Have you guys ever been scrolling through Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook only to roll your eyes at a recent post someone just uploaded? Sure, we all have.
Social media is—for better and for worse—a great sharing, social platform.
Positively, it’s a great tool to interact with many people, to share helpful content, to keep up with distant friends, and to hear from many people’s perspectives.
Negatively, however, it can be quite the opposite. It can be used as a tempting tool to flaunt our own experiences, to pump up our sense of self-significance, and to flex the muscles of our accomplishments before others. It can easily be seen as ‘Digital Promised Land’ of sorts where we too often look for the affirmation and attention of others.
With these two extremes in mind, this means you’ll invariably get a type of social media experience where you’ll see posts that are awesome and posts that make you nauseous.
Question is, with regard to the ‘negative side’ of social media, what happens next? How do respond to a post that might give off the appearance of showing off, fishing for affirmation, or the likes? (pun unintended…)
You could respond with a whole range of possibilities. On one extreme, you might roll your eyes in disgust. But on another extreme, you might be genuinely excited for someone. And anywhere in the middle of the spectrum, you might express anything from jealousy to nonchalance. So, what is your response, and why? Or rather, what should your response be?
If you get too annoyed, too jealous, or too maddened, you might be led to avoid social media altogether and just go inactive. In fact, I personally adopted this approach up until my sophomore year of college.
I thought to myself: “This whole social media scene is all about using it as a lure for people’s approval and affirmation. I’m just not going to play this game.” This is a line of thinking that many people have taken up today, too. And if you’re not avoiding social media altogether, it might be that you’re still active on social media, but are just as judgmental.
Practically, this might look like scoffing at someone for posting a supercool Snapchat story. Or gossiping about someone for posting a revealing Instagram. Or feeling angry because someone posted about his/her accomplishments that obviously top your own.
“That family always brags about their children’s accomplishments on social media.”
“That girl literally only posts selfies on Instagram, looking for dudes attention.”
“That guy always has to show everyone about how cool his life is.”
“That dude constantly flaunts how wealthy he is.”
Now, observation is one thing. We can’t help being rational, judgmental creatures in the logical sense. But getting emotionally tousled by a post is quite another thing. We can help how it affects us in the emotional sense.
Unfortunately, I think we respond to social media posts with more emotional jurisdiction than mere observation legally allows.
In other words, I think it’s easy for us to look down on people who seem ‘flashy’ on social media because we don’t do what they do.
Yet, this perspective is a tad ironic, and a tad more tragic, too.
Sure, people could be bragging about their experiences. Sure, people might be fishing for personal affirmation. Sure, people might treat their Instagram account like the NASDAQ of their self-worth.
But they might not be, too.
Maybe they want to take a fantastic picture because what they’re standing in front of is truly epic, and they want to share a small, still frame of their experience with others. Maybe they are talking about their accomplishments because it’s their way of sharing with others what matters to them, and they hope that you will rejoice along with them—and who knows, maybe you had a small part of that accomplishment anyways by virtue of being their friend.
Too often, we’ve unfortunately become the “Guy who doesn’t like [social media] because he assumes people are bragging about their experiences, so looks down on them for doing so”—all the while not realizing that his self-righteous condescension makes him just as bad as they are for doing so (if, in fact, they’re actually doing that), if not worse.
Recently at bible study, one guy actually called out another guy for doing exactly that. This guy wouldn’t post to or use Instagram because he felt like it was just a platform to brag about how cool one’s life is. “Ha, I’m not going to stoop that low.” But the conversation took a turn, and another guy asked him if his decision to not use Instagram made him feel better than others who do, or if it made him feel a sense of pride for not being like them.
He was shocked, and being quite dumbfounded, he readily admitted, “Oh… Yeah… Wow, I’m totally doing that… which makes me just as bad as the people I’m accusing. I didn’t even realize I was doing that either.”
To be sure, social media cuts both ways. It can easily fall prey to self-aggrandizement on one end of the spectrum for those who are active users, but it can just as easily fall prey to self-righteousness on the other end of the spectrum, too, for those who are not-as-active onlookers.
Too often, we see the ‘sin’ of other social media users, and cry out,
“‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, adulterers, tax collectors’ (Luke 18:11) … or even like these social media users.”
In the moment we’ve said or thought that, we’ve immediately become a premier example of what it means to be a Pharisee on social media.
What’s so ironic is that once we’ve said or thought that, we’ve actually become what we have accused others of doing—except, tragically, we don’t even realize it.
For instance, we say, “These people are trying so hard to get people’s affirmation, trying so hard to find self-validation in social media followers. How ridiculous.” But in that very line of thinking, we are actually trying to bolster our own sense of self-validation by feeling superior to them for how we use social media, too.
We’re accusing them for finding self-worth in social media. But in doing so, we’re finding self-worth in not being like them on social media.
Ultimately, and ironically, both parties are finding self-validation in their personal approaches towards social media. One is in the positive (I use social media), whom you are accusing. One is in the negative (I don’t use social media), whom you are representing. But both are invariably deriving a sense of self-validation from the way they use social media nevertheless.
It looks like the “I don’t use social media” person isn’t competing in the ‘comparison’ game of social media to the likes of those who appear to be competing against one another in likes and posts. But in actuality, this person is competing in the ‘comparison’ game; he’s just doing it afar and in private. He’s essentially saying, “Yeah, you might get more likes than me, but at least I’m not like you. I don’t need likes. And this is where I’m more superior than you after all.”
Both parties, then, are competing in the ‘comparison’ game. The non-user is just doing so from a different arena. It’s the same game; it’s just an out-of-conference-rivalry.
We’re talking about two sides of the same coin. Ironically, both people are the same.
This was exactly the case with the Pharisees in the New Testament, too: They thought they were better than most people because they didn’t do ‘the sins’ that most people did. Their validation came from feeling morally superior because of what they didn’t do in comparison to what most did do.
Jesus offered his salvation to both the Pharisees (the religious elite) and the prostitutes and tax collectors (the religious outcasts) in the same way, without partiality. Yet, what’s interesting is that he reserved his harshest rebukes not for the religiously immoral, but for the religiously moral—precisely because they thought they were better than others, blinded by their own grave, self-righteous condescension. The religiously immoral knew their sin full well; but the Pharisees never could, which actually made them far worse off.
Thinking we’re ‘better than’ others because of what we don’t do compared to what they do ironically makes us even worse than the ones we’re accusing. And it’s this line of thinking that puts us directly in the wake of some of Jesus’ harshest rebukes.
So, that begs the question: how then are we to respond?
If someone is posting things on Facebook that appear to be excessively self-promotional or showy or flashy or immodest or poorly-executed or nauseating—how should you react? Is there a healthy, middle ground between blind, naïve endorsement and smug, self-righteous rejection? I think so. Maybe not a ‘middle ground’ per se, but another alternative altogether.
I think we need to take several truths to heart, and keep them in tension with one another:
- We shouldn’t judge people’s motives, regardless of what they post.
- We shouldn’t take social media posts personally.
- We should realize we are just as bad as what we’re assuming is wrong with them.
Let’s briefly touch on these three points:
First, we can’t judge people for what they post on social media.
They might have posted the most ostentatious thing in the world, but we can never really know their heart behind it. When we do that, we are inherently twisting a post into a litmus test of their character. Regardless of their post, it just doesn’t seem fair to them.
Besides, why should it matter to us what their motive was anyways? Why is that of our personal concern? If it was out of a sinful motive, or if it was a post out of an innocent motive… why should it perturb us emotionally?
Why can’t we just admire the epic picture they blessed our eyes with? Their ‘heart’ behind it is none of my business. That’s between them and God. Therefore, let’s just appreciate the greatness, coolness, epicness of whatever our friends share with others to see—and appreciate it for what it is. Getting sour over it because of an assumed motive ruins any real appreciation of whatever it is anyways. Isn’t it a tragedy if our first reaction to someone’s picture of the Alps is “Wow, I bet they’re flaunting how much money they have to take trips like that.” It’s a picture of the Alps, folks. It is to be admired… not probed for motive. Let’s not judge. It’s unnecessary, none of our business, and disables our sense of appreciation for posts and cuts into our heart for others.
Second, we shouldn’t take it personally when people post on social media.
The sentiment of this point follows the sentiment of the first.
Why does their posting become a personal issue? Why do we feel offended or disturbed if someone posts a picture that actually has nothing to do with us in the first place? I think feeling incited, offended, or enraged seems to communicate much more about the competitive spirit in our own hearts than it does about the other person and their post.
Now, you might say, “Well, this person is just bragging about all their experiences! Someone needs to call them out, it’s getting out of hand!”
I would imagine there is a line that can be crossed where ‘innocently sharing fun experiences’ can definitely turn into excessive and nauseating bragging. It’s one thing to say in good taste, “Hey man, you are bragging so hard right now,” and not feel threatened by it or maddened by it. But it’s quite another thing to feel personally affected by another person’s alleged pride.
C.S. Lewis insightfully states that our degree of pride seems to surface when someone else’s pride comes into view. He says, “The more pride we have in ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.” Or, another way of saying it—the more we dislike the pride in others indicates the amount of pride we have in ourselves.
Lewis goes on to say that pride is, in its truest sense, not that ‘I have a lot,’ but that ‘I have more or better than you.’ He argues that if you had much or little, pride would not exist if there were no one else to compare to. Pride is, in its very essence, comparative: being better than or having more than someone else. It’s deriving a sense of personal significance because you’re ‘better than them’ or ‘not like they are.’
So when we see a post on social media—and it gets under our skin—is it because the abrasion of someone else’s pride rubs against the abrasion of our own pride? Is their ‘social media pride’ what incites and irritates our own?
Ultimately, our reactions to social media reveal more about our own pride than what others’ posts on social media reveals about their own pride. The appearance of someone elses’ pride might be more of a mirror reflecting our own pride than it is a window showcasing their own.
Let’s not take things personally… let’s put down our pride that makes us so ‘competing’ or ‘aggrandizing’ on the digital landscape. But how do we just ‘put down our pride?’ How is that even possible?
That segues into the third and final point:
Third, we should realize that we are—in reality—just as bad as what we’re assuming is wrong with the other person.
One of the most compelling things about Christianity, I believe, is that it simply doesn’t allow for someone to feel ‘better than’ or ‘more moral than’ someone else. It communicates that all people are equally fallen and ransacked by the distortive effects of sin—all the way down to the core. It conveys that our sin isn’t just what we do per se, but rather, that it’s unraveled the very fabric of who we are. In other words, our sin doesn’t merely consist of isolated malfunctions of our behavior; it points to a much greater condition—the malediction of our souls.
So even in our best days of morality, our default spiritual condition is no better than anyone else’s. The same sins I see others commit are the same sins I could easily fall into myself.
All have sinned and fall short of God’s standards—that’s the bad news.
But the same God who makes the demands of holiness for us, meets the demands of holiness for us, by sending His Son, Jesus—who lived perfectly and paid the just sentence for our sin on the cross—that’s the good news.
So there’s no reason to ever think of ourselves as better than someone else. God doesn’t see me as ‘better’ than anyone else based on what I do or don’t do; so why should I see myself as ‘better’ based on what I do or don’t do?
Instead, the gospel provides an economy of approval and acceptance from God based on Jesus’ righteousness placed on us through faith—which is the only cure for pride anyways.
Christianity takes ‘works’ or ‘performance’ or ‘how you approach social media’ out of the scales of spiritual acceptance. And instead, it credits Jesus’ perfect righteousness into our accounts by grace. And it’s a deep experience of that grace which imbues you with humility—because you didn’t earn it—and it infuses you with confidence—because it’s assured.
Tying it all back to social media, how does this ideology practically inform my responses to social media so that they are godly, and not self-righteous or self-indulgent?
It’s believing and applying the gospel. Meaning, if I have full acceptance, full approval, full self-worth, and full personal significance from the God of the universe—then that means feeling competitive, jealous, or slighted over someone else’s social media posts simply seems… less weighty and immediately more trivial. That’s because my self-worth isn’t in how I stack up to others on social media. It’s in how God feels about me.
People’s posts don’t define your worth.
And your posts don’t define your worth.
God does, which he clearly defined in the person and work of Jesus.
Now…you’re free. Take a deep breath.
Now, you’re free to enjoy people’s posts for what they actually are after all—just, posts. And nothing more. Not shots of competition that say ‘this’ or ‘that’ about your significance in comparison to someone else’s.
Now, you’re free to not have the coolest Instagram account. Because it’s not a reflection of your status. It’s just an Instagram account. And now look! As a result, your Instagram account just got freed from the bonds of inward-servitude and outward-comparison. It’s no longer a tool that pays homage to your credibility. Now, it’s just a social media tool to enjoy; or not to enjoy. Either way is fine.
So now what?
Let’s pray that God gives us a view of the gospel first: That we’re no better than anyone else. That we’re equally fallen. But that we’re equally loved and cherished. And then let’s pray for God to heal us of our deeply distorted, competitive spirits as we choose to marinate ourselves in those truths about how He feels about us.
If you do, I promise it will redeem your sinful attitudes and approaches on social media. It will safeguard you from becoming a ‘Pharisee’ type and a ‘tax collector’ type, too.
Abiding in those truths will prevent you from adopting the self-righteous, smug attitude of a Pharisee on social media (thinking you’re better than someone else because of what you don’t do). And it will also protect you from embracing the self-centered, aggrandizing approach of a ‘tax collector’ on social media, too (self-promotion to the exasperation of others).
Christ’s affirmation must arrest your identity first. Otherwise, social media (or something else) will keep you shackled to self-righteousness or self-indulgence.
