Oversharing

Awhile ago, my cousin shared something with me that may stick with me for the rest of my life and that is the concept of oversharing.  Oversharing, according to urban dictionary, is providing more personal information than is absolutely necessary.  She shared this information with me on the heels of me seeing this absolutely wonderful play written by Marcus Gardley featuring Minka Wiltz and Enoch King called Every Tongue Confess, in which church and community is in turmoil because of people oversharing. (Side note, if you ever get a chance to see this play, you definitely should, it is really fantastic.)

As you have come to expect, this prompted me to think and reflect on some things that I would like to share but not overshare...lol (had to say it).  We are all living in a time, especially in America, where social media and reality tv and world star hip hop and Youtube and the list goes on and on, gives us license to share every detail about our lives publically with just one click.  Whatever we are thinking or doing at this very moment can be seen, read, and heard by all that want to peek into our lives.  But this is how we get into oversharing because we just start to provide too much of ourselves for the world to see and most of what we share is not the best.

With all of the instant access we can put out and take in, we have exposed personal relationships, private thoughts, and pictures galore all because we can.  Now one could say, that there life is an open book and has nothing to hide but the thing is, Christ said it best, "Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing" (Matthew 6:3).  The wrong people can know too much about you and share it with others that should not the good and not so good things about you.

If you allow me to go to the Bible on this, Proverbs 2:11 says, "Discretion shall preserve you, understanding shall keep you."  See, not sharing everything protects you.  Think about how many wars have been lost, businesses went under, relationships have been destroyed because a little bird sang songs (tweeting) about what was said behind closed doors (Ecclesiastes 10:20).  We need to have an understanding that everyone cannot handle all of our being, if you will, and cannot handle all that we can share so we have to be careful of who we choose to share our lives with.  We need to start choosing secular friend and sacred friends.  Secular friends are people we just keep at a distance and only share things as needed.  Sacred friends are people you can share your heart with and can trust them not to share them with anyone else.

So, as Herman Edwards and Skip Bayless and others constantly warn, before you hit send or before you open your mouth to anyone, take to heart what you are about to share and who you are sharing it with, and just as important, why are you sharing it?

Reference: http://buzz.eewmagazine.com/eew-magazine-buzz-blog/2013/2/6/over-sharing-online-is-nothing-sacred-anymore.html