Bee Bold

We have been called and chosen by God to be part of His family through a relationship with Jesus Christ.  We have been saved so that we can not only abide in that love but to share it, as well.
Ephesians 2 states:
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

We have access to the glorious presence of God, and we can know that He is with us at all times. We also have been empowered by the Holy Spirit in order to live the Christian life, to reflect His nature, and to bring Him glory.  We can discern the ways that He is leading us and consider the work that He is doing through us, providing evidence of His hand.  We can rejoice in the presence of a faithful God, who works according to His will, in His time.

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The Christian life is certainly an adventure, and it provides the opportunity to love and to know the Lord who gave Himself for us.  And, He brings us into a growth process, about which we read in
Philippians 2:
12 Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;
13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

It's not satire.

It is really true - the website, The Babylon Bee, has been sold, and the reasons should give everyone who deals in the social media space some pause.

I saw a tweet from Phil Cooke about this development and went to Adam Ford's announcement.

He wants to develop an aggregator, Drudge-style website called Christian Daily Reporter.  It's good - and he won't be using social media, which means I will have to actually follow a link to get there.

Social media has been a blessing and a curse for the Bee. I've actually reported here and in River Region's Journey about the site's activity which resulted in a warning from Facebook.

Ford's unease with social media was a huge contributing factor to the sale of the site.  He writes:

...to become a successful content creator you have to use Facebook, and using Facebook, especially if you’re a Christian and/or a conservative, is sort of like going to a mafia loan shark for $10,000. They’re happy to give it to you, just like Facebook will gladly give you the opportunity for your content to go viral on their massive platform. But then, if it does, they own you. You have to conform to their rules and their worldview, and jump through every hoop they put in front of you, if you want to remain a successful content creator.

CBN News reported on the sale, and stated:

In March, Facebook threatened to reduce The Babylon Bee's audience if it didn't stop posting "false news." Facebook later said the threat was a mistake, but several of The Bee's satirical stories remained flagged with "fact check" warnings.

Ford warns that, "centralization of the internet is one of the greatest threats to the spread of the gospel...maybe the single biggest threat. It is tyranny over information. It's a handful of people who are hostile to the Christian message and the plight of the individual deciding what's good and bad, true and false."

So, according to Ford's personal site, an entrepreneur named Seth Dillon is the new majority owner, Kyle Mann (a recent Meeting House guest) is the editor and publisher, and Adam will participate in a "more limited capacity," and will continue to own a piece of the pie, and retain ownership of the book, How to Be a Perfect Christian.

Also, Adam lamented how big the Bee had become and how much he didn't really want to run a company.  He wrote:

Running the Bee I was hesitant, for various reasons, to do the things necessary for it to continue growing to new levels. I wanted to publish satire; I didn’t want to run a growing company. I didn’t want to hire people. With the new owner comes resources and aspirations that the Bee has never had before.

Well, kudos to Adam Ford, and I plan to be a regular visitor to your new site!  In the meantime, let us consider what he said, especially about the social media space.  NRB and others have called attention to it, and it seems to be a pervasive issue with the Internet sites: for instance, Facebook continuing to try to "tweak" and control its content.  Twitter's practice of "shadowbanning."  The whole utopian beauty of social media for a Christian is that you get to share your content with others and receive content from those you choose...nowadays, if it were only that simple.  Hello, Instagram?  Well, it's owned by Facebook, so that may not be immune from social manipulation. And, as Ford rightly points out, the gatekeepers by and large don't share our Christian worldview.

Also, Adam has applied the important concept of staying in your lane.  There are things we are good at, and things that we are, well, not good at.  We have to discern the gifts and talents that God has given to us.  We can identify the things we like and perhaps prayerfully consider how God would use those for His glory.  Conversely, we can shave from our lives those optional things that consume way too much of our time and may not reflect God's calling upon our lives.  We have to prayerfully seek to be where our Lord wants us to be.

Finally, we can be sensitive to the reality of God's timing.  Adam knew the time had come.  And, so he made the move - he already had a head writer who was willing to step in.  Plus, the Lord provided someone with resources who was willing to make the investment.  We can know what God is directing and seek to follow Him at the right time.