4 social media shifts the church should know about
By / Dec 7

The internet is changing again. And that is bad news for the churches that are already lagging behind on social media platforms. But it also creates an opportunity to leapfrog the era that is going by the wayside and start engaging a medium that has drastically influenced our culture (and our pews) more than we ever imagined.

By the late 2000s, churches had figured out they needed websites and sermon podcasts. Fast-forward to the mid-2010s, and most saw the need for Facebook pages and Instagram accounts. But pastors can’t be experts in everything. So perhaps it’s no surprise that most churches failed to understand how these tools worked, and how they could maximize their potential to spread the gospel. 

Even megachurches with budgets large enough to accommodate full-time social media personnel followed models focused primarily on creating influencers —a strategy exacerbating the celebrity scandal problem causing public crisis after public crisis.

On top of that, pastors across the country have seen their churches, and sometimes even families, torn apart by conspiracy theories and political vitriol on Facebook and Instagram. Young people are deconstructing their faith online to the aplomb of digital followers. They’ve even created a new kind of celebrity on TikTok: the Christian deconstructor. Given all these problems, you can’t blame church leaders for taking the soft-luddite position, using social media sparingly. 

But here’s the good news: the era of having to do everything is (thankfully) coming to an end. This means that churches can strategically assess their goals for online mediums and social media and focus on the one thing they believe they can do well. Is your goal reaching new people? Re-engaging dechurched people? Becoming a resource church? Providing digital discipleship for your congregation? Disseminating information about upcoming church events? Your answer to this will dictate the route you decide to go. But before you make that decision, you should consider four major shifts happening on the social internet:

From social-media-as-Newspaper to social-media-as-television station

The first wave of social media was text and photo-driven, much like newspapers. Pastors and institutional leaders had the writing skills necessary to engage in this format.

But now the internet is making a wholesale shift to video, specifically short-form video, requiring production skills more common in television stations than church offices. Video requires proficiency in lighting, audio, composition, and editing. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg: you also need to understand the tactics that work best on each platform. Unfortunately, hiring costs put this kind of endeavor beyond the bounds of what an average church can afford. 

Even leaders with these skillsets quickly discover that the time, energy, and equipment outstrip what their schedule and operations budget can afford. Forced to pick between short-form videos and caring for the people that attend your church, many church leaders choose the clear biblical mandate: care for the local flock. 

Should leaders also make the shift to video to meet the times? The answer is: it depends. If your church or institution has the funds and people skilled in video production and marketing, then absolutely. Try to break the celebrity model by measuring success in new ways. Rather than focusing on vanity metrics like followers and views, focus on quality and in-person conversion rate (i.e., of the new people we connect with, how many arrive in-person at church in the next year?).

If you lack the resources (and the majority of churches lack the resources), you should not invest in half-baked, short-term video projects that cannot be sustained over time. Video will quickly deplete resources you could more effectively deploy elsewhere. 

A shift from geography-driven to geographically neutral

Social media used to be able to do two things at once: reach locally and reach globally. You could do either depending on your goals. But with TikTok’s Discovery algorithm and Meta changing their algorithm to also be discovery-first to compete with TikTok, that is no longer true. Social media is becoming a global-reach-only system. The days of organically reaching the people in your immediate area are coming to a close. The exception is if you have the resources to pay for ads in a geographic location, but be ready to put far more of your budget into that than previous years. 

So how do you do local ministry online? Email. There is no space more intimate on the internet than the email inbox. Churches, who often already have large lists of email addresses spread across excel spreadsheets, need to lean into this asset. The beauty of email contacts is that you own them, and no platform or changes in algorithms can take them from you. Services like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, and even Substack make email newsletters extraordinarily easy. 

Double down on your efforts to grow your email list. Regularly encourage your people to read the emails. These are useful opportunities for ministering to the church’s specific season and also inviting people into in-person discipleship and community opportunities. However, email is not a one-size-fits-all silver bullet to your communication strategy. Study the best practices for good email communication, and consider using additional communication tools (such as Slack or Circle) to strengthen your communication without sending out too many emails. 

It’s also important to empower leaders in your church (small group leaders, Bible study leaders, and whoever else) to communicate vital church information so people can participate in the life of your church. One church divided a ministry team’s contacts into groups based on involvement. They began to invite disconnected people to specially designed events. The results were tremendous—hundreds of people who simply stopped going to church reappeared. 

A shift from brand to influencer

Brands are losing their influence on social media. Influencers are not only the future, they are the “now” of the internet. If you spend the majority of your time on Facebook and Instagram, you may not see it yet. But on platforms like TikTok, this is abundantly clear. 

Most people will see a church’s online presence the same way they see brands. They aren’t personal. They are self-serving, focusing primarily on pushing out church events and information, not helping or engaging the social media consumer. People are going to look for and care about your church online less and less. They don’t go to the internet to find a brand, they go to the internet to find a person.

At this point, you’re probably feeling a bit sick. Seriously? You want us to be influencers? We get it. The word “influencer” has many unhelpful connotations that we want to reject. But there is one good thing about it: it’s personal. God didn’t come to us as an abstraction or a brand. He came to us as a person and it is other persons who are his ambassadors, or representatives, in the world according to Paul (2 Cor. 5:20). While Christians should reject the celebrity aspect of “influencer,” they may do well to embrace the personal aspect. The truth is that the internet is a mission field, and we need digital missionaries who create content for specific niches to reach people with the gospel. 

What would it look like to support people in your church who already have a developing online presence? Could you resource them with community, pastoral discernment, and maybe even some equipment or ad dollars as your budget allows so they can reach people more effectively than a church account ever could? What does this look like for you as a leader? How can you become a more personal, engaging presence online for the people you shepherd?

A shift from information to identity

Social media was once primarily about making and maintaining relationships with others. With the shift to short-form video and Discovery algorithms, social media has become primarily a performance platform for people to express their individual identities. Of course, this becomes a discipleship problem when people are more interested in performing an identity than being conformed to Christ. Worse still, the solipsism (the view that self is all that can be known to exist) that develops online can easily bleed into real-life relationships that impact the church.

But the risk is not merely for creators. You may never make a TikTok, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t shaped by it. It’s not unusual to see people mimicking the speech patterns, personalities, and values of influencers. Put another way: some will perform an identity on social media, and some will receive an identity from social media.

Chris Bail wrote in Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing,

“We are addicted to social media not because it provides us with flashy eye candy or endless distractions, but because it helps us do something we humans are hardwired to do: present different versions of ourselves, observe what other people think of them, and revise our identities accordingly. But instead of a giant mirror that we can use to see our entire society, social media is more like a prism that refracts our identities—leaving us with a distorted understanding of each other, and ourselves.”

Tribalism (and trolling, its shared ritual) is the immediate fruit of these “distorted understandings of each other and ourselves.” We do not use social media as a tool for discovering truth; we use social media as a tool for understanding ourselves, finding people we think are “like us,” and banding together with those tribes we believe we belong to. This dynamic is at play whether you are an active content creator, a passive content consumer, or somewhere in between.

It does not mean people have stopped using social media for information, but they seek that information through shared identities first and reliable sources of a fact-finding second. 

Not only is it harder to find reliable information, but it’s also even harder to find reliable information without going through someone who communicates from a tribalistic frame of mind. Institutions are no longer the sole gatekeepers of truth; tribes have become powerful gatekeepers of their own, and good media literacy discipleship must emphasize how to see that dynamic and correct for it—both in how to get information, but also in how we see ourselves.

We need robust discipleship around our use of social media. This includes media literacy (how we are being formed by media and algorithms) as well as admonishment to engage others with the fruit of the Spirit both online and offline. Training our congregants to use social media well includes teaching, but modeling and displaying the fruit of the Spirit online is even more important. As Paul once told believers in Corinth to “be imitators of me, as I am of Christ” (1 Cor 11:1), pastors must model the digital wisdom and fruit of the Spirit they hope to see in their congregants. Through their personal example, pastors can help form their people into the image of Christ, and not into the image of partisan tribalists. 

Spiritual formation in a digital age

Pastors, if you are reading this and wonder “what should I do with my church’s social media presence?”, the best thing to do right now is to watch and experiment. Pay attention to these shifts in the social media industry, and wait to see what lasting impacts they have in your community. The social media world is in the midst of a very volatile shake-up, and now is not the time to make a reactionary, sweeping change when more change is likely on the horizon.

This is an opportunity for the church to regroup, take things more seriously this time around, and work to get in front of the change instead of lagging behind it. Now that we all know the formidable foe that the algorithm is in our spiritual lives, we can develop the tools and strategies to guard our hearts and prepare our minds as we work to follow Jesus in an increasingly digital age.

What is the social internet doing to us?
By / Mar 30

“I’m here to tell you that the water is poisoned.” These are the jolting words that open Chris Martin’s new book, Terms of Service: The Real Cost of Social Media. The water he’s referring to is the social internet, a term he uses to describe not just social media but the entire internet. And like a fish in water, totally at home in its environment, the social internet “has become so woven into all of our lives that we don’t even notice it anymore.” What’s more, we often can’t see that the waters we’re swimming in have been poisoned.

And that is Martin’s stated goal, “not to tell [readers] to delete our social media accounts . . . but to help [us] see that the water is toxic . . . to help [us] recognize that social media is changing the way [we] think, feel, and live . . . and largely in negative ways.” In Terms of Service, Martin sets out to shine a big, bright spotlight on the noxious environment we’re swimming in and then to shine that light on a better way forward. 

As a content marketing editor at Moody Publishers and a social media, marketing, and communications consultant, Martin has spent years advising some of the foremost Christian leaders and authors on digital content strategy, and is, therefore, qualified to speak authoritatively about the social internet’s toxicity. As a Christian, he is uniquely equipped to shepherd readers away from those toxic waters, and to the living water that Jesus offers those who come to him. For readers, the question is: will we continue swimming with the toxic tide of the social internet, or will we paddle against the current, refusing to be malformed by its poison?

What have we gotten ourselves into?

In the first section of the book, Martin provides a brief overview of the internet’s history and evolution, from its earliest prototype as a government project in the late 1960s to its virtual omnipresence today. In a matter of about 60 years, the social internet has evolved from a primitive project to a pervasive and, Martin argues, “inescapable” reality. He says, “We may be able to log off the social internet, delete our accounts, and never participate, but we can never escape its influence.” And then he follows that statement with a piercing question: “What is it doing to us?”

One of the critical pieces that we tend to misunderstand, and which Martin spotlights, is that the social internet is not a neutral tool. Well-intentioned though we may be, we fundamentally misunderstand the way the internet and specifically social media works when we assume otherwise. “The social internet is designed to be addictive,” he says. “It is not a neutral tool humans discovered and decided to use nonstop on their own.” Instead, “Since the start, and especially in the more recent iterations, the social internet has been designed with the intent to get people addicted.” In the early days, our forays into the internet began primarily as a quest for anonymity, a means of exploration, and a source of community. But now, it’s an addiction. And, Martin argues, it’s not entirely our fault.

“Our addiction to the social internet is ours to overcome, but it isn’t totally our fault. The social internet is designed with addiction in mind. The systems are designed to enslave our eyes. We’ve been set up. We’re being played” (emphasis added). Borrowing the language used by Sean Parker, former president of Facebook and founder of Napster, our brains have been “hacked.” The platforms where we spend so many hours of our lives have been designed with algorithms that exploit the human brain, leading to all kinds of ill effects, which Martin explores in the next section. 

The social internet is “an invention that was originally designed to serve us but which we have come to serve. We are servants of the social internet. It governs our days and poisons our lives more than we recognize.” What have we gotten ourselves into?

Malformed discipleship

In the second section of the book, Martin highlights five ways the social internet is shaping us, though the list is most certainly longer. From the ways we view and treat others to the way we view and behave ourselves, this “digital discipleship” is not so much shaping us as it is misshaping us; not forming us, but deforming us. Make no mistake, the social internet “is making its mark on us.”

If Christian discipleship is the process by which Jesus makes us more like himself, more truly human, then the social internet disciples us — and don’t be fooled, it is discipling us — with another end in mind. It is doing the opposite, unraveling our humanity bit by bit (and byte by byte). And, as Martin argues, it is doing so in at least five distinct ways. The social internet shapes us to “believe attention assigns value,” to “trade our privacy for expression,” to “pursue affirmation instead of truth,” to “demonize people we dislike,” and to “destroy people we demonize.” And as devastating as these are to our becoming more like Christ, they are symptoms of a deeper sickness.

Our addiction is virtually indisputable. As with any addiction, we are dependent — enslaved, even — on the thing we desire. And this addiction, widespread as it is, has produced and exacerbated a four-fold effect that is deforming us both individually and corporately. It is forming us to become more polarized, gullible, unhappy, and anxious. And, if I can add to Martin’s list, bored. We are addicted to the toxic water we’re swimming in, and the effects are overwhelming.

Undoing our digital discipleship

In a stark description, Martin says, “The social internet is brilliant and obscene. It sharpens the mind and dulls it. It brings nations together and tears them apart. It perpetuates, reveals, and attempts to repair injustice. It is an untamed beast upon which we can only hope to ride but never quite tame.” But if this “brilliant and obscene” tool is a bell that cannot be “unringed” and “a Pandora’s box that, now open, will never be closed,” then how can we possibly expect to undo the damage that Martin describes? How can we “de-toxify” the environment in which we now live? Thankfully, Martin doesn’t leave us guessing. He gives us a sample of six practices that can help put us on firmer ground moving forward: studying history, admiring creation, valuing silence, pursuing humility, establishing accountability, and building friendships.

At the core of each of these suggested practices, to some degree, is the implicit encouragement to retreat for a time from the digital ether we’re constantly staring into. Instead of peering into the pixilated displays that occupy our pockets, Martin encourages us to look elsewhere — back in history, up at creation, inward in silence, down in humility, and around in accountability and friendship — nearly anywhere but the digital twilight zone we’re immersed in. 

While the social internet is here to stay, undoing our digital discipleship will require a strategic retreat from its active use with some regularity; a sort of reimmersion into this God-made, material world. To reframe Martin’s earlier statement: though our addiction to the social internet “isn’t totally our fault, it is ours to overcome.” 

A most consequential decision

Despite all the caution that Martin suggests when it comes to our engagement with the social internet, it’s not all fire and brimstone. There is plenty of good that can and does come from the social internet. Thus, his goal is, again, not to convince readers to delete our social media accounts altogether. Instead, he aims to help us see. And, having read the book, we can’t unsee what Martin has shined his light on. So, a question looms: now, what?

What we do with what we’ve seen in Terms of Service is entirely up to us. But a decision is imminent: will we respond with the caution Martin encourages, or will we keep swimming as if the water isn’t poisoned? For the people of God, the decision seems clear. If the discipleship we undergo at the hands of the social internet unravels our humanity, as I’ve said, and Christian discipleship restores our humanity, then we would do well to empty our hands of our phones from time to time so we can “take up our cross and follow [Jesus],” which is the essence of true discipleship (Matt. 16:24). 

Martin’s predictions for the future of the social internet aren’t exactly optimistic. He forecasts more of what we’re experiencing right now; mental health issues, polarization, and even war. But it doesn’t have to be this way! And for Christians, we have an opportunity to show our peers, many of whom are hypnotized by the social internet, a way out of these toxic waters. But it’ll require an intentional, daily decision on our part — a decision that echoes from our elder brother Joshua: “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,” whether the gods of Facebook or the gods of Twitter. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24:15).

How the social internet is making our teenagers anxious
By / Mar 9

Do you remember what it felt like to walk the hallways of high school between classes or sit at the lunch table? Hallways and lunch rooms were the primary stages for social engagement in high school in years past. Sure, you talked with your peers in class, but most of the time you were paying attention to lectures or doing work. It was that time in between classes or while eating lunch that the social dynamics were most active.

Everyone, even the kids who say they aren’t, is performing in some way. High school hallways and lunch rooms are like little stages on which teenagers craft their personas and identities among their peers. It’s exciting and stressful, just like performing on any stage. In the 20th century, teenagers left the social stages when they went home. Unless they had plans to attend a social function in the evening or hit up the mall, the social dynamics of high school were left for phone calls with trusted friends until the next school day.

Today, as Derek Thompson says in his book Hit Makers, teenagers are always in the high school hallways. There is no escaping the social stages on which teenagers perform, because instead of walking the runway of the high school hallways for a couple hours a day, five days a week, teenagers have their personal stages in their pockets, calling them to perform every hour of every day with no opportunity to retreat to a social backstage for rest from their ever-present performance.

If you remember the social stressors of the high school hallways and lunch rooms, you can empathize with the feelings today’s teens have as they carry those performance arenas around in their pockets all the time. Is there any wonder, then, why teenagers are more anxious and depressed than before? 

The relationship between social media and depression

Mountains of data have been collected in the last few years that point to a clear relationship between increased social media use and increased experiences of anxiety and depression. Perhaps the most dramatic example of the correlation between social media use and symptoms of anxiety and depression come from the current teenagers that make up Gen Z or “iGen,” as they have been called by researcher and author Jean Twenge. Authors Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff cite one particularly troubling study in their book The Coddling of the American Mind. Research shows that, in the early 2000s, just more than one-in-ten girls aged 12-17 had a “major depressive episode” in the previous year. But, by 2016, nearly one-in-five girls aged 12-17 had a major depressive episode in the previous year. The rate of major depressive episodes among adolescent girls nearly doubled in less than a decade. Haidt and Lukianoff note that adolescent boys also experienced an increase in depressive episodes, but not as dramatic as that of girls.

Girls are more likely to become anxious or depressed because of increased social media use than boys because the root of anxiety and depression in girls tends to lie more in social dynamics than it does for boys. Whereas boys often deal with social conflict through direct, physical confrontation, girls are more likely to deal with social conflict in ways exacerbated by social media, which is one explanation for their increased anxiety and depression.

“Being a viewer in your own life”

Bo Burnham is a comedian, actor, and director. His career began when he started posting off-color comedic songs to a YouTube channel when he was in high school and YouTube was a relatively new platform. Burnham and I are roughly the same age, and I remember watching his videos in high school ashamed at how hard I was laughing because of how inappropriate they were (and are). Burnham’s 2021 Netflix special Inside is a comedy and a tragedy all wrapped into one hour-long program, and I could write pages about it here, as it is full of masterful commentary on the absurdity of the social internet. But instead, I want to call attention to a quote he gave when he was interviewed following the release of a movie he wrote and directed, Eighth Grade. 

The movie, which accurately depicts the most awkward aspects of the modern eighth grade experience, naturally features social media heavily. The film’s main character is an aspiring YouTuber, much like Burnham was when he was in high school. Burnham says regarding the social pressures young people face today that no one has ever had to face before:

What is the feeling of walking through your life and not just living your life, not just living your life—which is already [hard] and impossible—but also taking inventory of your life, being a viewer of your own life, living an experience and at the same time hovering behind yourself and watching yourself live that experience? Being nostalgic for moments that haven’t happened yet. Planning your future to look back on it.

Those are really weird, dissociative things that are, I think, new because of the specific structure of social media and how it dissociates ourselves from ourselves.

We find ourselves in a spot in which we feel we have to live our lives and create a documentary of our lives at the same time. We, as Burnham says, hover behind ourselves and watch ourselves live our lives while living our lives. Is it any wonder mental health crises are on the rise?

Another unfortunate reality is that this is not limited to teenagers. Data shows that social media use is adversely affecting the mental health of adults just as it is with teens. Sure, it’s safe to say that adults may feel less peer pressure to be as active on social media as teens are, but we’re all performing in the same way. With constant performance comes constant pressure. With constant pressure comes the gnawing anxiety that you’re going to fail in the spotlight at some point. How long can you really perform before you need to take a break? What if you feel like you can never take a break and log off?

Navigating the current technology and social media landscape as a parent, let alone as a Christian parent, is daunting. On one hand, outright banning all social media activity can unintentionally ostracize your child from his or her peers. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence to show that social media can easily hurt young people. In the face of the fear and difficulty that comes with parenting amid such tension, we parents must run to the Scriptures and cling to our God, who says in Isaiah 41:10, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” God is with us as we love our children and do all we can to lead them in the ways they should go. We must lean on him for our strength and our hope.

This article has been adapted from “Terms of Service” from B&H Publishing (2022). 

14 questions for Christians to ask about their social media engagement
By / Feb 18

Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill to protect children from the potentially harmful impacts of social media. The Kids Online Safety Act of 2022 includes five major elements:

  • Social media companies would be required to provide privacy options, the ability to disable addictive features and allow users to opt-out of recommendations like pages or other videos to “like.” It would also make the strongest privacy protections the default. 
  • The bill would give parents tools to track time spent in the app, limit purchases, and help to address addictive usage.
  • It would require social media companies to prevent and mitigate harm to minors, including self-harm, suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, sexual exploitation, and unlawful products for minors like alcohol.
  • Social media companies would be required to give kids’ data to academic and private researchers. The scientists would use that data to do more research on what harms children on social media and how to prevent that harm.
  • Social media companies would be required to use a third party to perform independent reviews to quantify the risk to minors, compliance with the law, and whether the company is “taking meaningful steps to prevent those harms.”

Whether the bill will be something Christians should support remains to be seen. But as Dr. Dave Anderson, a clinical psychologist at the Child Mind Institute, told ABC News, it’s an attempt to apply what social science research has taught us about the potential harms of social media. “I think politicians are taking what we know from the science and saying, ‘How do we build in these safeguards?’”, says Anderson.

Questions for evaluation 

While it’s important to build safeguards on social media for our children, every Christian adult should also consider what guardrails they are putting up for themselves. Listed below are 14 questions for self-reflection that we can ask ourselves about our social media engagement. 

1. The time use question: In 2020, the average adult spent three hours a day on social media. Do we spend more daily time on social media than we do on spiritual practices, such as prayer and Bible reading?

2. The best use question: Even if the time we spend on social media is not out of proportion to other activities, we should still consider how we want to spend our days. Is our social media usage an example of following the command in Ephesians 5:16 to make the “best use of the time”?

3. The bubble question: Social media allows us to choose who we interact with, allowing us the ability to create the online equivalent of gated communities. What types of interactions are you missing out on by engaging only within your social media bubble?

4. The corrupt company question: In light of question 3, what kind of bubble are you creating? Who are you surrounding yourself with online? Bad company — even disguised with Christian language — that will corrupt (1 Cor. 15:33)? Or good company that will build up? 

5. The looking with lust question: The predominance of personal photos on social media can allow us to get an intimate glimpse not only into people’s lives but often of people’s bodies. What precautions are we taking to prevent ourselves from looking with lust on the images we see in private (Matt. 5:28)?

6. The one another question: Throughout Scripture there are more than 50 “one another” commands that apply to our fellow believers (for example, the commands to “encourage one another and build up one another” in 1 Thessalonians 5:11). How are you using social media to fulfill those commands?

7. The probability of cancellation question: Cancel culture refers to the modern practice of withdrawing support for someone (i.e., “canceling them”) after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive. What are the chances that you could be “canceled” for something you post on social media?

8. The loving your enemy question: Jesus commands us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matt. 5:43). Do we use our social media accounts to identify the “enemies” we need to pray for?

9. The foolish controversies question: In Titus 3:9, Paul tells us to avoid foolish controversies because they are unprofitable and useless. Does our social media usage increase the likelihood that we will engage in such foolish controversies?

10. The eulogy question: Imagine that if at your funeral someone who despises you was able to give a eulogy that consisted of them reading 10 items you posted on social media. Would you have any concerns or fear of embarrassment if that were to happen?

11. The anonymity question: Many people on social media (especially on platforms like Twitter) choose to remain anonymous. But Jesus says “there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open” (Luke 8:17). If you have an anonymous account, would you be ashamed if your identity was revealed? (Alternative question: Should we be engaging with those who choose to hide their identity while attacking those whose identities are known?) 

12. The unwholesome talk question: Paul commands us by saying, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Eph. 4:29). Do we use social media to engage in unwholesome talk?

13. The true and noble question: Additionally, Paul says, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things” (Phil. 4:8). Does our social media usage help us to think about what is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, and praiseworthy?

14. The glory of God question: Paul also says, whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:13). Can we honestly say that all that we do on social media is glorifying God?

Why Christians can be content with a quiet life in a social media world
By / Jan 13

One of the great promises of social media is its implicit pledge to make its users well-known. Friends and followers, likes and retweets all whisper to us that we are being seen and known. And as our digital audience grows, we feel affirmed, important, influential, and maybe even powerful. It can be intoxicating, and social media companies know it. 

Christians often find ourselves in serious pursuit of more online followers and influence. Sometimes, it’s because we are rightly seeking to embrace the call to spread the gospel that’s been entrusted to us. Yet, the very nature of social media means users are encouraged to increase their notoriety. And while this may create a unique opportunity for us to share the gospel, it also presents us with a dangerous temptation that Jesus warns us to avoid — “practicing our righteousness before others to be seen by them” (Matt. 6:1).

So, while God may be calling some believers to use social media platforms for the sake of the gospel, what if the way of faithfulness for most of us is more akin to serving in obscurity? In a culture that seeks notoriety at all costs, one of the most important ambitions that some of us can choose to adopt is to embrace a quiet life, where we serve and share the gospel with those around us and recognize that our God-given desire to be seen and known will only be fully met by Christ himself. 

Practicing our righteousness to be seen by others

Why do we sometimes do the things we do on social media? It’s a basic question that we often fail to ask ourselves. Our feeds can frequently turn into kitschy Christian tropes, self-aggrandizing photos of our religious activity, and faux humility that spotlights just how earnest and spiritual we are. And, why? It’s because social media is one giant marketplace that makes it easy and “normal” for us to show off without even realizing it. 

What’s so addictive about our public displays of righteousness, as Jesus tells us, is that they promise and produce a reward that our flesh loves. Public displays of our piety — like Jesus’ examples in the Sermon on the Mount of praying and fasting or a punchy, well-timed religious quote meant to “own” one of our detractors — undoubtedly gain the applause of our followers through likes and retweets, giving us the dopamine hit that we’ve grown so addicted to. 

In giving ourselves over to this use of social media, we have contented ourselves with and even preferred the reward that comes not from the Father but from our crowd of followers. “Truly,” Jesus says to us, “they have received their reward” (Matt. 6:2). 

Gain followers, lose your soul

One of the interesting things about social media is that, regardless of which platform is being used, it has become our culture’s most prominent stage for acting out its most prized virtue: self-expression. It’s where we go to express ourselves and rally others to our cause. But following Jesus is not chiefly about expressing ourselves, as much as our culture may recoil at the thought. Instead it’s about denying ourselves (Matt. 16:24). It’s not about adding to some ever-growing list of followers, but about following Jesus with a cross on our back. 

Jesus assures us that he will return one day “with his angels in the glory of his Father,” and when he does, he says, “he will repay each person according to what he has done” (Matt. 16:27). At his coming, will we be those who have “gained the world” of social media, having forfeited our souls in the process, or will we be those who value self-denial above self-expression? 

Your Father who sees in secret

Social media, though it can certainly be used for good, is often the trumpet blast that Jesus condemns in his sermon (Matt. 6:2), the loud invitation for onlookers to clap their hands with “likes” and shout their approval with “retweets” at the righteousness that we have publicized for them. But Jesus tells us, “Beware.” And not because our desire for reward is inherently bad, but because we’re settling for a lesser reward! 

We do not have to practice our righteousness before others to be seen and rewarded. Our Father sees our acts of faithfulness, and he will reward us. He sees when we give and pray and fast in secret (Matt. 6:2, 6, 17). And he sees when we read his Word without posting a photo on Instagram, when we share a meal with a brother or sister without tagging them and announcing it on Facebook, and when we refrain from disparaging an image-bearer on Twitter. Even if no one else ever sees these “acts of righteousness,” our Father sees in secret, and he will reward us.

Lead a quiet life

Paul’s words to the Thessalonians are worthy of our consideration in a culture that has made an idol of celebrity and self-expression: “aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs” (1 Thess. 4:11). Our society rewards those who are loud and bombastic; those who are pugnacious, insolent, and “omnicompetent”; and those who parade their righteousness around for all to see. But God calls us to embrace something different — a life of self-denial; a life of unheralded, unseen acts of faithfulness; and a life content with obscurity. 

As St. Augustine and others have said, all of life is lived coram Deo, before the face of God. Therefore, we don’t have to fear that our effort to follow in the way of Jesus will go unnoticed, even if our peers never acknowledge it. And we don’t have to worry that the cups of cold water we give in Jesus’ name (Matt.10:42) or our hidden day-to-day faithfulness will go unrecognized, even when there are no “likes” or “favorites” to reward us. We can be content with praying behind closed doors (Matt. 6:6), giving anonymously (Matt. 6:3), serving and sharing the gospel with those around us, and quelling the impulse to practice our righteousness before our audience of social media followers because we are waiting for a better reward. 

May we be countercultural — happy to live a quiet life, hungering and thirsting for the righteousness that doesn’t need to be performed before others, and finding our joy and satisfaction in the approval of God alone. 

3 words that will shape digital culture for good and cultivate virtue in the public square
By / Nov 9

It happens like clockwork. Often within a few moments of breaking news or some other major event happening in our culture, we see one of the most damaging effects of social media and digital culture. Our feeds are immediately filled with “expert” opinions, half-baked ideas, and reactionary takes that routinely fail to account for the reality of the situation and resort to partisan or cultural talking points. In these moments, it seems that everyone we know has a take on what is happening. It’s tempting to join in as we seek to align ourselves with the “right” tribe or group online.

The internet was originally promised to be a major turning point in the pursuit of truth and free expression. We were told that the democratization of information would usher in a new era of freedom and emphasis on truth. The idea is that the truth would naturally rise above the fray given the freedom of information and a common pursuit of truth. But along with this pursuit came an onslaught of fake news, misinformation, and opinions based on feeling and emotion.

In reality, much of the ”news” we hear about today or “expert” commentary is nothing more than content designed to whet our appetites for immediacy, inflame our alliances to group identities, or stir up controversy to influence our behaviors. Social media in some sense breeds behavior in which we project ourselves as omnicompetent. We are constantly being pushed to post about “what’s happening?” on Twitter or to post “what’s on our mind?” on Facebook. We are encouraged and incentivized to post our random musings, unformed thoughts, and reactionary takes for the world to see.

So, how are we to break this vicious cycle of self-promotion and recenter our lives on pursuing wisdom in a digital age? The answer might sound trite and overly simplistic, but I am convinced that three little words can help change a culture: I don’t know.

Information overload

Each and every day, we are bombarded with more information than we could ever hope to process. In our digital first world, it is far too easy to focus on the things right in front of us. Social media naturally breeds an expert culture, where we seek to prove our knowledge, allegiances, and abilities often before we consider the full impact of these decisions. Through our feeds, we fall prey to what Neil Postman referred to as an “and . . . now this” culture, where we are encouraged to quickly move from one thing to the next without any real reflection or sustained evaluation of what we are being exposed to each day.

As writer Alan Jacobs puts it in his recent book, Breaking Bread with the Dead: A Reader’s Guide to a More Tranquil Mind, “navigating daily life in the internet age is a lot like doing battlefield triage.” In this digital age, we are often overwhelmed with the sheer amount of information to process. So, we usually default to shallow engagement and forgo deep reflection on the important things of life.

In conversations about technology and what this level of information access is doing to us as people, we often focus on some of the more prominent effects of technology such as screen time, app limits, and the rise of various psychological effects like the increase of loneliness, isolation, anxiety, and more. While all of these issues are important and should be addressed by the church, one of the most subtle and deleterious effects is how society perceives truth and how this information overload is causing all of us to lose grip on reality. This isn’t an isolated occurrence but has become a cultural practice across political, social, and even religious grounds. 

“I don’t know” and epistemic humility

In our digital age, it is easy to falsely believe that we know more or can navigate more than we can actually handle. As we wade through this battlefield of the mind, our sin tempts us to believe that the problems we see in the online world would simply go away if people just believed what we do or would just listen to us. Richard John Neuhaus reminds us in The Naked Public Square, “In principle, we should be suspicious of explanations for other people’s beliefs and behavior when those explanations imply that they would believe and behave as we do, if only they were as mature and enlightened as we are.” In the digital age, cultivating humility and understanding of how deeply embedded sin is in every aspect of our life can help usher in a more righteous pursuit of truth in a divided society.

One of the most countercultural things we can do in the midst of information overload — especially with the constant allure of projecting ourselves as omnicompetent online — is to simply say “I don’t know”. While it may sound trite and doesn’t entail that we cower from speaking truth, it reminds us that we are indeed finite and limited in what we actually know. We simply aren’t designed — nor do we need — to have an opinion or draw an immediate conclusion about the onslaught of information we face each day.

Paul warns young Timothy that “Certain persons, by swerving from these, have wandered away into vain discussion, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions” (1 Tim. 1:6-7). These simple words seem to typify our current age of constant connection and ease of sharing things online with social media, especially for God’s people. 

Social media generally yields itself to “vain discussions” where we try to prove ourselves to others and become teachers of others, often without a deep understanding of what we are actually saying or making confident assertions about. Modeling epistemic humility or a responsive awareness of the limits of one’s own knowledge by regularly reminding ourselves and those around us that we do not have all of the answers can help combat the concerning rise of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Not only are we ill-equipped for the task of responding to everything we see online, we simply aren’t created for that type of responsibility. Cultivating epistemic humility can breed a culture of curiosity and intrigue as it encourages sustained study and a culture of learning rather than uninformed opinions passing as facts or knowledge.

Speaking truth with grace in the public square

So when is the last time that you slowed down to evaluate the desires that may motivate your posting, sharing, or clicking online? The evaluation of our online habits shouldn’t be driven by a pursuit of avoiding the dreaded cancel culture, where a single post can ruin someone’s life, or out of a desire to back down instead of speaking truth to power with grace and understanding. With platforms (and society) designed for instantaneous connection and constant sharing, wisdom calls us to step back and seek to examine our souls before engaging online.

Slowing down can allow us time to verify the truth before we share, notice the actual person made in God’s image behind the inflammatory post, and think about why we feel the need to contribute in the first place. We can ask ourselves what we are trying to prove to others or what kind of façade we are seeking to build online. This pause can also help us see what is driving our need to be the one who corrects everyone’s controversial opinions or to show ourselves to be on the “right side” of the latest political controversy.

Of course Christians should engage online. However, when we engage, we should desire for others to know that we are not confident in ourselves but in the One who made us in his likeness (Gen. 1:26-28). Social media can tempt us to think that the things we say and do online are spoken into a void of time and space, disconnected from real life. But behind the avatars and updates are flesh-and-blood human beings with struggles, fears, and desires, just like you and me. Let’s be the ones who prize people over power and truth over position.

3 questions to ask ourselves before posting on social media
By / Nov 2

Love it or hate it, social media has become enmeshed with virtually every aspect of our digital lives. With the advent of the smartphone and smartphone apps, and relatively new services like Facebook Pay and WhatsApp among other, we are becoming more invested in and more dependent on these social platforms and their menu of features.

And despite our familiarity with and constant use of social media, we are still learning how to use each respective platform. Stated differently: we’re still learning how to behave on them. By and large, online dialogue continues to grow increasingly reckless, unkind, and contentious, on the one hand, and infantile, vapid, and self-absorbed on the other. 

But since social media is clearly here to stay, it is imperative that the people of God commit ourselves to the wise, charitable, and productive use of these platforms. 

Let every person be slow to . . . tweet?

While I am of the (strong) opinion that we should be less engaged on social media than we currently are, the fact is most people spend a significant amount of time on their preferred platform(s) scrolling and posting, tweeting and retweeting. There is no mass social media exodus anywhere on the horizon.

So, if we’re committed to staying, if we’re committed to the continued use of these social platforms, how can we avoid the recklessness and performative self-expression that so often spoils our online dialogue? 

Here are three important questions that we should ask ourselves before posting anything online.

  1. Why am I saying this?

Before finally clicking “post” or “tweet,” we should stop ourselves and ask this very simple question: “why?”

Our motives, the why behind what we post or share, matter. And on platforms where contentiousness, conflict, and impulsiveness are rewarded, we are being constantly encouraged to skip this first step of pausing and considering the motives of our heart. Wisdom is being forfeited for clicks. 

Why do we post cropped and filtered photos of our quiet time on Instagram? Is it because we want “to be seen” by others like Jesus warns against in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:1)? Or why do we feel the need to join in with angry online outbursts? Could it be that, instead of “walking by the Spirit,” we’re “carrying out the desires of the flesh” like Paul warned against in his letter to the Galatians (5:16)? If we believe Jesus’ words, that “from the heart comes” all kinds of evil (Matthew 15:19), we would be wise to stop and examine the motives of our heart before posting.

  1. What do I hope to accomplish by saying this?

I’m under no illusion that all our social media interactions should aspire ultimately to change the world. If that is the aim of our online life, we are sure to be severely disappointed. But there should be some intended purpose behind what we choose to share, from our light-hearted posts to those that are evangelistic. 

For Christians, we can use a simple rubric to help answer this second question: will this post glorify Christ, or will it glorify me? Will it bring about good, or will it lead to ruin?

Our task as Christians is summed up well by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31, emphasis added). For those of us who are active online, does our tweeting and posting accomplish the task that Paul charges us with in this text? Or does it fuel controversy, stoke rage, stir up jealousy and contempt, or, in some other way, produce the chaff described in Psalm 1? Do our online words speak life or death (Proverbs 18:21)? 

  1. How can I say this in a way that is truthful, charitable, and productive?

There is no shortage of “fake news,” hateful “hot takes,” and fruitless discussion taking place online these days. But that doesn’t mean that we must take part in any of it. In fact, Christians are those whose “speech” should “always be gracious, seasoned with salt,” the apostle Paul says (Colossians 4:6). What does that mean for the things we post on social media?

This final question is a safeguard that commits us, as much as possible, to craft our social media posts so that they are truthful, loving, and productive, in that they aim to produce good or simply to move a conversation forward in a charitable way. This means that there is no place for “owning” our so-called opponents, for peddling falsities, or engaging in shameful and degrading conversations. To this, with the apostle Paul, we might say: such talk “is not suitable and should not even be heard of among [us]” (Eph. 5:3-4). 

If we can’t, in good conscience, answer each of these three questions with sufficiently godly answers, we should be content with saying nothing. But if we can, we should feel free to click “tweet” or “post.” 

Blessed is the one

In a very real way, social media can function as the “company of mockers” mentioned in Psalm 1 and can serve as our “walk[ing] in step with the wicked” and “stand[ing] in the way that sinners take” (Psa. 1:1). But it doesn’t have to be this way. And it shouldn’t. 

“Blessed is the one,” the psalmist says, “whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night” (Psa. 1:1, 2). May we be the people who delight in “the Lord’s instruction,” who delight in obeying him, and in bringing his law to bear on every motive of our heart and every word that leaves our mouths, whether spoken or posted on social media. 

Why our boredom feeds wasted time on social media
By / Oct 19

The world is many things. It is both stunningly beautiful and unquestionably broken. It is vast and expansive, and surprisingly small. And it is loud. Very, very loud. The noise that we hear so often now, though, is not the sound of thunder or rushing waterfalls, but rather what G.K. Chesterton described in his book Orthodoxy as the bustle of “human repose.” 

That contradictory phrase — bustle of human repose — has become even more true in our own day than it was in Chesterton’s. A sort of societal idleness, masked as activity, has reached its widespread peak in our era of social media. And the noise is almost unbearable. 

Boredom will not be silent

As a self-acknowledged grouch when it comes to noise, I should start by stating something obvious: noise, in and of itself, is not inherently negative. In fact, some of the most moving and formative experiences of life involve a high decibel count, like a good belly-laugh with friends or the collective voice of a congregation singing to and about the Triune God. And we can be sure that these sorts of joyful noises will come with us when heaven and its King descend and this age gives way to the age to come. 

But this is not the noise that Chesterton had in mind when he wrote Orthodoxy, nor is it the clamor that fills our minds when we scroll through social media. 

Despite all the good that we’ve convinced ourselves we’re doing on our respective social media platforms, we are without question contributing to a societal noise that is not healthy by filling every idle moment with a post or tweet, or simply scrolling our timelines. Part of it could be, as Blaise Pascal wrote, that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

But, in this case, I suspect it is more so the fruit of boredom or, to use Chesterton’s word, repose masked as activity. And what’s more, this deafening noise, this way of idling away our days through the glow of a screen, has deadened our capacity to embrace the blessed monotony of real life. 

The cure for boredom

Has there ever been a time in history in which more hours of our day were wasted? On bathroom breaks, between meetings, on the clock, and across the table from those dearest to us, we’re haunted by a perpetual boredom fed by the very thing with which we seek to cure it. The constant buzz of social media — it’s noise and sensationalism — draws us in, rescuing us from and reminding us of our life’s mundanity all at the same time. It is a self-perpetuating black hole of boredom. 

But there is a cure. And for Christians, it’s spelled out for us in the black-and-white text (or red letters, depending on your Bible) of the scriptures. The cure for boredom is obedience to the commands of God; particularly in obedience to the cultural mandate and the Great Commission. 

1. Cultural mandate

In the opening book of the Old Testament, not long after God had formed Adam “out of the dust from the ground,” Moses wrote, “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it” (Gen. 2:15). This text is part of what has historically been referred to as the “cultural mandate” (Gen. 1).

The cultural mandate, to summarize very briefly, is at the very least the commission that God gave to Adam, and to us, “to work and watch over” the areas where he has placed us. For Adam and Eve, this was the garden in Eden. For us, it is our homes and our places of business, and wherever else God has placed us. As God’s likeness, we have all been given a task to attend to. 

On this topic, I can’t help but think of Samuel Hamilton, one of the prominent characters in John Steinbeck’s novel, East of Eden. When introducing Samuel, an able and tireless farmer, the narrator writes, “He was a busy man. He had no time for nostalgia.” Samuel Hamilton was a busy man; he had no time for Chesterton’s “bustle of human repose.”

Boredom is not an unhealthy thing. It’s what we do with our boredom that reveals whether we are healthy.

So, before we allow boredom to drive us online to the noise of social media and to the neglect of our God-given responsibilities, maybe we, like Samuel Hamilton, should go do the dishes. Or instead of mindlessly scrolling through our feeds to pass the time, maybe we should faithfully serve the work our employer has hired us to do. Maybe we should retire from the mindless bustle that takes up so many hours of our day and instead take up the activity of faithfully carrying out the cultural mandate, wherever God has placed us. 

The jungle of weeds overtaking my home’s flower beds bears witness to my own neglect. What areas of responsibility have you neglected in exchange for idle time on social media?

2. Great Commission

On top of the cultural mandate lies the commission given by Jesus, to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe” the commands that he gave to all his disciples (Matt. 28:18-20). As if working and keeping the places where God has put us wasn’t enough to stave off boredom, here is another task: go and deliver the greatest news the world has ever known to everyone you encounter.

Moreover, though we are certainly messengers of good news, by God’s own decree, we are much more than that. We are “ministers of reconciliation” (2 Cor. 5:18), “ambassadors of Christ (2 Cor. 5:20), and, by virtue of our union with Christ through his Spirit, we are those who’ve entered the “strong man’s” (Satan) house and begun to “plunder his goods” (Matt. 12:29). When we carry out the Great Commission, sharing the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and when our hearers set their allegiance on Jesus in response, we get to witness the plundering of Satan’s house. 

One of the phrases that my pastor repeats often is “if you’re a Christian who’s bored, you’re doing it wrong.” So, if we find ourselves bored, and prone to medicate our boredom with idle scrolling, let us commit ourselves afresh to the mission of God.

Make friends with boredom

Boredom is not an unhealthy thing. It’s what we do with our boredom that reveals whether we are healthy. 

Does our boredom send us to the digital ether in search of stimulation? Does it compel us to embrace the noise of social media because we’re afraid of the quiet? Has our boredom given way to idleness, a sort of addiction to the mind-numbing habit of seeking entertainment as we scroll endlessly down? 

In our day, boredom comes easily. We have no lack of entertainment, but we nevertheless live in a boredom epidemic. And if we continue to feed our boredom with paltry substitutes like the never-ceasing noise of social media, we will find ourselves in a perpetual state of unhealth. But if we make friends with our boredom, if we respond to its message by giving ourselves to the mandate and mission of God, we will find that boredom is our ally, not something to be stuffed down with the idle noise of our social platforms. 

If you’ve grown weary of feeding your boredom with the noisy bustle pouring out of your social feeds, hear the clarion call of God through your boredom: “Go and make disciples.” 

SBC Executive Committee and task force negotiations, pregnant women and the COVID vaccine, and government shutdown
By / Oct 1

In this episode, Lindsay and Brent discuss the SBC Executive Committee extending task force negotiations, the CDC urging pregnant women to get the COVID-19 vaccine, Youtube cracking down on anti-vaccine misinformation videos, COVID cases falling by 25%, and the Senate reaching a last-minute deal to avoid a government shutdown. They also give a rundown of this week’s ERLC content including Jason Thacker with “Is Facebook discipling your church members? How technology is shaping the church and altering our worldview,” Catherine Parks with “What is the state of abortion around the world? An international round-up of recent legislative efforts regarding abortion,” and Jill Waggoner with “Mindy Belz helps Christians think about the Middle East: 9/11, suffering, and the hope we have in Jesus.”

ERLC Content

Culture

  1. SBC EC extends task force negotiations
  2. CDC to pregnant women: Get vaccinated
  3. Youtube cracks down on anti-vaccine videos
  4. COVID cases fall by 25%
  5. Senate reaches last-minute deal to avoid shutdown

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Is Facebook discipling your church members?
By / Sep 27

Over the last few weeks, there have been a number of concerning reports about how social media — Facebook, in particular — is having extremely negative effects on our society, especially among teenagers. It is even shaping the content that Christians are exposed to on the platform as well. According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, the issues range from certain high-profile accounts being shielded from standard content guidelines to how the company has known that Instagram is toxic for many teenage girls. The Wall Street Journal also reported that in 2018 the company tweaked its content algorithms, which drive our news feeds, in hopes of fostering greater community and user engagement, but the effects were more dangerous than initially thought. The report shows that these changes actually exacerbated tensions and divisions with more inflammatory and objectionable content being highlighted for users, yet leadership failed to act.

On top of these reports from the Wall Street Journal, which were gleaned from various internal research reports, online employee discussions, and draft presentations to senior management, MIT Technology Review recently showed that troll farms had reached over 140 million users on Facebook before the 2020 election. A troll farm is an organized group of users (or even bots) who intentionally craft content to exploit division and sow discord in society. Of particular interest to Christians is that these troll farms — often based in Eastern Europe — operated all 15 of the top Christian American pages on Facebook in October 2019. The largest of the Christian pages on the platform reached 75 million U.S. users monthly. Ninety-five percent of that engagement came from users who never chose to follow the pages but were still exposed to the content crafted by these non-Christian groups.

Jeff Allen, a former senior-level data scientist at Facebook who authored the 2019 report in the MIT story, stated, “Our platform has given the largest voice in the Christian American community to a handful of bad actors, who, based on their media production practices, have never been to church.” This means that millions of Christians throughout our society are likely being exposed daily to messages from troll farms, which often design messages for higher engagement, financial gain, and to negatively alter one’s outlook on the world rather than point people back to Christ and the gospel.

It is obvious from these reports that Facebook needs to immediately address these concerning ethical issues for the sake of public safety, health, and our public discourse. But another big takeaway is that these issues are not limited to Facebook; rather, they are symptomatic of the larger issues with technology in our society today. In reality, we are often being discipled more by our technologies than we are the Word of God.

More than a tool

One of the most common understandings of technology, especially in Christianity, is that it is simply a tool that we choose to use for good or evil purposes. But others insist that technology is a larger social force that is basically unstoppable in altering society for ill. In his book The Technological Society, French sociologist Jacques Ellul says technology is much more than a simple tool or machine because its purpose is to shape every aspect of our society and culture toward greater efficiency — at any cost. While Ellul didn’t exactly have a hopeful outlook for our technological society, one aspect of his philosophy is prescient in that it pushes us to consider the larger ways that technology shapes our culture and alters our perception of reality. 

As technologist and theologian John Dyer puts it in his book From the Garden to the City, “Both [views] have elements of truth to them, but we cannot reduce all discussions about technology in either direction.” He goes on to say, “People are culpable for their choices, but technology still plays a role in influencing the decisions they make.” A Christian philosophy of technology seeks to balance the two prevailing views of technology by providing an active framework of agency and accountability, alongside an expanded view of technology that sees the larger societal effects of these tools.

The Church has long promoted the idea that technology is a tool that can be used for good by God’s people to connect with others, build communities, shape the worldview of our churches, and influence the wider culture as we harness it to proclaim the gospel. At the same time, we must heed the words of theologian and ethicist Jacob Shatzer, who warns in his book Transhumanism and the Image of God that “each tool pushes us toward the goal that the tool is best made for” and that we must be “aware of this, unless we think that our goals in life will always align with the goals that tools were made for.” Amid the good, Christians need to recognize the ways that technology expands our moral horizons by opening up options we never thought possible and allowing our sinful hearts to use these technologies to exploit others, manipulate truth, and stoke division.

Christian ethics in a digital age

If you survey much of today’s literature on ethics, a main critique of the Christian ethic is that it is simply unable to deal with new challenges we face today, especially in the digital age. But it shouldn’t surprise us that Jesus didn’t speak to these issues directly or that Paul and the other apostles didn’t write about how to navigate artificial intelligence, smartphones, social media, or other technologies.

While some will write off a Christian philosophy and ethic of technology as outdated or simply unusable, a biblical vision of technology ethics is more than robust enough to help us think through the challenging questions of social media platforms, how to advocate for free expression and religious freedom, and how to uphold the dignity of all human beings in the face of technologies that exploit our weaknesses. Christ summed up the foundation and goal of Christian ethics in Matthew 22:37-39: we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. This means prioritizing our neighbors over profit and recognizing how the tools we use — even if designed with the best intentions — can and will be exploited in sinful and dehumanizing ways as they alter our perception of reality.

One of the ways we can do this in the digital age is by learning about how technology, as more than just a tool, is shaping our lives and society. This should drive us to an active engagement rather than a passive use of these powerful tools. We should also seek to understand that tools like Facebook are being used to influence and shape the worldviews of the church and wider society, often in perverse ways. They do this by exposing us to perfectly crafted and curated messages used to sway our social engagement, exploit our natural desires to be known, and give us a false sense of control in chaotic times. 

Pastors and ministry leaders need to understand that technology is one of the primary disciplers of those in our churches. This is due to the fact that our technological devices are at our side nearly every minute of the day, ready to envelope us in the personally-curated online worlds that are designed to shape our view of society. Given the ubiquity of technology today, we have to ask ourselves how we are being formed by these creations, and to what end. Most importantly, Christians must ask if we are being transformed to be more like Christ through our use of technology, or if we are ultimately being conformed to the likeness of this world instead (Romans 12:2).

Learn more about ERLC’s work in the digital public square and sign up to receive articles like this at ERLC.com/digital