Question: How would your face look if Jesus were to scroll through a page of your Facebook? Or better one: Would He be confused, to find His name written under your religious views?
That’s a line from the song Pick it Up by Andy Mineo. The question he asks bears significance in a world so plugged into social media.
When we as Christians try to figure out how to respond to something in culture, we often tend to go to one extreme or another. With all this talk this week about Facebook and other social media, it’s important for Christians not to swing to one end of the spectrum by embracing all social media mindlessly, or the other end by refusing to engage with it in any way.
In fact, it’s not even a balance of those two extremes—using it sometimes, but limiting use other times, or engaging a lot as long as you fast from it for a certain amount of time. Balance is not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for faithfulness to Jesus Christ. It is my belief that Christians should be the best Facebook users on the planet.
Just a brief glance at the first two chapters of Kyle Tennant’s new book, Unfriend Yourself, will awaken you to the many evils and temptations of various social media. Given the bent that social media has towards excessive self-promotion, it presents a great responsibility for Christians who use them. Yet I must admit, for me it’s very easy to see many benefits as well, and Kyle points out a few in his final chapter as well. Christians ought to redeem some of the same tools the world uses for sin.
I think an analogy will be helpful. I’m aspiring to become a preacher. I have a desire in my heart to preach God’s Word to His people. I love teaching the Bible. One thing that is present in most church buildings is a stage, a platform. This is where the preacher stands, presenting God’s Word to the congregation. As I think of who else uses stages, I think of people who love to promote themselves. Late night comedians, politicians, and rockstars all use stages to promote themselves.
It grieves me to say this, but there are pastors who have followed the world’s method for using the stage, and have turned it into a platform for self-promotion. Yet there are many pastors who are using the stage as a way to promote Jesus, to proclaim Good News, to preach the Gospel.
The way Christians approach social media should be the same. It’s a platform, a medium. It’s not an end in itself, but the means to an end. We should always be promoting Christ in us.
I love the way The Message puts Romans 12, and I think it speaks to this very issue.
Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (Romans 12:1b-2, emphasis mine)
Do we use Facebook the same way the world does? Or are we changed from the inside out, and does our Facebook page reflect that?
Read along as we discuss social media and the Christian life. The e-Book that started out discussion is free today through Friday on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Download a Kindle reading app and get the book here, or here, then take three days off Facebook to read it.
Good Job Caleb, great questions presented!!
Thanks Sheri. I’ve enjoyed the way we’ve been able to keep up our friendship through social media over the past few years, and the ways you’ve encouraged me in the Lord in the good times and bad. Thanks for reading!