You know who shouldn’t have Facebook accounts? Born-again fundamentalist Christians.
I say this in jest, but sometimes, reading what overtly-religious people post online, I think to myself, disconnecting their Internet might not be such a bad idea. I mean, you can call me a Prayer Hater but why does everybody have to be forced to listen to or be dragged into your personal prayer time with the man upstairs?
I like to call these folks the virtual church lady. Generally speaking, some of them are friends, some are our great-aunts and heck, truth be told, some of you are the virtual church lady. At 9 a.m. in the morning, she has updated her status or tweeted that she is reading the Bible. At 10:42 a.m., she has updated several more times about how she is now reading and reflecting on Matthew 6:5-8. At 3 p.m. she has pulled a Juanita Bynum and has unleashed several status updates written in tongues. And by 6 p.m., she has drafted a lengthy prayer passage about how much she worships at the throne of Jesus and how the rest of us will burn in hell if we don’t love him too.
But her Facebook prophesying doesn’t stop there. Outside of her own statuses, the virtual church lady likes to tag you in pictures of photo shopped Jesus petting lambs and playing ring around the rosary beads with small children. She also likes to share her love for the Lord on your own statuses, even when you’re not talking about religion at all. Even when you’re talking about something random like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You’ll write something mundane like, “I hate when you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then realize that you are out of jelly.” She will be the first to comment, “WHO NEEDS JELLY WHEN YOU HAVE OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST HALLELUJAH JESUS IS THE ALPHA AND THE OMEGA PRAISE HIM…JESUS IS THE ONLY JAM I NEED.” Oh, did I mention that the church lady loves the caps lock key an0d thinks that punctuation is the work of the devil?
Most times the church lady is harmless enough – as harmless as you updating the world about peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. However, sometimes she crosses the line and can be closed minded and hypocritical, if not downright vicious. She thinks gay people are an abomination and will openly pray that God will besmirch them. She thinks that single women (especially single mothers) are manipulative immorality whores, even though she too is single. She feels that anyone who refuses to see the light as they, in particular, have portrayed it is deserving of widespread damnation. And if you try to calmly remind the virtual church lady that God also said to Love Thy Neighbors as Thyself, she will get utterly belligerent, using a lot of exclamation points and sometimes using some very unsanctified language – and then publicly ask the Lord for forgiveness as this heathen is trying to “separate” her from her “righteous” path.
