Facebook and Sin

I am grateful to the various people such as "Church Marketing Sucks" who have drawn our attention to the American pastor who has banned his staff from Facebook, and recommended all his flock stay off it. And he is of course right.

Let us face it. On Facebook you have the ever-present temptation of a whole world of potential former loved ones. You can interact with the avatar of your former flame - an image that will never fade, and was probably taken in 1983. If you become "friends", they have the ability to "like" what you do. And that is, after all, part of the problem. Because you gain an artificially approving image of the blast from your past. How much more godly, I say to myself, if Facebook had the ability for "friends", as well as "like"-ing your status, to "dislike", "raise their eyebrows at", "say it's definitely one last chance or that's it Buster at", "reckons that's about typical", "reckons ..... was drunk again, the beast", or "just gives up, simply gives up with...".

I have had a discussion with Eileen, and proposed some changes she could make to encourage a more godly Community around here. In the first instance, I've suggested she block the IP addresses of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Particularly LinkedIn. Given that many people have affairs in the office, the last thing you want is people making contact with former colleagues.

And that takes me onto my further suggestions. Since many people do have affairs in the office, factory, guinea-pig-dairy or other work-related environment, I've recommended that all members of the Husborne Crawley community be banned from going to work. And since former love interests are renowned for wandering the lanes of Mid Beds and Milton Keynes, searching for innocent married souls they can corrupt with the darkness of their extra-curricular fumblings, I've suggested that it's best if all Beaker Folk be kept to the environment of the Great House and its grounds, while all visitors be scanned with my new "pheremonophilic detector". This will ensure we exclude all that might be capable of exciting unwanted and unwonted lust. It will be a great drag on my evangelistic campaign, but one can't be too careful.

But I am aware that some people find  propinquity is the necessary ingredient for unbridled animal urges. And if we confine all Folk to barracks, as it were, what might be the danger of them actually falling in love with each other? Much better that married couples be locked into their rooms. We can push blank doilies under the door and receive the pressed ones back, ensuring that they can still usefully contribute to the financial well-being of the Community.

Single people, naturally, can be allowed out- provided they are chaperoned either by someone who can be utterly trusted, or by people who can be guaranteed not to raise uncontrollable sexual urges in others. I suggest in the latter category atheists in anoraks and 45-year-old computer programmers. Or best of all, atheist computer programmers in anoraks.  A reliable member of the senior staff might be regarded as "utterly trusted", but unfortunately that takes us back to where we came in, banning senior religious figures from dangerously provocative situations.

As for myself, I need access to Facebook. If I don't have it myself, how can I keep track of, and shut down, all the "We hate Drayton Parslow" groups that Eileen and my wife Marjorie keep setting up? Bless them, it's a great joke. But even the best joke to wear thin after 213 different Facebook pages.