Dear Faith Family,
My note this week is a bit longer than normal and has to do with a couple of sensitive subjects: social media and politics. I say this upfront so that you have an out, but I hope you don’t take it.
What we have been hearing Jesus say to us and about us in the Sermon on the Mount has compelled me to share publicly what I usually reserve for back porch conversations. I certainly claim no expertise on either topic, though I am not unstudied. And while you may or may not agree with the argument or find my concluding suggestions helpful, I do hope you’ll accept the invitation at the end.
Regardless, know I love you, faith family. God bless!
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“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall it be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
(Matthew 5:13)
Salt preserves life, or at least the life-giving properties and potential of that which will not last. What would naturally decay and rot ends us sustaining life when coated in salt. That’s the image of Jesus’ metaphor anyway. So, what is it that we salty people are to be preserving?
The not-forever living in the world are the social constructs of our existence: governing bodies, the nuclear family, the local community, institutions like the church, school, for- and non-profits, civil authorities, as well as economic systems and vocational occupations. Such entities and operations structure and order our daily existence in society, and thus their functionality has a direct impact on our experience of life on earth. How they function either sustain life or quicken its decay.
Now, these constructs (for the most part) are not eternal. The hope we have is a day in which the unmitigated presence of God with us is what provides structure and order to our everyday existence. We look forward to a time when the limited function of these structures is no longer needed. Yet the temporalness of our social systems and organizations does not negate their necessity for God’s kingdom come and willing being done on earth today.
As kingdom citizens, we are meant to preserve and draw out the life-giving peculiarities of these God-created structures. We are kingdom of heaven citizens and children of our heavenly Father, who are simultaneously conscientious constituents of a particular place and peoples and influencers for the good of that particular place and peoples. I doubt many of us would object to this essential, familial responsibility. And yet, the problem of losing our saltiness, our distinct taste as Jesus refers to it, is a pressing issue for each generation of his followers, and we are no exception. Unfortunately, our generation is struggling with staying salty.
While there are multiple contributors to our dilution, one factor stands out in our cultural moment. There is mounting sacred and secular research demonstrating that the tools we use to be conscientious members of society are, in actuality, keeping us from being the people we are meant to be. As the salt of the earth, we preserve the intended usefulness of our social constructs to aid in living out God’s envisioned goodness as humans, and so, the tools we use should have the same humane function. But what if our means of engaging with social constructs operate in opposition to the fullness of our humanity?
In a not-so-grounding breaking, but convincingly constructed documentary titled, “The Social Dilemma,” the founders and contributors of the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) set out to pull back the curtain on the tool of social media (and subsequently, ‘mainstream media’s’ coopted parallels). Most Americans (including us Jesus followers) access and assess our world through some form of social media, i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, news feeds, and other apps. Most of us think of social media as a means. It is merely a resource to connect, find out information, be entertained for a bit, contribute to change, and interact with our community and world. But what if we are wrong? What if social media is not an inert object waiting to be picked up and put to proper use under human influence (i.e., a tool), but instead a shaping and demanding mechanical intelligence?
While never intended to subvert our humanity, this so-called “tool,” by which we access and assess our daily world, takes advantage of our human psychological and social propensities and weaknesses to form (not “inform”) what we think and what we will do. Rather than us using social media to contribute to the good of our social constructs, the collective tool of social media is using us. Or so the documentary argues.
The documentary is worth your time, especially the comments during the credits. While there is certainly bias in this crafted narrative, there is credible research (not to mention experiential evidence) to substantiate their claims of social media's construction, intentions, and impacts on human society and individuals. My point in bringing this up is that our dependent use of social media (out of ignorance or addiction or both), to be informed and influence, actually dilutes our “Christian tang,” as John Stott called it.
Here is what I mean. Our consistent use of social media (and mainstream media) to access and assess politics, systems, structures, institutions, other humans, etc.—keeps us from being who Jesus said we are to be with wisdom, empathy, and mutuality. The mathematical mind of the economic algorithms creates an isolated, bubble world where the information we take in and the actions we are encouraged to take lack right perspective and good intent. Leveraging our psychological propensities and social needs, social media reinforces a mechanically crafted version of “our truth,” or “our rightness,” shielded against any cognitive dissonance that might break through from interaction with a real-world source. We have bubble vision, not because we have chosen to isolate, but because we have chosen a tool to access and assess our daily world that isolates. As Neil Postman so famously said, “the medium has become the metaphor.” Modernizing Postman’s critique of “T.V. culture,” in the 1980s, we can say,
“Social media…encompasses all forms of discourse. No one goes to a movie to find out about government policy or the latest scientific advances. No one buys a record to find out the baseball scores or the weather or the latest murder. No one turns on the radio anymore for soap operas or a presidential address. But everyone goes to a social media feed for all these things and more, which is why social media resonates so powerfully throughout our culture. Social media is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore – and this is the critical point – how social media stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the phone’s screen, your mechanically crafted bubble vision is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen, the same metaphor prevails.”
Therefore, all political discourse (discussions on how to best organize life with others) ultimately circulate within individual bubble visions without ever overlapping. There are points of contact but no withness. Yet, a healthy polis requires overlapping circles, like in a Venn diagram. Distinctions are neither lost nor all-consuming.
In overlap we have to come together, compromise, show empathy and understanding, mourn our part in the divide, admit we don’t know it all, show mercy, learn from differences, die to self, and love an enemy, and actually share life with others. Within isolated bubbles, we do not need the very characteristics of a healthy human society (or a godly one).
And while the CHT crew cannot seem to nail down “the one thing,” behind all this, we can help shed light on that too, as well as a way forward (Matt. 5:14-16). But, only if we stay salty. And so, I leave you with some suggestions on how to do just that…
CURATE | select and organize how you assess our social constructs (i.e., what sources you go to for information), and do the same for the content you access. Don’t let headlines grab you or your feed guide you. Pick and choose, and be willing to work to see as clearly as possible.
CULTIVATE | the characters and qualities inherent in kingdom living. Spend more time doing those things that help you see and interact with the world through the vision of the Beatitudes than through any other tools. Let the medium of Spirit-filled scriptural contemplation in community become our metaphor for social engagement.
CONVERSATE | Have conversations about organizing life together, i.e., politics. Overlap bubbles in face-to-face dialogue with family and friends and people you may or may not think alike, but who have a common identity in Jesus. Because of our current state of affairs, this is a rather daunting suggestion for some. But as a couple of friends told me recently, “If you can’t talk politics with me, we are not a faith family, we are just a social club.” So, let’s talk politics as a faith family…in my backyard @ 3:00 pm on October 11th! Save the date and I'll send out more details soon.