Privacy Issues

I saw something on Facebook the other day that shocked me.

I have seen an awful lot on Facebook. I have seen photos that verge on pornographic. Ok, they don't just verge on it. They are. I have seen people endorse movies and TV shows that I can't believe they can watch in good conscience. I have seen language that would blister paint. I have seen warnings for false computer viruses, poisoned food, and vaccines that cause your fingers and toes to rot off, ads for dogs who have been lost since 1991, and miracle foods that promise to allow me to live forever. I am cynical and suspicious. I don't believe much. And I'm not shocked by much.

But I was shocked.

I saw pictures by a professional photographer who had been hired to capture images of a child's birth. Oh, they were tastefully done, I suppose. Black and white, so no one had to be disturbed by the reality of blood and amniotic fluid and afterbirth. Photoshopped, I'm sure, to make it look like Mom had just been out for an afternoon stroll, rather than having just pushed out a baby. (Did she put on make-up before this photo op?) But I was shocked. And saddened.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Is nothing private?

I know what you ate for supper. I've seen your 600 wedding photos, your "after sex" photos, your ultrasound photos, your pregnancy belly photos. Now I'm seeing you with your bare legs spread open, giving birth, with what looks like the entire extended family looking on.

I get it. It's a precious moment. It's a miracle. It's wonderful. I might even understand why you would want to capture the moment on film (although the idea of hiring a professional photographer to do so is a little weird to me). I kind of might get why you'd want to have such photos. For yourself.

But you just completely cheapened it by sharing it with the entire world (well over 500 million people, to be exact.) You took something precious and miraculous and private, and you made it public. You invited us all in.

I wonder, would you willingly give birth in front of a stadium full of strangers?  Even if you set your photo settings to just your friends, you invited around 150 people to watch you give birth. Would you ever do that in real life? Because you just did. I wonder, how will your child feel about this when he or she is old enough to realise what you did? And I wonder, What if something had gone terribly wrong? It happens, you know. In a matter of seconds, a moment of joy is turned to horrible tragedy, even in our modern Western world. It didn't happen this time. But it could have. It happens more than you'd think. And there would have been a professional photographer there to capture every tragic moment.

We whine and complain and post endless stupid posts about how to protect our privacy from Facebook (which, if the posts are to be believed, can read my mind). Have we not shown "them" over and again that we really don't care about our privacy? Why, then, are we surprised and indignant when "they" believe us? I can just hear Mark Zuckerburg: "Look, they post for the world to see their 600 wedding photos, their after-sex pictures, pictures of their (practically) naked bodies, pictures of their completely exposed pregnancy bellies, pictures of their in utero children, and pictures of themselves giving birth. Trust me, guys, they don't care if we track every single thing they look at on the Internet. Why would they? It's nothing compared to what they've volunteered to show us."

I just shake my head. Why do we do this? Are we so sickeningly narcissistic that we really think the whole world needs to share in our most sacred, most precious, most private moments? Are we really that selfish, that self-centred? It makes me sad. You know what? If you want all those pictures, great. No problem. I might even understand that - sort of. But keep them for yourself.

It says in Luke 1:24, "Zechariah's wife Elizabeth became pregnant and for five months remained in seclusion.“The Lord has done this for me,” she said. “In these days he has shown his favor and taken away my disgrace among the people.” She stayed in seclusion for 5 months. Because she was ashamed of her pregnancy? No, she knew this was a gift from God, a miracle, a sign of his favour. She stayed secluded for five months because she was NO LONGER ashamed. God had taken away her disgrace. She stayed secluded for five months to savour that truth. Some things are just too precious to share.

And later, of Mary, Luke tells us, "But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." She didn't post them to Facebook. She didn't put them on Instagram. She didn't even talk about them. She treasured them up and pondered them in her heart. Oh, I know. Different times. Different era. But both Mary and Elizabeth could have done the first-century equivalent of posting their news to Facebook. They didn't. They kept their treasures private. Some things are just too precious to share with the world.

I can't stop what people post on Facebook. But I pray, yes, I pray that God gives me wisdom to think and rethink every single thing I post.

Because I really do care about my privacy.

And some things are just too precious to share with the world.

When Bad Things Happen

Have you ever wished you could wave a magic wand and change a situation?

Have you ever wished you had a supernatural ability to somehow bend the ear of God and cause him to act in the way you want?

Have you ever wished you could just lay your hands on someone and have them healed, the way Jesus did? The way his apostles did?

I do.

And, judging by the way I sometimes here others pray, they do to. I have heard people plead, beg, demand, insist. I have heard them declare, promise, and decree. I have heard them whimper and shout, pray in words I understood and in words no one could, pray with conviction and contrition and compassion. I've heard it.

And what I see is that sometimes God heals and answers and moves. And sometimes he doesn't.

I have no intention of talking about prayer and how it works, about faith or healing or giftings or anything like that. But I got to thinking the other day, What if God really did give me, say, the gift of healing? Awesome, right?

Or, maybe, not so awesome.

Because I started to think about my own life. I thought about how I have learned and grown and fallen more deeply in love with Jesus through the struggle. Every struggle has been one I resisted and prayed against. Who wants to go through pain? And some of it has been tremendous pain indeed. If I had had the power to change it at the beginning, I would have. I know I would have. I would have waved the prayer wand and made the hurt go away.

But here's the crazy thing: when I look back, I wouldn't change it. If my today-self could somehow travel back in time and stay or move the hand of God at the points of my greatest struggle, if God said to me, "Shall I do it differently?" knowing what I know today, and the good that has come from the struggle, and how the struggle has refined and strengthened my relationship with Him, I would go through it again. Because I would rather go through the pain and know my Jesus more than to be rescued from the pain and miss out on knowing him as fully.

So I think, What if I had the gift of healing, what if I could wave my wand and make God move, and in so doing, I somehow robbed someone of the blessing, yes, the blessing of their pain? What if someone had seen me struggle and had prayed, "Oh, Lord, don't let her have to go through that," and poof, he made it so, and in so doing, I never got to know him the way I do? What if I did that to someone else?

It strikes me that my wanting to be able to wave my prayer wand reveals at its heart a distrust of the heart and motives of God. I think I must know better. I think that this suffering another is going through can't possibly be turned to good. The suffering that I am going through can't possibly be redeemed. It has no value. It should simply stop. Clearly, I know this, but God missed the memo. I begin to think that maybe this evil in my life is something God has not willed. That's a tempting direction to go. It can't possibly be God's will, right? Well, it isn't God's will in the sense that it falls within his moral will. But if I am going to take seriously the sovereignty of God, I have to accept that the bad things that happen in my life aren't just things that he "allows" but that he "wills". To suggest that he simply "allows" them is to suggest that the evil is sort of a Plan B which he'll work around if he absolutely has to but he'd rather not. That's certainly not what Joseph believed. "What you (his brothers) intended for evil, God intended for good." God didn't allow it for good. He intended it for good. He intended for Joseph to be tossed into that well by his brothers. He intended for Joseph to be sold as a slave, thrown into prison, and locked up for years. Because he intended to use it to shape Joseph into the man who would save his family from starvation, ultimately preserving the nation of Israel, and our world's hope for a Saviour. That is what God intended all along. And that's how he intends to use the suffering in my life - to shape me into the person he wants me to be, who will more accurately reflect his image in the world.

But that leads back to trust, back to a heart of trust that is so profound I can rest quietly in the trouble. No, not without tears and anguish. Not without confusion, questions, and lament. But quietly. Without insisting on a magic wand to wave it all away. Without doing everything I can and a whole bunch of things I can't to try to escape from the pain. It leads me to a heart that holds on to God, through the struggle, through the pain, until he blesses me. It leads me to the place where I am willing to suffer because I believe that He is of greater good than temporal comfort and ease.

I don't know that I'm there yet. But I'm thinking about being there. And I think that's a start.

Maybe She's Born With It

Since watching my horse struggle to canter, I've been doing a lot of reading about cantering. Fascinating stuff, the way animals run. I've learned a lot. And, once again, the lessons have gone far beyond the mechanics of animal movement.

Moving on four legs is complicated. When the animal speeds up, the pattern of the way the legs move changes. At the walk, the feet land one at a time: left hind (LH), left front (LF), right hind (RH), and right front (RF). One, two, three, four. Not too complicated. It's the horse equivalent of left, right, left, right, but they have an extra left and an extra right to throw in. Dogs are the same.

With people, when we start moving faster, nothing changes. We don't start all of a sudden hopping on one foot before switching to the other foot or something weird like that. But with horses, their feet begin to move differently. Most horses, when they begin to move faster, start to trot. Now, instead of their feet moving one at a time, they begin to move in diagonal pairs. So the left hind and right front land together. One. Then the right hind and the left front move together. Two. One, two, one, two. Dogs do the same.

Let's say we humans are really fast. Like, Olympic speed fast. Our feet still move the same way. Left, right, left, right. How boring, eh? But things four-footed, ah, they are so much more interesting! Kick up the speed on these critters, and they begin to canter. And in the canter, their feet get really crazy. If you're a normal horse, you start with the left hind, say. It lands first. One. Then the right hind and the left front land together in a diagonal pair. Two. Finally, the right front lands by itself. Three. It's called a transverse canter. If you're a dog, though, you canter a little differently. You start with the left hind. But then your whole right side moves together in a pair, hind and front together. Finally, you land on your left front. It's called a rotary canter.

Now, I know that's all a lot of technical leg talk, but bear with me. Because here's where things get interesting.

You see, Raphi isn't "most horses". He's of a breed that moves his feet differently. (Which also accounts for his stunning good looks. My horse has better hair than any woman I know. Women would pay hundreds of dollars for hair like his. Anyway, back to his feet.) Raphi can trot, if I push him too, but mostly, what he wants to do is pace. Instead of moving his feet in diagonal pairs, he wants to move his feet in lateral pairs. He wants to move both his left feet, and then both his right feet. He has been hardwired by his genetics to move his feet in lateral pairs.

But the transverse canter (which is what a horse is supposed to canter in order to be balanced and comfortable) has a diagonal pair right in the middle. That diagonal pair in the middle of his canter goes against every fibre of his being. What he is born with is inclined to do is to run the way a dog runs, with a lateral pair right in the middle. The only problem is that the rotary canter throws him so off balance he risks tripping over his own feet, falling and hurting himself. The thing that is right to do goes against his nature. The thing that aligns with his nature has the potential to harm him. So he is at war within himself when I ask him to canter.

That sounds almost biblical. How like me my horse is as I struggle to live contrary to what I was born with. What I am born with is a sinful nature; what I am hardwired to do is to rebel against God, to take control of my own life, to do things my own way, to think I know better. I am hardwired to do anything but trust and submit and obey. But the very thing that I am hardwired to do is that which causes me the most harm. God knows that, so as I correct and correct and correct my horse when he tries to cross-canter, so my heavenly Father does the same. He knows that if he allows me to go as my human nature decrees, I will fall flat on my face. He loves me far too much to allow me to cross-canter unchecked. He knows that the only way I will truly live the abundant life is to live the life of the Spirit. And so my sinful nature is at war with the Spirit within me when my Father asks me to follow him.

But here's the wondrous end: my beautiful, brave horse is learning. He is learning to trust me enough to go against what he was born with, to follow my lead, and to learn to canter. And when he gets it right, it is a vision to behold. He is majestic. His canter is huge and smooth. He runs with all his flags flying. He is stunning.

If my horse can learn, surely I am learning, too. I am learning to trust my Father enough to go against what I was born with, to follow his lead, and to learn to run in faith.

I can only hope that when I get it right, I will be half as beautiful as my horse is.

I certainly don't have his great hair.