Do you have Facebook friends who lead perfect lives? You know the ones I'm talking about...The ones that home school 10 kids at once and cook all their food from scratch and {always} have a clean house and they look fabulous all of the time and their children {never} fight or throw a temper tantrum and everything they place in their mouths is 100% organic and they sew all 10 of their kids' Halloween costumes themselves each year and they always find the cheapest gas prices and make homemade crafts with their kids every day and they lead 5 Bible studies and are president of the rotary club and... well, basically, they're perfect. At least that's how it appears on Facebook, right?
Facebook can lie. Don't get me wrong, I love Facebook. I use it often and it's a great way to keep in contact with people, especially for someone like me who grew up in several different countries and have friends all over the world. I appreciate Facebook. But, sometimes I think it could be called Fakebook, because it's {so} easy to appear {fake} on Facebook (not necessarily on purpose!).
I get it. Most people don't want to post the worst pictures of themselves or list out all of their failures or constantly comment on how terrible their lives are. You actually probably have some friends who often do the latter and that gets old real quick! But in posting about mainly the best parts of their lives, some of our Facebook friends really do seem to have it all together.
But Facebook doesn't always tell the whole story. For instance, when I take a picture of my kids and they are smiling nicely and have their arms sweetly around each other, I post it! But I don't post (or comment about) the 50 pictures I took before that where my kids were refusing to smile or had their fingers up their noses. And I certainly don't comment that as soon as I snapped the picture one of them smacked the other in the face which caused a catastrophic meltdown which ultimately led to an early nap time (for me!)! I post the picture on Facebook and everyone thinks, "Wow, what perfectly adorable children. I wish mine were that well behaved." Ha! Right!
I'm not saying that we should all start posting about the {awful} parts of our lives or start using Facebook as a place to constantly complain. And I'm not saying that we should stop posting about the {good} things in our lives and the things we can praise God for. I'm simply reminding you that Facebook doesn't always tell the {whole story}. The perfect life you think your friend is leading because of his or her status updates and pictures may not be as perfect as you think.
Don't let Facebook cause jealousy or feed bitterness or stir up discontentment in you. Use it as a fantastic way to keep in touch with people and their lives and to share about the wonderful things in your life or the not so good things you need prayer about. But don't let it lead you to feelings of failure about your own life and how it doesn't seem to measure up to others'. Facebook can be real. But remember, sometimes it really can be Fakebook.
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