“You really need to blog.”
I remember someone saying that to me not long ago.
“I do?”, I asked myself.
Almost immediately I excitedly responded back: “Why yes… I do… I DO need to blog.”
But it wasn’t a sense of need, like one needs to eat or breathe or DVR The Walking Dead. This was, “I need to blog, because the world needs another daily portal to my brilliance.”
O.K., so maybe it wasn’t quite that pompous, but there was the unmistakable realization, that I had something to say that people might want or, dare I say it, need to hear, which I couldn’t quite express with the several other platforms I was already using.
Now before you throw virtual stones at me and judge me as narcissistic or egomaniacal, check your own profiles.
Let’s face it, nearly all of us exist in social media to further our agendas, build our brands, and ultimately, make the case for our indispensability.
Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and every other Internet entity like it, serve as perception-management tools; reputation builders, where we can control the info and Photoshop the photos and delete the negative comments. True, sometimes we use these tools to better people’s lives; to promote ministries, services and social causes, but the bottom line, is that we are all in the ME business, and want others to buy our stock.
I minister to teenagers who have grown-up completely in a social media world. As a result, they are simply unable to see what those of us who have existed in both worlds can see: We are different now…. very different.
We have been transformed from a people who once said “I have something I need to say.”, to one who now says, “I need to have something to say.” (You may want to steal this for a FB status).
And so we login over and over, and stare at an empty screen, waiting for that next life-changing proverb, that incoming pithy pearl of wisdom, that Divinely-inspired social observation that will get us our next fix of the new cultural cocaine; approval.
We are a people who are almost unable to function without some continual proof that we are loved, appreciated, respected and needed. This validation come in the form of “likes” and Retweets and hi-tech shout outs from high-profile Friends.
And like all unhealthy addictions, the deeper you get sucked in, the more you need to maintain the high.
As a result, the teenagers in our community, whose profiles I see every day, are littered with ever-more revealing photos by Middle School girls, designed to inspire attention. They are cluttered with young guys’ raunchy rap lyric quotes, hoping to create some hard, gangsta image that belies their gated community realities. They are bloated with every kind of pointed social, political and spiritual commentary, designed to generate hits and shares and sideways smiles.:)
No one, it seems really wants to just be who they are, where they. We are no longer content with the simple joys of eating at a restaurant, watching a baseball game or spending quiet moments with our children. We now need to interrupt those moments, so that we can publicize them to a world, we must assume, is out there frozen and breathless, waiting anxiously for our riveting minutia so that they can go on.
As a Christian, I teach and (propose to believe) that I am known and loved just as I am, just where I am. My faith tells me that God is intimately aware of my needs and deeds, and finds them worth His time. (To use a social media term, God doesn’t just love me, he likes me).
Spiritual maturity comes when my popularity with God is more valuable than with people; when intimacy with Him matters more than notoriety with them.
(P.S. Please share this blog though, as I will be checking my site stats continually:)
