I really love using Facebook.  It is a great social networking tool that allows me to connect with current friends, and reconnect with friends from the past.  I promote my blog through Facebook, and More Than Cake is in the Top 10 in 3 different categories (if you have not joined my blog network, you should).

Facebook is a cool tool, but I never would have guessed that joining Facebook could create a crisis of identity for so many people.  What question has caused the most trouble for people.

• Interested in Men?
• Interested in Women?
• Looking for Friendship?
• Looking for a Date?
• Looking for a Relationship?
• Looking to Network?

Nope, not these questions are it.  And no, it is not the question about, “are you a man or are you a women.”  The Washington Post says that the Facebook question about “Religious Views” is the most probing question subscribers face.

Creating a Facebook profile for the first time, Eric Heim hadn’t expected something so serious. Hunched over his laptop, he had whipped through the social network Web site’s questionnaire about his interests, favorite movies and relationship status, typing witty replies wherever possible. But when he reached the little blank box asking for his core beliefs, it stopped him short.

“It’s Facebook. The whole point is to keep it light and playful, you know?” said Heim, 27, a college student from Dumfries. “But a question like that kind of makes you think.”

Such public proclamations of beliefs used to require a baptism in water, or a circumcision, or learning the five pillars of Islam. Now Facebook users announce their spiritual identity with the stroke of a few keys. And what they are typing into the open-ended box offers a revealing peek into modern faith and what happens to that faith as it migrates online.

Wow.  How amazing that a simple empty box could create such personal upheaval?  I appreciate that last line quoted above because it brings up a profound question,  ”What happens to faith as it migrates on-line?”  The article goes on to explore how putting down one’s faith in a Facebook box has caused a lot of soul searching for millions of people across the globe.

Millions have plumbed their innermost thoughts, struggling to sum up their beliefs in roughly 10 words or less. For many, it has led to age-old questions about purpose, the existence of the divine and the meaning of life itself.

Some emerge from the experience with serious answers. George Mason University student Travis Hammill, 19, spent several days distilling his beliefs into this sentence: “Love God, Love Others, Change the World.”

Others try to deflect the question with humor.

“God knows,” wrote Hannah Green, 19, who attended Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville. “Pastafarian,” typed Maddy Gillis, 20, of Kensington, invoking a popular pseudo-religion that venerates a “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”

A good many, however, tread the fine line between wit and truth: “Agnostic, but accepting offers.” “I barely believe I exist.”

When Facebook added in this question and made it a “fill in the blank” they never guessed it would become one of the most popular and talked about features.  One reason this little box “works” is that it creates challenge for people to both define and refine their beliefs as all their friends read along.

My own experience with this little box with big implications is much the same. Writing in the word, “Christian” felt trite to me.  It seemed like writing that single word would diminish my faith.  I never even considered writing silly things like “Protestant” or “Evangelical” because those words have very little meaning to me and even less meaning to everyone else.  Today, my Faith in the Facebook Box reads, “I am saved by grace… and boy do I need it!”

How have others faced this struggle to fill in the box?  The Times article goes on to share more personal stories about putting ones Faith in the Facebook box.

With space limited to 100 characters, there was simply no room for Heim to go into his childhood experiences with faith — growing up with an agnostic father, an evangelical mother and a fundamentalist grandmother. There was no space to describe the terror he felt after learning of heaven and hell. Or how the hell part weighed especially heavily after he was caught breaking into a neighbor’s home at age 7.

He couldn’t convey the profound faith and forgiveness he found in junior high after hearing the tear-filled sermons of a charismatic Baptist minister. Or the eventual dulling of that faith in college by alcohol. And he couldn’t fully explain the slow reformation of that faith, now that he has abandoned the hollowness of his old party life.

“How the heck do you fit all of that into a box?” asked Heim, who sometimes attends a Lutheran church in Dale City.

So rather than type in a specific denomination or a pithy, amusing answer, Heim entered this non-sequitur: “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

The honesty of Hein’s answer is important, but it also reflects the influence of culture on both our perception and assurance of ‘truth’.  So where does that phrase used by Hein to define his faith come from?

It is a phrase written by linguistic philosopher Noam Chomsky to demonstrate how a sentence can be grammatically logical and yet have no meaning — how things that seem so right at first can crumble under scrutiny.

“It represents my faith,” Heim said, “how it sometimes makes sense to me and sometimes doesn’t.”

I am completely sympathetic to Hein’s plight.  There are times in my own life when I feel the exact same way.  What I want to know today is this,

• How have you filled in the Facebook box?
• Was it hard?  Was it simple?
• Maybe you left it blank.  Why?
• If you are one of those readers who has not yet discovered the joy of Facebook, how would you chose to answer the question in 110 characters or less?