You know Facebragging— always only posting amazingly flattering pictures and giddy exclamations about how great life is. Your 857 friends roll their eyes but dutifully click “like” so you’re good and validated. Don’t be that guy.

However, if you read through my timeline, I’m aware that you’ll see tons of cute and funny kid pictures, lots of funny kid quotes, occasional links to things I find interesting, and not much else. Even on Twitter, where I’m purposefully more unfiltered, I don’t share much about bad days. Perhaps this makes me sort of a Facebragger. But I have reasons.

First, in the share-ALL-the-things moment we’re living in, it makes sense to have a bit of a filter. I’m all for being real, for permission not to be OK, all that. But I have… hang on a sec… 901 Facebook friends. (I feel like I crossed 1000 at some point. Hm.) I am under no obligation to be as “real” with all those people as I am with my wife, close friends, coworkers. The idea of 901 people knowing that the combination of sin, stress, and sinus headache is making me not at all fun to be around today is not appealing to me. If the first days of spring are making me glad I’m alive, I’m a little more likely to share that.

The second reason is one I feel more strongly about. My family is not perfect. We (yes, all of us) have tantrums and inappropriate talk and whining on a daily basis. But my family is also freaking fantastic. I am more than happy to highlight how much I love our adventures, and since we have friends on several continents I’m grateful for how Facebook lets us see and share day-to-day stuff. When one of our kids is having a hard day or does something embarrassing, that’s not to share with everybody. If a picture or story doesn’t communicate “this kid is awesome and I love being their dad,” it’s not going online. One day, my kids will be able to look through my digital footprint or whatever, and I hope that’s their takeaway: Dad always loved being my dad.

I don’t suggest we Facebrag, selectively sharing to make our life look like a comparatively flawless paradise of awesomeness. Facebook permanently proved its worth to us when Eliza was sick, allowing us to easily share what was going on and helping mobilize people to pray. Just this week I learned via Facebook of a crushing blow suffered by some friends we’re not in close touch with anymore, and I was able to grieve and pray for them. I appreciate honesty in any and every forum.

I do suggest we think about what and why we’re sharing. Christians in particular are to let our speech be gracious, seasoned with salt. I suspect Paul would also say something like “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, post about these things.”