ONLINE: Being A Good Neighbor
Hey everyone! If we haven’t met before, my name is Leah, and I’m on staff here at CSF! I like coffee and rock climbing and reading, and I think I’m pretty cool, so if you want to hang sometime, just come find me after. But for right now, I wanted to chat with you all and continue our series on Being a Good Neighbor. Jesus says that the way to eternal life is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. There are lots of different ways to be a good neighbor and lots of different spheres of life to consider as you strive to be good neighbors to those around you, as we’ve been talking about since August. We’ve talked about roommates and intercessory prayer and sharing the gospel and being a witness and hospitality and encouragement and service.
If you were here last week, Nate talked about how to be a good neighbor in a politically-charged world. He spent some time walking us through the idea of Jesus as the King, the Kingdom of God, and bearing witness to that Kingdom in this world. He talked about living your life as a witness, as if Jesus were your King—because, if you claim to be a Chrisitian, He should be.
A part of that witness is one that isn’t necessarily in the physical world. It’s one that most, if not all, of us are involved in in some form or fashion. And that’s the digital world, or the online world. There’s a line somewhere that is shifting and getting ever harder to find between the online world being real or not real. In some ways, it’s not real: what you see online is not necessarily a true reflection of reality. But in other ways, your online life is just as much a part of your real life as anything else.
I heard somewhere that your brain can’t tell the difference between something you imagine and something you experience; for example, if you’re constantly daydreaming about a guy or girl you have a crush on, your brain is going to log those as memories and increase the way you feel about those things. You might logically know that that didn’t actually happen, but it will form your subconscious feelings about it. “The eye is the lamp of the body,” as Jesus says, which we will look at a little later. What you see and dwell on matters and lets something into your very soul. So then what kind of light, or darkness, are we allowing into our bodies and minds and hearts via the online world?
Before I go too much further, I have four main points tonight that I want to hit before we leave. Here they are, so you can keep track:
God is interested in your entire life and making it more Christ-like.
We are called to edify or build up those around us.
The mouth speaks what the heart is full of.
Social media and technology might not be the best use of our time in our endeavor to be a good neighbor.
Don’t get too bogged down in these points right now; I will be elaborating on all of them soon. But first I want to talk about social media in general.
The idea of social media was connection. Social media has given people who are far apart the opportunity to connect/reconnect even when the physical distance is still there. It’s connected people from around the world who otherwise would have never met, it’s brought to light global issues and crises and given people the opportunity to meet those needs, and it’s revolutionized news and marketing, completely changing the game when it comes to getting information about the happenings of the world and the latest products and technology. It’s definitely sped up the pace of life, making this morning’s news old news and yesterday’s news irrelevant. But that’s another topic.
Unfortunately, the goal of social media—connection—has somehow had the opposite effect in a lot of spheres, especially on the personal level. Somehow, interactions have been reduced to a few pixels on a screen, and that faux anonymity has given some people this bravado that makes them think that they can just say whatever they want. A lot of people I know will more likely have an argument with a distant “friend” or even stranger on Facebook or Instagram or some other platform about something they don’t even really care about or have any control over than talk to a real-life friend about their personal issues. We think we’re good at communicating when really we just feel this sense of protection when we speak through a screen, like a shield that allows us to dismiss our neighbor as a bitmoji or avatar or profile picture and not a real person who is made in the image of God. And conversely, we can let what they say roll off of us and not have any meaning because it’s just some tiny profile picture on my six-inch screen.
And all that’s not even touching on the fact that these profiles we get to curate of ourselves can say whatever we want, portray somebody we’re not, or even be “faceless” as some meme pages or whatever get to be to hold onto some semblance of privacy in this very public sphere. You can be whoever you want online and no one's the wiser. You can make your posts a highlight reel of your life, painting it in such a way that no one can see when you’re hurting or when you make a mistake or a lot of mistakes. On the flip side, you can inadvertently beg for sympathy or pity when things don’t go as planned, making as big a deal as you want about the hard parts of life while keeping you as the victim even if you’re not.
And instead of connections, social media has recently become a platform of short term distraction, feeds full of six-second videos where you can watch people dance or cats do silly things like get scared by a cucumber or hear stories of people that are so far removed from your circle that any sympathy or empathy you have for them is gone by the time you scroll to the next video, all in an effort to avoid the darkness that resides in your soul. That painful breakup. That scary diagnosis. That betrayal of someone you thought was your friend. The overwhelming amount of school or house chores or work or all of the above that keeps piling up behind you while your face is lit by the blue light of the phone screen. Maybe even the still small voice of the Lord telling you something you’re not quite ready to hear.
Essentially, what was designed for connection has become so individual and selfish, overridden with gossip, anger, intolerance, and sometimes just plain evil, that it sometimes seems impossible to even consider what it means to be a good neighbor online.
But if we spend so much time in this virtual space, then as Christians, of course we need to consider Jesus’s words in light of where we are. Something that I know about the Lord is that He cares about our whole lives, not just our spiritual ones. Romans 12:1 says “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.” Not just your souls, but your bodies, too. And not just your physical being, but your entire selves, and that includes your time, your words, and your online profile.
So then, this is the question of the night: What would Jesus do if He had an Instagram? Or a Snapchat, or whatever? If He had a phone? What would Jesus do if He were me, right now?
That’s one of my favorite questions to consider because sometimes my first instinct is, “well, I don’t know!” but if I take even just a second longer to think, knowing what I know about Jesus, I can usually be pretty confident that I can think of a few options of what to do and know what Jesus would pick. That’s not to say that He would never surprise me, because boy, does he, but I also know that as long as I’m seeking to glorify Him, He will use my efforts for good.
So I’d like to spend some time with a few passages of Scripture tonight, and apply it to our question of what Jesus would do if He had a phone and social media. I’m not trying to make the argument of whether Jesus would have had social media or not; I could easily stand here and say that I’m not sure Jesus would—He’d probably be one of those guys who didn’t have social media yet everybody else would be posting about Him and all the crazy cool things He did. And maybe that’s something to think about; maybe Christians should rethink social media as it is.
What I am saying is, if you choose to engage in social media or technology of any kind, that is part of your life and therefore it is an area in which you should strive to be Christ-like. This is point number one, if you’re keeping track: God is interested in your entire life and making it more Christ-like and that includes your online life. He’s interested in what you see, what you comment, what you post, and what you DM or text to people.
So what does your feed promote to you? What are you consuming? What does your profile say about you? What kind of words are you using online? How are you speaking to other people? Are you reflecting Jesus in this area of your life?
I’m not saying you have to transform all your online profile into one of those Christian accounts that only post highly edited landscapes with Bible verses over it or even over-spiritualize every single thing you post or comment. I’m just asking: does your account point people to Jesus? Would anyone even know you’re a Christian? Is your profile an accurate reflection of your life and is that reflection also a reflection of Jesus? Is your profile a good witness to the transformation you experienced in Christ?
Because if Jesus is King and if Jesus’s Kingdom has come and if we proclaim allegiance to the King, then that should change everything. Your whole life should be oriented toward being what the Creator King designed you to be. And Jesus, the King Himself, came and showed us what that looked like and made it possible. What would Jesus do if He were you, right here, right now? And that includes what you do online.
Point number two: we are called to edify or build up those around us. Ephesians 4:29 says: "Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for [edifying] building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen." I like the word edify. To edify means to instruct or improve (someone) morally or intellectually. The Greek word, oikodomé (OIK-o-doe-MAY), translates literally to “the building of a house,” which is why it’s often translated in our English Bibles to “building up.” It’s like encouragement, but it’s more than that; it includes any activity that results in more Christlikeness, either in oneself or in another believer. Edification can be individual or corporate. Individually, you can edify yourself by participating in the various spiritual disciplines (Bible intake, private prayer, private worship, etc). Generally, however, the concept of edification is applied to the corporate body, like a whole church or community. Mutual edification involves helping one another along the road to Christlikeness.
So not only is God interested in your whole life, but He has also called us to help others to also be more Christlike. Any “talk” that comes from your mouth should be helpful for edifying, for building others up to be more like Chrsit. I believe that includes what we say from behind a screen. What you comment on people’s posts, what you DM to people, what you send people on Snapchat, what you text to people—all of it should be building others up, pointing them to Christ.
Is what you say kind? Is it helpful? Is it true? Or is it “unwholesome,” as Paul calls it?
Point three: The mouth speaks what the heart is full of. Luke 6:45 says: “A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” Like I’ve already said several times, God is interested in transforming your whole life, and that’s because He’s interested in your heart. And God knows that what’s in your heart will be reflected in your life. So are you filling your heart with evil or with good? And how do you know? How do we fill it with the right things?
Luke 11:34-36 says: “Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your whole body also is full of darkness. See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”
This “light” is the gospel, and if we allow it to, it will fill our whole bodies with its light, through what we see—what we watch, what we consume, what we think about, what we dwell on. We should be striving to seek truth and beauty and goodness, so that the gospel of God can take root in our souls and sanctify us, or make us more like Christ, which is what we’ve been talking about this whole time. And verse 36 says that if our whole body is full of light, full of the Gospel, and no part of it dark, then our hearts will be just as full of light. And if our hearts are full of light, of goodness, of beauty, of joy, of truth, then, as it says in Luke 6:45, our mouth will speak what our hearts are full of.
So is your social media or your phone in general helping you to watch, consume, think about, and dwell on that which will fill your heart with light, with Gospel truth? Mine doesn’t. Even when I do my best to train the algorithm to only show me good things, only show me what I’m interested in, it presses the boundaries and darkness slips in, sucking me into the vortex of distraction and destruction. Verse 35, “See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.” But that’s hard in a space that’s literally designed to addict you and gratify your fleshly desires. Matthew Henry, a theologian from the 1600s, is one of my favorite commentators on the Bible, and he said this: “The gospel will come into those souls whose doors and windows are thrown open to receive it; and where it comes it will bring light with it.” So are your eyes open to the light of the Gospel? Or are you blinded by distractions?
Maybe then, social media and other digital spaces are not the best use of our time when it comes to filling our minds and hearts with the light of the Gospel. Ephesians 5:15-16 says: “Look carefully, then, how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.” If we could tally all the minutes spent swiping, clicking, liking, commenting, scrolling, reacting, refreshing, posting, and skimming, we might be alarmed how the minutes add up to hours. I’m sure none of you are strangers to the screen time feature on your phone, showing you how much you are on your phone and even how much time was spent on certain apps. When it first rolled out, I was appalled by the amount of time I spent on my phone. We’re talking upwards of 9 hours a day. It was over half of my waking hours every day.
John Piper once said, “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”
As believers, we must prioritize time in the Word and prayer and in doing what pleases the Lord. We are saved no longer to live for ourselves but for Christ. If we find the draw and distraction of social media too great, or if others find that our social media accounts do more to harm the gospel’s advance than to promote the gospel’s advance, it may be time to rethink our relationship with our accounts. Would taking a break from them be beneficial? Maybe reevaluate what your content says about you and about the Lord. Are you pointing others to Christ or to yourself? Is your profile damaging your witness? Is what you post and comment and DM edifying to those who see and read it? Or are you unkind and self-absorbed, using the false protection of the screen to justify unChristlike thoughts and actions?
You might be thinking, “Well, at this rate, it sounds like social media is only damaging to this whole following Jesus thing.” Maybe. Maybe it would be better to delete our accounts and focus on being good neighbors in the, quote, “real” world, instead of bothering with managing our time and attention and what we post and say online. Hey, maybe! Maybe that’s the step you feel called to take. But I’m not necessarily saying that you should do that.
If you didn’t have social media, something else would come in to fill that space in your life, and that thing might be just as or even more distracting and damaging. These verses I referenced tonight are not about social media; spoiler, the Bible doesn’t have any verses about social media because it did not exist when it was written. So these verses are applicable to all of life, good for thinking through many different spheres in which we are striving to be good neighbors.
Because, God is interested in your whole life, what you do online and offline, publicly and privately. And the goal here is to become more Christlike, to become what God designed us to be. And we should be helpful and edifying to those around us who are reaching toward the same goal, and even those who aren’t. We should always be striving to point to Jesus in all we say and do. And one sure way to make sure we do that is to remember that our lives are an overflow of our hearts, so filling our hearts with the light of the Gospel, with the truth, will sanctify us, make us more like Jesus. And filling our hearts takes time, which is limited to us. So we have to determine how to make the best use of it.
So then, what am I saying when it comes to social media? I’m saying to think about it. Think about whether your relationship with social media is helping you to be a good neighbor or hindering you. And then take a step to be more Christlike.
Is your social media reflecting the transformation you’ve experienced in Jesus? Or is this area of your life one you haven’t considered? Maybe you could delete some posts, unfollow or unfriend some people, edit some captions. Consider the things you post in the future: does this photo or post reflect Jesus and how He has changed me?
Is your social media kind and edifying? Do you allow your screen to let you forget that these are real people you’re engaging with? Maybe you could make a point not to engage with hateful comments, especially if arguments online make you lose your temper. Maybe you can make an effort to watch your language or content or whatever, consider whether it would “edify” or build up someone else and point them to Jesus. Maybe you could make it a rule that any hard conversation or argument you have with a friend has to be done in person. Too much gets lost in translation through the screen.
Is your social media filling your heart with Gospel truth? Or is it filling you with darkness or distracting you from the light? Maybe you could try to train your algorithm. It’s pretty hard, but not totally impossible. Maybe set some time limits on problem apps–Tik Tok or Instagram or Snapchat or… does anyone use Twitter anymore? Maybe use that time you would have been on social media to read your Bible, pray, journal, meet up with a friend or mentor—something to point you back to Jesus.
Is your social media the best use of your time? Is it worth it to you to manage it and bend it to be helpful to you, or should you consider stepping back? Maybe deactivating your whole account for a while? Or even deleting it altogether?
I’m not saying social media or your phone are bad. They’re just tools, totally neutral. They can be used in good ways as well as bad. I think it’s hard, but definitely not impossible, to be mindful all the time of whether it’s helping you or hindering you from being a good neighbor, which Jesus says is part of the way to eternal life.
You don’t have to take all of these steps, obviously. That’d be a lot. Pick one or just a few. Or maybe God is telling you a different step, one I didn’t say. The only thing I’m really asking you to do is consider. What would Jesus do if He were you, right now? And how can you be more like Him?
