Derive your Worth from What (or WHO) Is Real

Lately, the “unfriending” craze has begun to build steam. Cleaning house. Swabbing the decks. I have even heard about people on Facebook deciding to unfriend everyone who didn’t write on their wall as a way of ascertaining real “friends.” Which begs the question…

Are social media contacts necessarily “friends?”

In some cases, absolutely. There are those folks in your feed that you speak to IRL, care about their whereabouts, and have a vested interest in their lives, beliefs, values, family, and online ramblings.

But what about the rest? What is the value of a list of names about which you care virtually nothing?

I used to care about numbers. Since I look at Facebook and other social outlets differently, I’ll deal with Facebook. I used to have several hundred “friends” on Facebook and was adding more every chance I got. Acquaintances. Co-workers. Friends of friends of friends. All for the numbers.

But WHY?

While my Twitter, Facebook #NoCamo page, G+, and #NoCamo are public, my Facebook is just for friends and family whom I care about. I’ve simply come to a point in my life where I derive not one iota of my worth from the number of followers/friends/likes/+1’s I have (well, maybe the occasional iota).

So, from whom does my worth emanate?

1. God. Duh. Take a 2-second glance around #NoCamo and you can guess my first answer. God. Lord of All Creation. Sovereign Lord. My Father.

2. Um, no one!

As I was drafting this post, I started to put down family, friends, and others. But then I realized that deriving my worth from anyone but God is the very things I’m writing against in this post! It’s prideful idolatry for me to get my worth from Man.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t care what people think of me or about me. Their opinions simply pale in comparison to His.

Thoughts?