Facebook and Jesus Christ Superstar

Flashback. Almost 40 years ago, Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. The title song is sung by Judas as he questions who Jesus is. Judas sings, “Every time I look at you I don’t understand why you let the things you did get so out of hand. You’d have managed better if you’d had a plan. Why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land? If you’d come today you would have reached a whole nation. Israel in 4 B.C. had no mass communication…”

Now He has Facebook.

Phenomenon would be an understatement. Facebook may be here to stay. It has over 500 million subscribers and it is rapidly pushing to 1 billion. Imagine. 1/6th of the people on the planet using one social networking tool. If you do not count the impoverished in third world countries who have no access to a computer, it may account for more than half of the population on the planet. The world can communicate as one.

So what do you think? Does it make a difference that the Son of God came 2000 years ago? Could he have waited for Facebook? Would that have been a quicker way to spread the news? Apparently not.

Marshall McLuhan once said that the the medium is the message. McLuhan’s work is complicated to fully explain in a short piece but he was saying that content does not matter as much as the vehicle through which the content is delivered. I am not going to make an argument here about why Facebook itself is more culture shaping then a Facebook post by a 16 year old boy but I will say that the medium itself is what shapes society over time. Facebook is shaping society.

That is pretty esoteric for a Sunday morning. More thinking maybe needed by all of us. However, in the simplest of terms I can say that (1) Jesus’ birth fulfilled the prophecies so He came at the time appointed by God. (2) Jesus is the center of all things (3) He is more important and shapes the world more than content and (4) God has called His people to deliver His message.

Can Facebook be helpful to deliver the message? In large part; probably not. Facebook as a medium won’t help spread the love of Jesus. The love of Jesus is spread by the love of people who are in Christ. Those people may use Facebook to that end, as long as they remember that Facebook as a medium has a message and it is not the message of Christ.

Yes, you can post your thoughts and responses to me on Facebook.