No true Christian would ever consciously dare try to unseat God or to replace him as king of their life. However, as a practical matter, many of us may be slowly and subtly doing just that if;
You post on social media more than a couple times a day (except for your job).
You find yourself checking often for “Likes” or comments from others.
You are constantly looking for pictures to post to get “Likes.”
You check your phone during worship.
You check your phone before you pray or read scripture in the morning.
If you own and use a “selfie stick” regularly.
“You shall have no other Gods before me.” Deuteronomy 5:7 1. Remember that you are God’s Social Media We were made in God’s image to represent him in his world. From the beginning, were meant to be God’s media. That was true for Adam, true for Israel, and is true for us in Christ. God should be made known through us, and through our connection with him and with others. We’re his representatives in his world, recreated in Christ to re-present him.
“You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” 2 Corinthians 3:3
2. Self-worship is idolatry If you spend more time daily posting things about your life, or checking what people think of you, than you do thinking about God – you’re becoming your own God. Is your phone actually – not figuratively, and idol for you?
“Idols are silver and gold, made by human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but cannot see… Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust them.” Psalm 115:4-5, 8
3. Share Jesus If we are communication mediums for whatever we worship, then the way we use mediums will reflect who we are, and communicate what it is we worship. If someone looked at your social media accounts, who would they say you worship? Our job isn’t to try to make images of God, or of things we worship, but to point people to God via our lives, and via what God has made (and how we use it). God’s handiwork – the stuff he makes, including the people he remakes in Christ – should point people to him, which for us means our ‘good works’ that he has prepared for us to do, as a subset of his creative acts, should show who we are “in Christ Jesus.”
“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Ephesians 2:10
4. You must decrease. He must increase. Our human tendency is to want to be at the center. It’s the experience of being creatures whose lives are projections of our own subjectivity – our thoughts, our imagination, our desires, are projected through our actions. The Gospel calls us to re-center ourselves, and our lives, and our thoughts about others to make Jesus the subject, and the center of reality, and to point people to him, not ourselves. I like the way John the Baptist describes this experience as he is confronted with the truth about who Jesus is.“He must become greater; I must become less.” John 3:30This runs counter to the way people in our world use social media to project either ourselves as the ultimate subject of reality, or to present our idols as the subject of our lives and worship.
“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.” Philippians 2:3-4
Here’s my final question: Stop reading right now and look at your Facebook and Instagram posts for the last week. Who is at the center of them?
Many of these ideas were edited from a blog post by Nate Campbell, http://bit.ly/2ual3qm.
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