This story from New Jersey caught my attention today…

Pastor to church leaders: Get off Facebook or step down

Rev. Cedric A. Miller has had it with what he says Facebook is doing to couples coming to him for help and is giving his married church leaders until Sunday to get off the social-network website or resign their posts.

Miller, senior pastor at Living Word Christian Fellowship Church, the popular interdenominational and evangelical church on Route 35, said a large percentage of his counseling over the past year and a half has been for marital problems, including infidelity, stemming from Facebook.

Miller said there was no problem when people just met with friends from high school in a platonic way.

But that has changed, he said, and now people are reigniting old passions and connecting with people who should stay in the past. He said a marriage can be going along fine when someone from the past breaks through and trouble begins.

I’m the last person you’ll find defending Facebook, as I personally think it’s an enormous waste of time (to put it lightly). That said, this pastor is deceiving himself if he really believes that “a marriage can be going along fine” and suddenly Facebook is to blame for leading a spouse to infidelity.

People don’t just decide one day to go out and break their marriage vows by having an affair. “Reigniting old passions” on Facebook is the symptom of underlying problems in a marriage, not the cause.

If Rev. Miller thinks that banning Facebook will somehow magically prevent marriages from falling apart in his church body, he is going to be in for an unfortunate awakening.

In my opinion, misguided dudes like Rev. Miller are part of the reason that Christianity is perceived so negatively by much of the culture. What if, instead of focusing on nonsense like Facebook, Rev. Miller launched a campaign in his church to teach husbands and wives how to meet each other’s needs, and strengthen their marriage against all forms of temptation? Wouldn’t that be time much better spent than sermonizing about the evils of Facebook?

[Update]
Like I said, Facebook is not the cause of marital infidelity. Guess what Rev. Miller managed to do ten years ago without any assistance from the big blue internet evil: Pastor who banned Facebook had three-way sex affair.