What if Jesus had Facebook?

Social media can feel like a blessing and a curse, can’t it? One week I want to delete all my accounts, the next I’m posting every day and watching the likes roll in.

Right now, social media feels more important and useful than ever. It’s amazing to have this technology and still be able to communicate with each other. It can also be a great distraction from everything going on in the world, as well as a place for creativity and self-expression.

But lots of us struggle with social media addiction. We sit scrolling through our phones, wasting time looking at nothing in particular.

We make it all about us and try on 100 different versions of ourselves to get enough likes, before we eventually lose sight of who we really are. It’s easy to be a different person online to who you are in real life.

Ultimately, we wind up unsatisfied.

#broken

Sound familiar? The Bible says this is what we do with everything, not just social media. We take something good and spoil it by making it all about us.

Genesis tells us how God created the world and everything in it and concluded that ‘it was very good’ Genesis 1:31. It also tells us we were created as relational beings, that we were designed for relationships with one another and with the God who made us: ‘It is not good for the man to be alone,’ says God in Genesis 2:18.

This is why social media is good: it helps fulfil our fundamental human need for relationships and social interaction. We need each other (even if we don’t like to admit it sometimes).

But the Bible says we’ve pushed God out of the picture and made the world revolve around us instead. We think we don’t need a relationship with him, so we try to live life our own way and reject him. This is what the Bible calls sin.

Just as we lose sight of who we are on social media, we forget who we really are. We forget the one who made us in the first place – ‘So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.’ Genesis 1:27.

The consequences are pretty dire. According to the Bible, the punishment we deserve is death: ‘For the wages of sin is death…’ Romans 6:23.

#blessed

Wonderfully, despite our rejection of him, God still wants a relationship with us. He sent his son Jesus to die on the cross in our place and take that punishment. Through his death and resurrection, he’s made it possible for us to have a right relationship with God again, and ‘…the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord’ Romans 6:23.

Trusting in Jesus gives us a secure identity. It’s no longer about how we define ourselves or present ourselves online. In Psalm 139:14 we’re reminded that we’re ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’ in God’s image, fully known and loved by him.

For Christians, Jesus is the perfect example of how we should be living. So, what example might he set on social media?

I think he’d show the same radical love and selflessness that led him to the cross. He wouldn’t think of himself and how many likes he was going to get but would encourage others and keep in touch with them – he came to serve, not to be served (Mark 10:45). He’d make it about God and other people, not just himself. And I reckon he’d have a lot more followers than any of us.

Dan is in his final year studying Liberal Arts. He’s not quite sure what to do next other than try to write a novel. He’s a member of the Emmanuel City Centre church family and can often be found playing or watching tennis and eating things with caramel in (not always at the same time).