good use of time? after all, it's "just facebook." i can hear my teenagers now. i want them to read these articles and sit and have an intelligent discussion with me about them but i'm not sure yet whether it would produce the result i desire. they already have enough attitudes to fight against right now.

one thing is for sure. post only what is helpful is what i strive to document here on the legacy i'm leaving for our kids. if i ever waver from these four basic principles:

1) Be faithful to God and you will be faithful to others.
2) Be brief.
3) Be truthful and factual.
4) Be pleasant and encouraging.

you have my permission to call (comment or email) me on the carpet about it.

(if you're new to blogging, click on the red words to go to the link that i've referred to and on every picture you can click to enlarge. if the picture is too big, right click and click on "view image" and it will calm down to a reasonable size).