Question: Do you think social media has made the Christian journey easier or harder? Just curious on your thoughts
I’ve found that often there are more gray areas than black and white and I believe social media and its consequence falls somewhere in that gray zone.
Immediately something that comes to my heart is distraction. Now, of course although the Bible doesn’t say anything about social media specifically, it does speak to the idea of distraction. We know the rebuke that Martha received from the Lord because although she had opportunity to sit at His feet and learn from Him, she was distracted by other things, seemingly harmless and even useful things. We see direction in Matthew 6:33 to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, but often times the more we have available to us the less we seek Him first. I know many of us have been guilty of opening up our Facebook in the morning before even speaking to or seeking the Lord for our day. Ouch! But it’s true. Scripture after scripture reminds us to set our minds on things above, not on the things of this earth (Colossians 3:2), to meditate on what is pure, noble and acceptable in His sight (Philippians 4:8), and to renew our minds according to the Word (Romans 12:2). Anyone with any social media experience knows full well that not all of it is lovely, pure, or heaven-minded.
On the flip side of this, we know that many connections have been made through social media. A number of the people that attend our churches faithfully have come to find us through various social media outlets. Our services are freely broadcasted to the world through social media, which is a beautiful opportunity for people to get and stay connected. In many regards social media has made bringing the gospel to the world a lot more effective. Romans 10:14, “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” I personally believe we haven’t yet tapped into the full potential of social media to reach the world for Jesus.
Let’s also look at Romans 14:12-14, “So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather determine this—not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother’s way. I know and am convinced in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but to him who thinks anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” Now this in context has to do with eating meat and idolatry which is a topic for another day, but the principle is still relevant here. Often through the outlets of social media we see a lot of inconsiderate behaviors such as this. It’s important that Christians don’t use social media to attack or cause others to stumble. During the pandemic I saw a lot of Christians using social media as a place to show how strong their faith was, without regard to how scared or weak in faith the world was. The brashness (not boldness) of their posts on social media weren’t showing the scared lost world the goodness of God, but quite the opposite.
Together we could probably sit here and list all the bad that can come out of social media and all the good potential it has. We could do this for days. But as with anything in life more ability and more access means more responsibility. This is why it also requires more maturity. I would never put a blanket statement out there that social media is good for all or good for all Christians, but I also can’t say it’s bad for all or bad for the church at large. I think it was Spider-Man or Winston Churchill or someone that said with great power there is great responsibility. Social media is both very powerful and requires great responsibility.
Be Blessed,
Pastor Renée
