Everyone knows the adage, “actions speak louder than words.” But I think in this new digital, social age, the saying should be, “social media speaks louder than words.”
Social media has become a primary form of communication across all generations. In some cases, people only know each other through social media — they’ve never met in real life and likely never will.
With social media usage growing rapidly shouldn’t we view it as a missions field? Shouldn’t we be purposeful with the content we are letting fill up our feed?
If someone comes to your profile and your bio says you’re a Christian, wouldn’t you want your feed to reflect that? What kind of witness is it to unbelievers that someone can say they are Christian, but chose to type out and share hateful things?
I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to have an opinion on issues and aren’t allowed to express that opinion — you absolutely are. But what I am saying is that we should express those opinions through the fruit of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22b–23a).
In John 2, we see Jesus display righteous anger. When He found merchants in the temple, He drove them out, dumped out their coins and overturned their tables (vv. 13–17).
What does this teach us? It teaches us that anger isn’t sinful. It isn’t sinful to be passionate about concerns. What is sinful is displaying that anger in an ungodly way.
And before you call your Facebook, Instagram or Twitter rants “righteous anger,” consider what righteous anger is.
Righteous anger is anger toward a sin — not a sinner; righteous anger is concerned about God’s kingdom, God’s concerns and His glory, not affronts to someone’s personal kingdom or concerns; and, like I mentioned above, righteous anger is displayed in a Christlike way.
So I implore you to consider these things before you post, share or retweet anything else. Ask yourself these things:
- “How does what I’m sharing glorify God?
- “Does my social media feed point others to Christ?”
The missions field is all around us: in our neighborhoods, at school, work or the grocery store and, yes, even on social media. If you want to rant and rave in private … well, I don’t think that’s great either, but that’s not the point of this post. The point is, everything we do outwardly, whether actions, words or social media posts, either points unbelievers to Christ or doesn’t. And as Christians, we are all called to be missionaries wherever God has placed us and to continually point others to Christ.
Would you be proud to show our holy God what’s on your profile?
Spoiler: He’s already seen it.
“Let all that you do be done in love” (1 Cor. 16:14).
