Back in the “old days”, “This isn’t working, or “I just want to be friends” is how you ended a relationship. Most of the time, you said this in person. Occasionally, a phone call transpired in place of facing the other person, but that was considered a little cowardly. Hallmark movies tend to favor similar break-up methods between characters, but is this a true reflection of dating scene? That would be an unfortunate no.
Today, the current trend for ending a budding relationship is to ghost them. Let’s say you’re talking, texting, otherwise interacting with someone on social media then they suddenly disappear. You, my friend, have been ghosted. And this, apparently, is typical behavior, even among Christians.
Someone asked me if I thought this was Christ-like behavior. Good question.
I wonder what Jesus would do if it happened to Him? If your response is He’d probably turn the other cheek, I’d have to agree. But what would He say to one of His disciples if He saw them ghosting someone? What does He think of us if we ignore someone, leave them hanging without any explanation?
Treat someone as you want to be treated comes to mind, and there are plenty of instructions on how to treat someone in His Sermon on the Mount, so we know better right?
What would it take to resist the trend of ghosting? An Ebenezer experience? Like Scrooge, receive three visits to convince us to treat others with kindness? What if we knew ghosting someone in our present, most assuredly determined being ghosted by someone important in our future? What if we simply took Jesus’ instructions to heart? Would it change how we treat others? I’d like to think so.
Let’s leave ghosting to fiction, and treat others well.