(32) Social Media

    (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for Social Media, originally shared on July 16, 2020. It was the thirty-second video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Well, we seem to have taken two steps forward and one step back with regard to the effects of the coronavirus on society. Or, is it one step forward and two steps back. I don’t know. Time will tell.

   We are setting records for cases and deaths all over the country. Hospitals are nearing their capacities to care for COVID-19 patients. Morgues are filling up and refrigerated trucks are being brought in. Have you ever wondered what those trucks are hauling when they aren’t storing bodies? Or, maybe their just dedicated to that and are kept in reserve somewhere until their needed. I don’t know.

   What I do know is that at the same time as all this is going on, many people have gotten to the point that they are fed up and have taken the fatalistic attitude that whatever happens, happens, as if they have no part in determining what happens next.

   Will we now take a step forward or a step backward?

   Some School districts have announced that they will not open in the fall, others will open with precautions, and others are not sure. Some restaurants are still open for outside dining, and others have been closed entirely. Churches are closing their indoors worship, and some have moved outdoors. Gyms are closed, again, as are barbershops and beauty parlors.

  We’ve known that human behavior effects the spread of disease for hundreds of years, but we seem to disagree on whether human behavior will effect the spread of this one. Disagree may be too mild a term.

   We have, as we have with so many other issues, become polarized on this one. That is, you are on one side or another, and you are an enemy if you are not on the right side. Beliefs about how to handle a disease have become part of our national culture wars.

   Social media is often blamed for our polarization.

   You can find your tribe there no matter what your beliefs are, and everyone will support you. There is a group for everyone and everything. Your enemies are their enemies, until it seems like they are the only real people in the world. At least, in that world.

   But, lately, it seems to me that every post is its own group. That is, if you state an opinion almost every single response will support you. There will be few, if any at all, responses that don’t say you are absolutely right, “well said”, “don’t let the haters get you down”, “thank God there are still people willing to speak the truth”. Anyone who does disagree will be attacked, bad-mouthed, called all kinds of names, stereotyped, and rejected.

   People find their identities in their group, and the affirmation of the group is all that matters.

   Does it strike anyone else as ironic that, if a post gets widely shared, it’s said to have gone viral? Polarization is everywhere, like a virus.

   However, do you see the problem here? As meetings and groups become more and more the product of polarization, and there is no toleration of dissenters, the groups become smaller and smaller.

   Bari Weiss recently resigned from a prestigious and lucrative job working as a young writer for the Opinion section of the New York Times. Here’s a link to her letter: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

   She sees herself as a centrist, maybe a little left of center, and wrote in one paragraph,  "Twitter is not on the masthead of the New York Times, but Twitter has become its ultimate editor…” (see article)

   Sometimes we see no alternatives. Anyone who has grown up in a small town, or is a member of a small church, works for a small business, or is a part of a small group within a larger groups understands this.

   The laws of Jante were written as part of a novel in 1933 by Danish/Norwegian writer  Aksel Sandemose, but they describe the real-life reality of life in Scandinavian countries even to today that value social conformity. Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s description of these laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante

   Here’s a paragraph from Bari Weiss on the new rules of social conformity:

   “All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.”

   We can’t see alternatives to this because we are blinded our need to put something other than God at the center of our lives, in this case the tribe, and turn to it in time of need.

   God gives us another alternative, another way of being in community that is based on faith, not on fear.

   When I say faith, I don’t mean a blind trust, I mean a living relationship. A living relationship with the living God.

*Acts 2:37-47

The Bible is our collection of 66 books of social media.

   Instead of judgement, we are called to bring a word of redemption.

   Instead of conformity, we are called to community by focusing on our common relationship with the one true living God. We are called to love all people: Trump supporters and Never-Trumpers, Democrats and Republicans, pro-maskers and anti-maskers. Everyone.

   Instead of polarization, we are called to see ourselves universally as sinners, all in need of repentance and a Savior, which God has given us in Jesus Christ, at the cross.

   The Holy Spirit continues to shape and sustain us. It is the living waters that forms and sustains us in daily lives.

   This is the time to let God use our at home to form our interior selves, our living relationship with the living God, like washing the inside of a cup to make the outside clean.    

   This is the time to let God shape us into someone God can equip for service.

   This is the time be the people God has called us to be, socially transformative through the media of God’s presence.