Safe

Safe. What a buzzword. We are a culture consumed with safety. Actually, we are a culture consumed by fear, so we become obsessed with safety. The feeling of safety "fixes" our feelings of fear.  

So naturally, the question has been raised to Lent Unedited--is this really safe? Is it safe to put your real life out there? To be vulnerable on something as public as Facebook? And to be clear, Facebook is very very public. Anything you put up, any comment you make, is public--it can be shared with anyone anywhere, even when you have the strictest privacy settings. 

It's an important question and the ramifications of posting our vulnerabilities need to be thought through. Maybe someone will see our posts and somehow use them against us. Maybe we will lose trust in someone. Maybe we will feel that we went too far and said too much and it just didn't sit right. Maybe someone will stalk us or try to take advantage of us. Those are legitimate concerns. 

So is Lent Unedited a safe thing to be promoting? No. But I would argue that nothing we do on social media is safe. Nothing. 

But I doubt I'm shocking any of you by saying this. We evaluate risks and take them all the time. We know that driving a car can be deadly, but we take appropriate safety precautions and use our best judgment because we know that going places is worth the risk of getting inside a car. 

And safe is not always the same thing as good. When I get to thinking of the very abstract concept of safety, I recall the scene from C.S. Lewis's, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Susan is speaking to Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about Aslan, the lion and Christ figure in the story:

"Ooh," said Susan."...Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good..."

I think that although participating in social media is not always safe, it can be very good, especially when we act as a real community. As mentioned in earlier posts, I've been blown away by the support people have shown one another in this Lent Unedited experiment. It's been awesome. When I've made #lentunedited posts on my own page, my community has shown up in really meaningful ways with every single post. My community has always been there. But it's grown wonderfully deep over the last ten days. What a gift. 

So take appropriate safety precautions with your posts--know your settings and use good judgment. But don't let fear get in the way of being real. Being real is where Facebook can be at its best.