social media

The Pros and Cons of Social Media for the Christian

Posted on April 14, 2021April 14, 2021 by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

I’m a lay person, a Christian woman, who happens to write. I’ve made my living from writing in the past and I’m thrilled to be able to use the talent God gave me for His glory now, writing as a Christian about biblical things.

I’m older and I distinctly remember life before internet. As a writer wanting to publish, bumping up against the monoliths of the Madison Avenue publishing companies, and the chokehold of the magazines and literary journals, (and the publishing rejection letters) having a free platform in which to share one’s thoughts and words with the world was a revelation. I took to it instantly and with glee, going online in 1996 and becoming an Amazon.com customer in 1997. Finally, an equalizing global conversation could be had.

I don’t think young people have a well-developed sense of just what a privilege it is to have global access to speaking one’s mind on any topic. I remember the frustration of rejection letter after rejection letter, of seeking the underground, mimeographed ‘zines as they were called then, of a regular person not having a voice. Or seeing the ones with voices squander them or limit them or censor them. Conglomerates purported to speak for the masses, and more often they didn’t, but their lobbyist money did speak to the corruption. Journalists were supposed to speak for the voiceless but more often they were kowtowing to Corporate. Benjamin Franklin felt the same frustration so he started his own papers and printed them on his own presses. The Second Amendment gave the promise of free speech, but never made any promises about how or where. No platforms were ever promised. That, one had to figure out for one’s self.

Of course all my words back then were unfettered into in the civic or personal/creative realms, but were wind and chaff to God because they were not for His glory.

I converted to Christianity late in life at around age 42. Until then I’d been occupied with writing for my weekly newspaper and curating its online version. When I sold the paper in 2006 and moved down south I needed to fill the void left by not writing intensively, so I started my personal blog The Quiet Life in August of that year. It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a decade since I founded it. What a joy to play with the Layout format, press ‘publish’ and one’s thoughts and words could be seen by the world. Of course, back in 2004-2006 blogging exploded and there were a million blogs starting a day, it seemed. How to make one’s own blog rise to the top amid the sea of cacophonous voices also clamoring to be heard was something left to one’s creative problem solving. Now we had the platform, but how to make people listen…

As the Holy Spirit solidified my faith and grew me in sanctification, I founded this blog in January 2009, and once again it’s hard to believe it’s been 11 years since then. Though I write intermittently on The Quiet Life I am committed to using the gift of writing and proclamation and exhortation for the Lord and I’ve been faithful to write daily on this blog since the beginning. Though I’ve been writing longer at The Quiet Life and there are 70 pages over there, there’s double the amount here, containing about 3,600 essays. And fortunately, I don’t have to stress over about whom to make listen. The Holy Spirit takes care of disseminating the message to whom He desires.

I joined Facebook in 2008, and joined Twitter then also. This year I added another Facebook page, The End Time. Online newspapers and journals enabled comment sections. People from the great to the small posted their email address, allowing direct conversation. Cell phones, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Flickr, Podcasts…Suddenly, there were platforms everywhere and it seemed like the cacophony grew but so did the possibilities for getting the Gospel out.

The question today is, just because social media exists, does that mean it is wise, profitable, or even safe to enter the fray?

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. (1 Corinthians 6:12)

That is a question for each Christian to answer and there are different considerations if one is a parent, a missionary, or is living under a restrictive regime or just to personally consider in the face of doing our utmost for His highest (to paraphrase O. Chambers).

Here are some thoughts in my experience, in my opinion, and remember I’m just one lay-woman with a small sphere of influence. There have been pros and cons with being so present on social media. Just as with anything, there are considerations and there are joys.

I am a single woman so there are safety issues with being too open.
Yet I feel compelled to be truthful and transparent, openly proclaiming the message to as many as possible.
If The Lord allowed the internet to be invented then I resolve to use it to the best of my ability to honor Him and spread His message.
Yet there are also a great many temptations to sin with my mind and with my mouth (typing fingers) and present a poor witness.
I have stumbled before in being so present online.
Yet when I sadly do, it presents more opportunities to repent, grow, obey and rely on Him- and to be mindful next time.
Seeing before me in living color so vividly the woes and successes of fellow believers; and being accountable to an online community of believers widens my perspective and reminds me of how large His body really is.
It presents a tendency to want to focus on just the virtual believers to the exclusion of those in real life.
When someone is encouraged by something I’ve written, it offers a high incomparable to any other.
When I receive letters from people who have come out from under a false teacher, or have strengthened their walk because of anything I’ve written, it makes it all worth it
People online can be mean, nasty, and hide behind cowardly anonymous comments. Combating their effects can steal your joy and re-direct your energy better used in other ways.

So, you see, the pros and cons are similar to laboring in any other medium or any other sphere. No better, no worse, just different considerations to consider.

Unlike other people who have expressed distrust or disdain over social media use to share a holy Christian witness, I don’t believe social media is the devil. It is merely a vehicle into which we can pour our energy and message depending on what the Lord has called us to do. Some pour their message into children through motherhood. Others who are not called to motherhood became missionaries and brought the message to orphans overseas. Some who were writers without the advantage of social media got the message out anyway using the vehicles of their own day- hymns.

So be mindful of the medium you choose to employ to spread God’s message, from your own tongue in real life to the cold virtual reality of a laptop keyboard, to… whatever else. As a matter of fact I’ve always held that the internet is one of the world’s great inventions. The Gospel message can be disseminated in podcast, tract, devotional, online bible, visually through art and animation, Youtube, the ancient writers’ work is spoken alive online to new generations or can be read anew for those who can’t afford the precious tomes but can afford the lower price of an online connection or even free at a library. Wow!

Through online blogs and sermons and devotionals I was strengthened by John MacArthur’s preaching and discovered the Puritans and Reformers. I connected with solid doctrine at The Master’s Seminary and learned of Paul Washer’s fire. I learned that I, too, had a platform that may strengthen even one woman seemed too good an opportunity to pass up- as long as I kept my priorities straight. But that’s like any ministry, it’s life, isn’t it? It is all a struggle and no matter the sphere or means the Lord provides, the devil will attempt to corrupt it.

So make your decisions about social media with your husband or pastor or family. Decide how “out there” you feel led to be, and which means to use. Elisabeth Eliot, Gladys Aylward, Eliza Spurgeon, Fanny Crosby, Katharina von Bora (Mrs Martin Luther) all used the means at their disposal and through obedience to the Lord to influence those in their spheres. How large or small or what that means the Lord will use through you within that sphere is a personal decision. But don’t let scary stories or condescension about social media taint your view of how useful it can be to getting the message out there. Just be safe, be wise, and the Lord will take care of the rest.

buffer, discernment, social media

Buffer and Newspaper Exegesis

Posted on April 28, 2016May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

I mentioned yesterday that I’m slow to adopt new social media or technology fads, so as to maintain a streamlined focus on the main online ministry I have set before me, which is make Christ known, and offer credible and solid resources to women and new Christians for growth enhancement.

I mentioned this because I saw a new gizmo on my blog’s “Add This” button. It’s called Buffer. I looked into it. Basically, it is a one stop shop whereupon for free (or more, for a fee) one can blast a set of self-selected material onto your chosen social media pages throughout a 24-hour staggered period.

I signed up.

Now, to load content. As a blogger at The End Time, I’d been in the mindset all along of a journalist. “Fresh content only on the blog”. So I write every day. Only a handful of times have I re-posted something. But then I thought, I’ve blogged daily since 2009 and I’ve published over 3,600 essays. It might be good to offer the older ones to a new ‘generation’ of blog readers. Because as we all know, a new generation is born on the internet every two to three minutes. LOL, not really, but attention spans are short. 2009 was 7 years ago, an ancient lifetime ago in internet years.

The Holy Spirit in His grace has dispensed to me His gifts of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement. I love prophecy. I love all of it. As a newbie Christian I cut my teeth eagerly on Jeremiah, Nahum, Obadiah. The OT prophets were the books I read first. Genesis, and all the OT prophets, before even turning to the New Testament and John. When I did turn to the NT, it was to Revelation.

As a child born in 1960, my first memory was of the Beatles in February 1964 (I had turned three years old just about 7 weeks before) and all the screaming. I was annoyed with the screaming. I thought it was nonsense that the screaming went on so long that one could not hear the actual music. I was precocious perhaps, autistic children usually are, and sometimes have advanced thought processes early. But the point is, my very first memory is of out of control girls screaming wildly. It was a chaotic scene.

My home was filled with aware and engaged parents observing current events on the newly invented television. They often discussed them as I listened. I often watched Viet Nam casualties loaded onto helicopters with newsman Walter Cronkite’s mournful intonation recounting the deaths and injuries. I always wondered why the injuries far outstripped the casualties. Real-time war reporting was fairly new, and the living technicolor also showed the color of the blood. As a child watching constant war during my formative decade it made an impression.

In addition to war, was strife. Civil Rights riots, Race Riots, marches in the streets for gay rights and feminist rights, protests, and the 1968 Democratic Convention carnage all passed before my observant eyes. My active but immature brain attempted to process all that I was seeing. Remember, as an autistic kid, what was on the TV was more real to me than what I was actually experiencing in life. It always has been.

In my formative years it seemed that things were out of control. As I grew to teenager years, I became aware that war and famine and chaos and strife has always been part of the human experience. I wondered why. I wondered why a LOT. I often thought that there had to be a reason. See, if war had always been present, and humans have always been present, there must be a reason why we have such a proclivity to war. And hate. And chaos. It just seemed obvious to me.

Every night for nearly 20 years, we would hear newsman Walter Cronkite sign off on his famous tagline, “And that’s the way it is, tonight, May 24, 1967.”

No! No, that’s NOT the way it is! It can’t be! There has to be a reason!

Autistic kids often attempt to find the secret pattern that they know is underlying everything. They look for an underlying order, a mathematical equation, a musical beat, a chronology, something, that will make everything make sense. It was agonizing not to know. But when the Light burst through my dead heart to regenerate it, and I learned that the underlying pattern to everything is Jesus, I lit up like a Roman candle.

I loved the notion that there was order, and purpose and a Controller in charge of it all. I loved that since the beginning God was in charge and for all the perplexing things that happen and have happened in the scope of perhaps 7000 years of human history in the world, there has been a reason. Because, you see, I’ve always looked for a reason. When I learned why things were the way they were, I went A-HA!! in a big way.

A haqrd copy collage I did which I scanned and digitally manipulated.
This is “Peace that Passeth” and shows how calm I feel now with the world news
still being chaotic but what a difference the biblical worldview has made.

Suddenly seeing all the news through a Godly worldview and not a confusing, incomprehensible, human world view made everything burst with color and light. There was a reason! There was order!

When I looked at the news I now knew why peace in the middle east was so elusive. I’d lived through the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur, The Camp David Accord. I’d lived through assassination after assassination. I’d lived through Iran’s rise and the Soviet Union’s Fall, and rise again. Looking at the paper made me understand what God was doing because i understood not only about sin, but His long-term plan and humankind’s redemption

Having a new worldview to see things though was fun so at the beginning of the blog’s life I did a lot of newspaper exegesis. I was thrilled. I’m not unhappy nor am I embarrassed. One can go too far in it, and come up with crackpot ideas, to be sure. I hope I didn’t do that. But I did enjoy flexing the boundaries of my newly grace-given worldview. Suddenly that order and pattern was there and I shared my perspective of it.

I’m still entranced with how things are moving in the news. I’m still vastly grateful the LORD gave me, through His Son and His Spirit, a perspective framework through which I can know, and I DO know. I’m also pleased to see even in the first month of life on this blog, essays which were of prophecy, discernment, and encouragement and which were not newspaper exegesis. Those are the ones I’m Buffering out.

As I send out 2009 and beyond The End Time stories through Buffer, and if you choose to explore here, have fun, don’t think too ill of me, and enjoy.

discernment, social media, witness

The Pros and Cons of Social Media for the Christian

Posted on December 27, 2015May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

I’m a lay person, a Christian woman, who happens to write. I’ve made my living from writing in the past and I’m thrilled to be able to use the talent God gave me for His glory now writing in a Christian context.

I’m older, 55 years of age, and I distinctly remember life before internet. For a writer wanting to publish, bumping up against the monoliths of the Madison Avenue publishing companies, and the chokehold of the magazines and literary journals, (and the publishing rejection letters) having a free platform in which to share one’s thoughts and words with the world was a revelation. I took to it instantly and with glee, going online in 1996 and becoming an Amazon.com customer in 1997. Finally, an equalizing global conversation could be had.

I don’t think young people have a well-developed sense of just what a privilege it is to have global access to speaking one’s mind on any topic. I pointedly remember the frustration of rejection letter after rejection letter, of seeking the underground, mimeographed ‘zines as they were called then, of a regular person not having a voice. Or seeing the ones with voices squander them or limit them or censor them. Conglomerates purported to speak for the masses, and more often they didn’t, but their lobbyist money did speak to the corruption. Journalists were supposed to speak for the voiceless but more often they were kowtowing to Corporate. Benjamin Franklin felt the same frustration so he started his own papers and printed them on his own presses. The Second Amendment gave the promise of free speech, but never made any promises about how or where. No platforms were ever promised. That, one had to figure out for one’s self.

Of course all those words back then were important in the civic or personal/creative realms, but were wind and chaff to God because they were not for His glory.

I converted to Christianity late in life at around age 43-45 (who knows the exact moment the Holy Spirit gripped me, God knows). Until then I’d been occupied with writing for my weekly newspaper and curating its online version. When I sold the paper in 2006 and moved down south I needed to fill the void left by not writing intensively, so I started my personal blog The Quiet Life in August of that year. It’s hard to believe it’s coming up on nearly 10 years since I founded it. What a joy to play with the Layout format, press ‘publish’ and one’s thoughts and words could be seen by the world. Of course, back in 2004-2006 blogging exploded and there were a million blogs starting a day, it seemed. How to make one’s own blog rise to the top amid the sea of cacophonous voices also clamoring to be heard was something left to one’s creative problem solving. Now we had the platform, but how to make people listen…

Social media pinwheel. Source Wikipedia

As the Holy Spirit solidified my faith and grew me in sanctification, I founded this blog in January 2009, and once again it’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 7 years since then. Though I write intermittently on The Quiet Life I am committed to using the gift of writing and proclamation and exhortation for the Lord and I’ve been faithful to write daily on this blog since the beginning. Though I’ve been writing longer at The Quiet Life and there are 70 pages over there, there’s double the amount here, 140 pages, containing about 3,500 essays. And fortunately, I don’t have to stress over about whom to make listen. The Holy Spirit takes care of disseminating the message to whom He desires.

The question today is, just because social media exists, does that mean it is wise, profitable, or even safe to enter the fray?

All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient: all things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. (1 Corinthians 6:12)

I am a single woman so there are safety issues with being too open.
Yet I feel compelled to be truthful and transparent, openly proclaiming the message to as many as possible.

If The Lord allowed the internet to be invented then I resolve to use it to the best of my ability to honor Him and spread His message.
Yet there are also a great many temptations to sin with my mind and with my mouth (typing fingers) and present a poor witness.

I have stumbled before in being so present online.
Yet when I sadly do, it presents more opportunities to repent, grow, obey and rely on Him- and to be mindful next time.

Seeing before me in living color so vividly the woes and successes of fellow believers; and being accountable to an online community of believers widens my perspective and reminds me of how large His body really is.
It presents a tendency to want to focus on just the virtual believers to the exclusion of those in real life.

When someone is encouraged by something I’ve written, it offers a high uncomparable to any other.
When someone in the next pew is encouraged by something I’ve said, it offers a high uncomparable to any other.

People online can be mean, nasty, and hide behind cowardly anonymous comments. Combating their effects can steal your joy and re-direct your energy better used in other ways.
People in real life can be mean, nasty, and hide behind cowardly gossipy comments. Combating their effects can steal your joy and re-direct your energy better used in other ways.

So, you see, the pros and cons are similar to laboring in any other medium or any other sphere. No better, no worse, just different considerations to consider.

“The medium is the message” is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan, meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. …Extending the argument for understanding the medium as the message itself, he proposed that the “content of any medium is always another medium – thus, the content of writing is speech, print is that of writing and print itself is the content of the telegraph.

McLuhan understood “medium” in a broad sense. He identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of the concept of “the medium is the message”. A light bulb does not have content in the way that a newspaper has articles or a television has programs, yet it is a medium that has a social effect; that is, a light bulb enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness. He describes the light bulb as a medium without any content. McLuhan states that “a light bulb creates an environment by its mere presence.”(source)

creator, rembrandt, snowflake, social media

Rembrandt flash mob, how to use social media for Jesus, and snowflake

Posted on November 30, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

The last few days has had some heavy duty discernment stuff that leaves a bad taste in my mouth, so here is some fun stuff.

This essay was very helpful! I recommend it.

The Who, What And When Of Social Media
“Now, the Bible never talks about social media. Not one word. But it is full of principles that we need to apply to our social media habits. Without these guidelines, our social media use devolves into an unhelpful, “the hashtag for Twitter and Twitter for the hashtag” scenario (1 Cor. 6:13). It’s not enough to use social media the way it was meant to be used; it’s designed by people without God. How can we redeem our use of this form of communication so that it becomes a tool for Christian service and worship?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This next set of events happened back in April of this year. I love creativity!

Rijksmuseum Renovation Brings Back Masterpieces By Johannes Vermeer And Other Dutch Artists
“The Rijksmuseum, the National Museum of the Netherlands, is finally set to reopen to the public, with Rembrandt van Rijn’s masterpiece “The Night Watch” reclaiming its place of pride. The giant painting hangs in the same central position it did before an epic, decade long, (EURO)375 million ($480 million) makeover, flanked by works by Johannes Vermeer, Jan Steen and thousands of other Dutch cultural and artistic artifacts.”

In order to celebrate the re-opening of this wonderful museum, they staged a flashmob who re-enacted the events in Rembrandt’s famous “Night Watch” painting. It’s really good, see:

Here are a couple more stories about the flashmob.

Rembrandt Flashmob: Guards of the Night

Actors Restage Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” in Mall

And here is a link to the Dutch Museum, Rijksmuseum

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Imagine, God makes every snowflake different. If one snowflake is this beautiful, how gorgeous will heaven be?

But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”— (1 Corinthians 2:9)

facebook, sin, social media, society

Social media is changing child custody disputes, child-support payments, & divorce

Posted on August 5, 2013May 9, 2016 by elizabethprata

I am in the midst of writing three loosely connected blog entries regarding marriage and the family. The first piece looked at marriage through the creation of man and woman and God-ordained society. That piece also contained news of the UK’s new legislation allowing gay marriage. While the ink was still drying, a gay couple sued the Church for refusing to perform their gay wedding even though the legislation promised that churches would not be forced to perform them. So they are making an end run around that and going to court.

The third piece looks at celibacy.

This piece looks at an interesting news article I read in the Providence Journal. We have all read of the ridiculous youths and graduates and young adults losing jobs or not getting jobs because in their partying enthusiasm, they posted one too many photos on their Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/Tumblr page and they were fired or disciplined or passed over for the job. But here is a more serious effect that is changing the face of families- and divorces.

The new ‘private eye’ in divorce cases
“There’s a powerful tool, and relative newcomer, at work in Family Court in Rhode Island. It’s social media, and it’s affecting child custody disputes, child-support payments and, in some cases, the distribution of marital assets. There was the father seeking custody of his 3-year-old son who posted a photo of himself standing in a field surrounded by a dozen marijuana plants. “He went down in flames. No pun intended,” lawyer William F. Holt said.”

“Eighty-one percent of the nation’s top divorce attorneys reported seeing an increase in the number of cases using social networking evidence, according to a 2010 survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Facebook led the pack for online divorce evidence, with 66 percent of the lawyers naming it as the main source.”

There’s a Facebook meme that went around, I’m sorry I can’t find it again, that was a poster which said “Thank goodness I did all my stupid stuff before the internet!”


Kevin Colvin, an intern at a bank told his boss he had to miss work due to family emergency. And posted this on his FB page. (source)

There is something funny about that to us over-fifties. But there is something also kind of sad about it too. Because people today, with the internet, are not only doing stupid stuff, but they are deliberately posting photos and comments about it. No one is forcing them to go public with their stupidity. They did the stupid thing and then they broadcast the stupid thing.

What is it with people today? They are simply mental!

Apostasy is growing. This means indeed that people are stupider, more mental, and just plain moronic and crazy. No, I’m not being mean. Romans 1 chronicles the progression of behavior and thinking that captures people as they, or a society, descend deeper into sin.

When people do not honor God, they descend into futile thinking. Verse 21:

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.”

The word futile in the verse is from Greek, (mataioó) and it means to “become vain or foolish, am perverted”. And the word thinking means “to have self-based confused reasoning”. And then foolish again, means “properly, without comprehension; foolish because incoherent…failing to put facts together, describes a person failing to structure information in a meaningful way, and therefore unable to reach necessary conclusions. This person is illogical because unwilling to use good reason.”

A hemp field in Mongolia.
photo credit: Gregory Jordan via photopin cc

See? They can’t think straight. They refuse to think straight. That is why they do stupid things like break the law to grow marijuana plants, leave their wives, sue for custody of their son, photograph themselves in the pot field, and publish it on the internet. Duh.

The one feeds the other. Selfishness leads to divorce, so does laziness, sense of entitlement, conceit, in other words, all the things that Paul said would happen in the end time.

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.” (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

So you have people dishonoring God, becoming foolish and perverted in their thinking, which causes them to do more stupid stuff, which indulges their lusts, which causes them to sink further into depravity and perversion…it is a cycle of rapidly diminishing returns.

I did find it interesting that the article went on to say that it has been the past ten years of technology that has dramatically forced an evolution of family law in RI. KoonsFuller is a Texas Law firm which offers a brief overview of the history of family law:

Divorce is a terrible thing.
photo credit: hebedesign via photopin cc

Family Law History

Family law has undergone a tremendous amount of modification over the past century due to the quickly changing roles identified within American families, the varying definitions of the concept of “family” and the importance of each individual’s rights within the family unit.

The revolution began in earnest during World War II, when women began to enter the work force en masse. Significantly, women found an avenue that would allow them to assert themselves as separate and independent individuals, and a profound evolution of roles within the family began that continues to this day. The impact was felt from family law to real property law, through civil law and probate law, and continues to have an impact on the development of family law cases and the interpretation of those laws by the entire judicial system.

In the 1950s and 60s, the number of marriages ending in divorce increased steadily across the nation. In 1969, the Texas Legislature adopted Title 1 of the Texas Family Code, allowing “no-fault” divorce. Divorcing parties no longer had to prove improper conduct or other grounds for dissolving a marriage, and the number of divorcing couples increased even more dramatically.

Stephen Cretney’s work in the book Family Law in the Twentieth Century: A History also affirms that “the law governing family relationships has changed dramatically in the past one hundred years.” And anyone over the age of fifty knows that anecdotal evidence shows an increase in the disintegration of the legal family, of which marriage has always been the entry and divorce rather than death is the increasingly employed exit.

The more that people indulge their lusts the more stupid they will get. The series of verses in Romans 1 shows us this. As they say in business, economics, and politics, there is a ‘law of diminishing returns’. This applies to sin, too. The end result of sin is always death. (Romans 6:23). Look how sin works by applying the principle of diminishing returns. Here, Dr Paul Johnson of Auburn University explains,

photo credit: arbyreed via photopin cc

When increasing amounts of one factor of production are employed in production along with a fixed amount of some other production factor, after some point, the resulting increases in output of product become smaller and smaller.

Dr Johnson uses an example of a small garden plot to illustrate diminishing returns.

A simple example of the workings of the law of diminishing returns comes from gardening. A particular twenty by twenty garden plot will produce a certain number of pounds of tomatoes if the gardener just puts in the recommended number of rows and plants per row, waters them appropriately and keeps the weeds pulled. If the gardener varies this approach by adding a pound of fertilizer to the topsoil, but otherwise does everything the same, he can increase the number of pounds of tomatoes the garden plot yields by quite a bit (notice the amount of land is being held fixed or constant).

If he adds two pounds of fertilizer (rather than just one), probably he can get still more tomatoes per season, but the increase in tomatoes harvested by going from one pound to two pounds of fertilizer is probably smaller than the increase he gets by going from zero pounds to one (diminishing marginal returns). Applying three pounds of fertilizer may still increase the harvest, but perhaps by only a very little bit over the yields available using just two pounds.

Applying four pounds of fertilizer turns out to be overdoing it — the garden yields fewer tomatoes than applying only three pounds because the plants begin to suffer damage from root-burn. And five pounds of fertilizer turns out to kill nearly all the plants before they even flower..

So the sinner can sin more and more but the amount of yield he gets eventually diminishes. At the end the return on your production of sin is death, like the burned roots that simply zap the tomato plants. You’re dead. Ask any recovering alcoholic about this. Ask any sober drug addict about this. Ask any child molester about this. Ask any serial killer about this. OK, maybe not a good idea to approach a serial killer, but you’ve read about the high that these addicted folks get in their preferred sin and how they are always seeking the bigger high, the next high. The same goes for even the “respectable sins”, for example, gossips. The more they gossip the more they want, the more people look to them for the juicy tidbit, the more they seek out the juicy tidbit, the more they gossip….Hedda Hopper made a career out of gossip. The gossip journalists are always looking for the bigger story. Each one has to top the last. As with all sins, there is always the search for the ever elusive satisfaction. People are perpetual sinning machines.

Jesus spoke of the Broad Way and the Narrow Way in Matthew 7:13-14.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

The broad way is the way of sin. The narrow way is the way of holiness. The Broad way is without Jesus. The narrow way is with Jesus. There are only those two ways, nothing else and nothing in between. Anyone on the broad way will stay on the broad way and not make the hop until and unless they repent and Jesus brings them over. The two paths don’t run parallel to each other like the white fog lines on this road.

photo credit: gustaffo89 via photopin cc

The two paths diverge.

God is always working (John 5:17, Romans 8:28). Everything is always in motion. Thus, the believer is always being sanctified. He is always in progress toward the Father in Christ-likeness.

“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18 )

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18)

The unbeliever is always progressing downward in sin. They are growing too. Growing worse. The law of diminishing returns shows us that they will always seek after sin in greater amounts. Whether those amounts consist of huge leaps forward on the road or tiny baby steps depends on the person, but they are always progressing downward.

“All day long he craves and craves, but the righteous gives and does not hold back.” (Proverbs 21:26)

“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.” (Titus 3:3)

“while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” (2 Timothy 3:13)

I opened with a news story that showed people acting stupidly, seemingly inexplicably. They are changing the face of family law. I showed why people act the way they do. It really isn’t inexplicable, it’s sin. And sin and sinners get worse. If too many sinners get worse in their sin, society as a whole becomes worse. At the end, there is a tipping point and God gives a society over to its lusts. After that another phrase besides the “law of diminishing returns” comes into play:

“Circling the drain.”

If you ever watched bath water drain from a tub, at the end there is just a little bit of water left and it goes around and around the drain before getting sucked down the vortex.

Definition: A medical phrase, “FTD–fixing to die, near extremis, pre-code Medtalk Referring to a patient whose future prospects of life are dim”

The legal article from the Providence Journal above describing our society indicate behavior that clearly shows we have become stupid (futile in our thinking). If marriages are disintegrating at such a rapid pace and through such heinous means as immorality, illicit spying, hatred, and duplicitous technological methods as those … if people are behaving in such a way so profusely that it has changed an entire segment of the legal profession … our society is truly circling the drain.