Hey! Where ya' frum?

"Where ya' frum?" That's a question often heard where I come from in Mississippi. The question is asked because depending on where ya' from you may know someone I know. We may have mutual friends. You may know an uncle or aunt of mine. Heck, we may even be kinfolks. At the root of the question is a search for connections between people.

I think that is what Facebook and Twitter are also about. They are the current method of asking "Where 'ya from?" They are our "in the moment" tools for connecting with people. Much is lost in our communication when it is not face to face but rather through bytes of electrons. But at least we get a photo of the person we are connecting with unlike we did with snail mail or email.

So, "Where ya' frum?" is an ancient human question with deep theological implications. Not convinced? Consider this text from the New Testament: 

They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 3:5-6)

Granted, we have been trained through our New Age / Politically Correct education that either / or thinking does not compute. We have been taught there is no difference between good and evil; there are no winners or losers; nothing is any longer either black or white, there are only shades of gray. But this text is having none of that. "They are from the world. We are from God." There is a difference in quality and kind here. This is not to say "we" are "better" than they are. It is to say that we are different than they are.

Figure out who "we" and "they" are and the difference between the two and you may begin to see the difference between truth and error. Here's one final hint for the search: Neither ABC, NBC, PBS, FOX, or MSNBC is under any legal obligation to tell you the truth about anything. Keep that in mind going forward.

Here's a few "Where ya' frum?" songs from Jim Croce: "Operator" and "I've got a Name" 

"Like the fool I am and I'll always be
I've got a dream, I've got a dream
They can change their minds 
but they can't change me ..."