Where were the Tem Commandments first written? Some people say Exodus; others say Deuteronomy. What about Romans 2:15, where they were written on our hearts!
With this in mind, the following standard clearly illustrates the choices we make with Social Media between obeying and violating the Ten Commandments.
Exodus 20: 3-17
1. Turn it off when you start spending more time with it than with God.
2. Turn it off when you have more interest in the activities of your peers or Hollywood personalities than you do in God.
3. Turn it off when God’s Name is taken in vain or Godly morals are mocked.
4. Turn it off to honor the Lord’s Day.
5. Turn it off when the authority of parents is challenged, belittled or neglected.
6. Turn it off when someone is murdered or when anger and hatred are accepted and excused.
7. Turn it off when lust or adultery are accepted or when you or others are tempted to lust.
8. Turn it off when someone steals.
9. Turn it off when someone tells a lie or misrepresents the truth and makes an excuse or rationalizes the offense to God.
10. Turn it off when someone covets or when you desire something that God does not intend for you to have.
What did God have in mind when He wrote
the Ten Commandments on our hearts?
They are rules to live by, though we fail miserably. They reflect to us our great need for Him because of our great failure to live righteously. It’s so easy to say, “Everyone is on social media…I have to keep up!”; “It is the “new” millennial culture, Jackie, get with the program!”; “How would I maintain my relationships or be able to keep pace with what’s going on in the world without Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, iPhones, YouTube, T.V., Virtual Video Games, etc.,etc.?”; or “It would be impossible to keep up with life, if I gave God equal time”, .….
We live in a world consumed with social media. Just checking in with all its networking tentacles keeps us occupied daily. Setting it aside for an entire day would require intense willpower. We observe each other... on the streets, when we are walking our dogs or children in strollers; in our cars, in the marketplace, at the family table when we gather to eat, in the bathtub; during times of entertainment or when guests are in our home…you get the picture…everywhere, all the time. If we are not looking at a screen, we are carrying it…we read a book on it in a waiting room or in an elevator. Being engaged in a face-to-face conversation with facial expressions and an opportunity to read the spirit of the person with whom we are speaking is a lost art and laborious in the light of a collection of abbreviations incorporated into less than two sentences.
It has been said that the eyes are the windows to the soul. We are accountable for what we put before our eyes. He’s watching. Job made a covenant with his eyes…“Does he (God) not see my ways and count my every step.” Job 31: 4; 36: 7 “He does not take his eyes off the righteous.”
~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America. Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California. My passion is discipling and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights.
