Mack Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Did the Burning Bush Send Moses a Monthly Bill?
Mark Zuckerberg is said to have said that Facebook could be a replacement for religion. But one never knows; as George Washington wrote in Grant’s Farewell Address to His Soldiers in 1918, “Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.”
Mr. Z is said to have said in an interview on CNN (eek) that Facebook is like a church, and that “connecting people is not enough…Facebook has a responsibility to manage its communities.”
Now we know the latest manifestation of Voldemort.
Great Zuckerberg will manage you, so bow before him, and obey.
Pens and paper, typewriters, CB radios, semaphores, smoke signals, mirrors, newspapers, the telegraph – all these are forms of communication, but probably no one has ever perceived these as manifestations of God.
Imagine kneeling in private prayer before an Underwood typewriter and whispering, “O Great Underwood, let thy keys speak unto me and share with me thy mysteries.”
No one has ever suggested of a problem, “Let’s take it to an 80% cotton sheet of bond paper in prayer.”
No one in a theological discussion has ever declared a Sheaffer fountain pen to be the inspired pen of God, and that a Parker pen is a heretic to be cast into the outer darkness of a dumpster behind The University of Where Circuit City and Radio Shack Used to Be.
No one has proclaimed, “For God so loved the world that He gave His beloved Zuckerberg to be His only-begotten distributor of gossip.”
How, then, can a little plastic box made in China be an Epiphany?
In the end, an anti-social medium is but a back fence that lights up and makes noises: gossip, recipes, Amelia Earhart sightings, unmarked UN helicopters ferrying Real Americans to concentration camps in abandoned Wal-Marts, and pictures of kittens and puppies.
Yes, that’s all somewhere in Genesis.
When your wife or husband dies, or your child has been arrested, or you’re suffering a terrible illness, will God’s Chosen Manager Zuckerberg come to your house at three in the morning? Or maybe he will only manifest himself (or Himself) as a recorded voice, urging you to place your hands on that glowing, noisy little plastic box that has indeed become a god to many, and ask the electrons for a blessing.
Gentle Reader, you probably identify with a religion. As part of that there is a local minister. He – or she – probably isn’t cool, doesn’t sport a Rolex watch, doesn’t wear a designer hairpiece, doesn’t fly all over the world in a private jet having his picture taken, and doesn’t have a tellyvision show or a media empire. But he has you. And he’ll come to the house and be there for you when your life falls apart in the dark of the night.
An Underwood typewriter won’t.
And besides, who would be the cranky coffee lady after the Sunday morning service?
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