We Are Social Media

For the past several days, I ‘ve been reading and watching the posts on social media about the terrible, heart-wrenching things that have been happening in our world. I’ve seen the red, white and blue photos, I’ve seen the “we’re not going to stand for this” posts, the frightening articles about how our destruction as a nation is already being carried out from within our borders. To be perfectly transparent here, I’ve kind of reached my saturation point of bad news.

Oh, I do not deny that it’s bad. It’s becoming somewhat of an amazement to me that we continue to wake up and have relatively normal days these days, even though we do so with this ominous black could hanging over us.

It appears that speaking out on social media seems to be the way that many people these days are responding to the presence of this unspeakable evil in our world. But I have to ask, what good is it all doing to really change anything? Our cleverly worded posts and “shares” of bad to worse news stories might get lots of likes, and might even stir up some controversy, but what good is social media if it’s just a transmitter of more of the same? Are we really confronting the evil in our world? Or is it just giving us the illusion that we are?

I got to wondering, what is this social media really supposed to be about? Because it really seems to me that it might be a tool for deceiving us into thinking that we’re doing good, when in reality we are just sitting in our recliners thinking about stuff and typing without filters.

Being the “wordie-type” person that I am, I looked up the term “media.” Full disclosure, I actually looked up the term “medium” since that’s the singular form of “media.” Here’s the definition that jumped out at me from dictionary.com:

“An intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished”

Then it occurred to me, as a Christian, I am to be that intervening agency, and that something which I am to be conveying is the love of Jesus Christ. I am the one that is to intervene in this steady decline that this world is on, and convey to everyone who needs to hear the Good News that Jesus has overcome this world.

So, how do we do this? I think that the answer for these days that we are facing can be found in Matthew 25:34-40:

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. ‘

Then the righteous will answer him saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

In this season of Thanksgiving, as we begin to think about what’s going to be on our tables and who is going to be around our tables, let’s think about how we can be the social media that Christ has entrusted us to be. He left us with a job to do, and that job can’t be done with a laptop, tablet, or smart phone. It has to be done face-to-face and hand-in-hand.

Let’s face it, my friends, none of us is going to change any minds with a shocking meme, or with a shared link. But when we reach out to the people in our community who need us with love, compassion, and generosity, extending the grace and mercy of Christ, we will definitely be the media that the Lord uses to change a life. And in the process, the life that is changed, just might be your own.