What Would Jesus Post?

“With great power comes great responsibility.”

If the Spiderman movies have done nothing else, they have certainly ingrained that particular phrase into the public consciousness. But Jesus told us something very similar two thousand years ago. In Luke 12:48, he says, “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” In other words, when God gives us the power to make a difference in the lives of others, He expects us to use that power, and to use it well.

And make no mistake: social media gives us great power indeed. As a society, we’ve already become so accustomed to the internet that we rarely stop to appreciate what a revolutionary achievement it is. Never before has virtually every person on the planet had an opportunity to communicate with every other person, let alone in real time, through text, images and video. Book publishing, recorded music, filmmaking, news reporting, banking, and retail are just a few of the industries that have been radically transformed or nearly eliminated by this advance in communications technology. It is only relatively recently that the technology became ubiquitous and mobile enough to insert itself into our daily social lives and interactions with friends. But in a few short years it has already reshaped the way we engage in even those basic activities every bit as much as it has reshaped the way we shop for books or music. That is a level of power that the greatest kings and most successful despots in human history could scarcely have dreamed of wielding.

That is why I believe it’s vitally important for we who identify as Christ-followers to pay attention to social media. If we take seriously Jesus’ command in Matthew 22:37-40 to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind … [and] love your neighbor as yourself,” and we recognize the power that social media can have both on our own hearts and minds and on our relationships with others, then we need to be asking ourselves such questions as, “Am I honoring God with how I use social media?” “What effect are these sites having on me as a person?” and “How could I use this technology to be a better friend to the people in my life?”

I wrote this book because I couldn’t find another one that was asking these questions or suggesting answers from a Biblical viewpoint. The need for these types of conversations is abundant. In my professional life, I spend a lot of time both litigating commercial disputes and writing legal commentary. In both contexts, I constantly encounter new examples of how people misbehave in social media, and allow themselves to say and do things online that they likely would have never done in another context. Likewise, in the leadership role I hold within my church community, I have seen far too much evidence of social media’s corrosive effects on the lives of those around me. Loose words and poorly thought-out actions online have ruined relationships, caused offense, and even soured people on faith altogether.

Yet despite all of this fallout, I’ve also seen much good come out of interactions that took place, in whole or in part, online. People have been drawn back into fellowship by their Facebook friends.

Others have delivered encouragement to people in times of need that they wouldn’t have known about if not for social media. But social media itself is morally neutral. The ability to interact with others online is a tool, nothing more. Whether it affects people for good or ill depends entirely on how we choose to use it.

One thing, however, is certain: social media is not going away. The names and capabilities of the particular services we use will inevitably change, sometimes at a very rapid pace. But the internet itself exists as a means for communication. Its utility has broadened over the years from its original military purpose to commercial and ultimately social communication, in part because we as humans have a fundamental need to interact with other people. It is safe to say, therefore, that our communications technology will never get less social than it already is. Studies show that as much as 98% of Americans between the ages of 18-24 already use at least one social media site. Over a billion people—about a seventh of the world’s population—have Facebook accounts, and the average amount of time that a Facebook user spends on the site is more than 15 hours every month. Like it or not, online communication is destined to be a vital component of how people across the world interact with each other for the foreseeable future.

How, then, should we live in that online space? What does it mean to love God and love others in social media? The following is my attempt to answer those questions from a Biblical perspective. I’ve broken the discussion down into seven basic principles that I believe are important for all Christians to keep in mind as they interact online.