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New Jersey’s newest self-ordained censor |
Rev. Cedric A. Miller has had it with what he says Facebook is doing to couples coming to him for help and is giving his married church leaders until Sunday to get off the social-network website or resign their posts.
Miller…said a large percentage of his counseling over the past year and a half has been for marital problems, including infidelity, stemming from Facebook…There was no problem when people just met with friends from high school in a platonic way.
But that has changed, he said, and now people are reigniting old passions and connecting with people who should stay in the past. He said a marriage can be going along fine when someone from the past breaks through and trouble begins.
“It’s to the point now that this Sunday, anyone in our church in a leadership position and who is married and is on Facebook has to resign their church position if they do not give up Facebook,” said Miller…
“The average citizen is going to see my action as controlling, not that I care about that,” Miller said. “I’m not concerned with being politically correct. I’m trying to save families and marriages…”
Do you as an individual feel yourself so ignorant and unlearned about decision-making that you need a friendly neighborhood saviour telling you how to behave, how to manage your personal life.
Do you need a church-based “filter” governing what in the world you are allowed to read or see or hear?
Self riotous ass clowns like this are the cause of most of the worlds bigger problems.
Eidheard’s religious bigotry on full display here once again. The same could be said about marriage counselors, and government in general.
The truth, is that this is one individual, in a large organization of individuals, not even a high ranking one, making a dumb decision.
Now, the right decision would have been to concentration on honesty, and not keeping secrets from your partner. My neighbor, and his wife know all of each other’s passwords, and if they wanted to could go into each other’s facebook accounts. They don’t because, they trust each other.
Maybe the pastor should have been teaching trust, and devotion to your partner. Infidelity on facebook is not the problem, its a symptom of something much deeper.
Clearly doesn’t have a proper understanding of the role of pastor, which is to preach the word and to dispense the sacraments. He can certainly advise on what’s unwise, but making rules to hedge the law was the thing that brought the pharisees down.
“Do you as an individual feel yourself so ignorant and unlearned about decision-making that you need a friendly neighborhood saviour telling you how to behave, how to manage your personal life. Do you need a church-based “filter” governing what in the world you are allowed to read or see or hear?”
Absolutely not! I rely on the government for all that!
it’s not like these people are forced to go to that church. if they want to be a part of a group, they have to follow that groups rules or find a different group to be a part of. this guy happens to be the leader of the group. i see no problem with this. do i agree with him? nope! however, this is how society is supposed to work. you become a part of different groups (family, church, civic, social, etc…) and you abide by those rules. if you don’t you are welcome to leave. if these people were required by law to be a part of this church that would be a different story. this guy has no real power over them unless they let him. this is libertarian philosophy at it’s finest and this is the social agreement these people have made with each other at their church whether we like it or not.
Very consistent with conservative thinking that institutions, be it government or religious, should dictate ones personal lives.
Pathetic. This is why religion needs to be the hell away from government
I do not use Facebook. If I did, I’d yell yippee kay yay yeah! We can do without anybody that would listen to such nonsense. Besides, the members of his congregation that actually ARE using Facebook for nefarious reasons are probably using pseudonyms and won’t be giving them up.
The problem he’s speaking of does exist though. I’ve had more than one friend find their relationship in trouble because people from their past found them throughh facebook and started trouble.
This could be a good thing – I’m faced daily with difficult technical choices, it would be really nice to have God answer them for me.
Tell me father – what is the catholics church’s stance on the one true brace style?
yet ANOTHER person trying to Legislating Morality.
Or he is setting up his own little world where he can be king!!
Eideard’s comments are idiotic as usual. This man is the pastor of his church. That means he’s the boss. It is a freedom issue. Freedom of a boss to tell his people they can follow his rules or work somewhere else. He’s not dictating to his flock that they can’t use Facebook. He’s telling his employees that they need to set a better example because they are in the role of counseling people.
The number one issue most marriage counselors deal with today is internet porn addiction. The second is internet based relationships. This pastor sees the destruction these problems cause every day and is trying to do something to stem the tide. He should be applauded, not ridiculed.
Our society is slowly sinking into a swamp while people stare at screens and try to live out their fantasies on the internet. It’s time to get back to reality and start taking care of the people we live with.
#8. God doesn’t care about your technical problems. He cares about your soul. Maybe you ought to ask Him for some help with it instead.
Yeah, those Web-i-Tubes are the Devil’s Playground !!!
Pay, Pray, Obey.
Thanks, I can do that on my own now.
Church is free to associate or not and if you do they have clear rules of rights and regulations for members. Hence this is perfectly fine for all involved – you are in and don’t like it – leave.
Problem in our society is that Progressive driven Govt. is trying to get same powers without freedom to associate or not, without legal basis and with very loud opposition. Don’t tell me that Churches are one forcing us to particular health care rules or banning toys from children meals they don’t approve.
I’m pretty sick of people trying to tell people how they should live their lives. Of course I’m talking about the intolerant Dvorak regulars.
Well, his approach is wrong but he is right regarding the role of social networking sites in connecting old acquaintances. He should not be forcing married church leaders to quit though.
Why some of you use this article to attack religion is odd, since this is just one man’s opinion.
Probably only a week or two before we find out he’s on FaceBook communicating with pre-teen boys. He’ll call it counselling even though he’s asking them to send him pictures of their hairless little putzes.
Do “I” need a church based filter? No. Do people who go to church need one? Yes, that is why they go to church. This pastor is not setting my moral standards. He is setting his congregation’s morals. That is his job.
I believe it is just as egregious to condemn one person’s belief system based on one statement or action. His statement may be very useful in the setting of his church.
>church based filter.
I was just thinking you could have a simple config file for the settings you believe in that you could upload. All the faiths could agree to a standard XML file, a creed markup language.
Then it occurred to me that most beliefs are pretty binary – s you could simplify this into a single number. Just bitwise and.
NNOPORK 0x1
NNOGAY 0x2
NTRANSUBSTANTIATION 0x4
NSINGLEGOD 0x8
NMULTIPLEGOD 0xA
You could also then have a bitmask of people you are prepared to, talk to / marry / eat with / kill
after the excellent comments by #5–erlenmeyer316 and #17–speedier UNTIL I read #19–Nobody and realized that good common sense could be digitized.
The future is so bright, I need layers of filters.
While myself, i think what you do on your own time is your own, i may be able to offer a tiny insight into this seemingly sub-orwellian request.
I do mostly house call tweak/fix/viral lockdown work on pc’s in nyc..since the 90’s. my clients run the gammut.
Since about december 2009, i have had a **huge** uptick in requests from clients who run small business and esp the new “just add water” private security “consultants” on how to circumvent facebook privacy controls so that they can monitor what their clients or employees are posting on their facebook pages. The most commonly “framed” reason is that they want to make sure their employees are not posting company secrets or dirt on the CEO’s or upper management. Out of work “entrepreneurs” and “concerned spouses” make up the balance.
the amount of requests is such that you could call it a “growth industry”
the body language i get from some of those asking indicates other intentions are in play.
(i have always refused any work or “friendly advise” which involves snooping on someone else on principle. -ie, mind your own friggen business)
anyway you slice it, its a disturbing trend.
anyway, its food for thought.
-s
It must be about all the cybersex, and sexting on Facebook. They will only move on to other services, like Adult Friend Finder!
He has a point, many relationships are damaged by people pulling up a past on Facebook that is probably better left in the past. I don’t agree with requiring church leaders to not be on it. However, he is correct to point out the dangers and encourage couples to be careful pulling up a past they may not be prepared to deal with.
I’ve seen many marriages damaged or suffer because someone reconnects with an old fling, forgetting the reasons they aren’t with that person and making a mistake thinking the grass is greener on the other side. It is easy to take the position that couples should avoid it after seeing many relationships damaged as a result.
Next he will want you to give up your Internet porn!
Seriously though, If you are one of those that feel the need to attend religious services by all means please opt out of secular society and the Internet.
Facebook does cause the trouble he is talking about between married people. A lot of people do end up committing adultery.
I was about to meet for coffee with an old acquaintance, but I asked her first if she was going to tell her husband who she was meeting with. When she said no, I decided we probably shouldn’t meet and canceled the meeting. I wouldn’t want to cause any problems in that situation.
Is it fair to force everyone who is married off Facebook? I don’t know. My preacher and the church staff uses Facebook to reach out to the community. The staff is pretty trustworthy. My church does have quite a few unpaid staff members as well.
I just think honesty between a husband and wife is important and you should not be doing anything on Facebook that would get you in trouble with your husband or wife.
Benji–forced? Yea, I went to the mall last night and was forced to choose between two different movies, then forced about choosing between what candy to get, what size popcorn and then to top it all off, I was forced to decide whether to drive my car home, call a cab, or walk.
Why does everything have to be forced down our throats these days??
#11
NO he is NOT the boss.
Jesus is the BOSS.
And Jesus clearly stated that a THING cannot cause sin.
And please don’t start the society is going down fast routine. It NEVER crawled out of the swamp to the way Jesus said to live in the first place.
#18
That is NOT his job.
Righteousness is NOT to come from another man. IT is to come from God. If you are NOT listening to God and not receiving that righteousness then no amount of banning dancing, drinking, gambling, facebook, twitter or whatever is going help that situation.
I may not believe in the religion, but at LEAST I have read and understood its text. Again this is another man trying to rewrite the manual.
#24
“I was about to meet for coffee with an old acquaintance, but I asked her first if she was going to tell her husband who she was meeting with. When she said no, I decided we probably shouldn’t meet and canceled the meeting. I wouldn’t want to cause any problems in that situation.”
AND THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT! Thank you!
It is not that you should stop using it. Just that you should NOT sew trouble with your choices. A THING cannot choose for you. We are ALWAYS the final arbiter.
Thank you Benjamin!
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Religion is a club. You join the club, you follow the rules. If you don’t like them, you leave. As long as the church focuses its governing to its congregation and leaves the outside world along, I don’t care what websites they allow.
Divorce rates among conservative Christians is significantly higher than other faith groups, and much higher than agnostics or atheists. Barna Research Group 1999
This pastor is attacking the symptoms, not the cause.
#25 Benjamin, that’s an excellent way to do it. If people hide their get-togethers from their significant other, there’s something fishy going on.
I was on Second Life for a while, an online world like World of Warcraft but more open-ended, and I saw lots of marriages wrecked there.
My ex is a therapist, and she says the next edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, version five (DSM-V), which psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose people, is going to have “Internet Addiction” as a disease.
So this guy has a point, even if he’s kind of ham-handed in how he’s trying to address it.