Skip to main content

Using social media responsibly

I recently read an interesting article in the UK's Grace Magazine by Pastor Andrew King on christians and social media. The article identifies three dangers of social media to Christians and six opportunities that we should embrace to help us use social media responsiby. 

Three dangers :

1) The danger of being shallow rather wise. The vast amount of information that is generated by social media means that that there's a real danger that we waste our time updating or reading trivia. Most of what we read is not important. 

2) The danger of being selfish rather than serving. Whether it is carefully constructing my comments to attract a person's attention, or regularly checking for their replies, social media runs the risk of making an idol out of our own significance.

3) The danger of being connected rather than communal. Social media has the danger of removing our minds to 'somewhere else' rather than where we are.  With our phones and tablets on, social media escapism can become pervasive. 

Six opportunities :

1) Keep, or establish, a habit of reading good Christian books, both old and new, alongside your use of social media.

2) Be intentional in your use of social media, even in your reading and writing of 'trivial' posts. That is, keep in mind the purpose for which you are using it.

3) Be aware of that the idolatry of self is never far from any of us; think before you post comments fishing for a response, and reread all your comments before you post them remembering all the people who will read them.

4) Think through how social media contact can enable face to face, or at least voice to voice contact. Use social media as a channel to deeper and longer conversations serving others for the sake of Christ. 

5) Be ready to switch off or silence your social media feeds when you are in community; always value the beauty of face-to-face community life. 

6) Use your social media to talk up good times together, to continue conversations started when together, and to arrange to meet again. 

Copyright © Chola Mukanga 2013

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Shame of Worldly Joy

Only a Christian can be joyful and wise at the same time, because all other people either rejoice about things that they should be ashamed of (Philippians 3:19) or things that will disappear. A Christian is not ashamed of his joy, because he is not joyful about something shameful. That is why the Apostle Paul in [2 Corinthians 1:12] defends his joy. He says, I don’t care if everyone knows what makes me happy, because it is the ‘testimony of my conscience.’ He means, let other people can be happy about base pleasures that they are afraid to admit; let other people rejoice in riches, fame, or popularity; they can be happy about whatever they want, but my joy is different. ‘I rejoice because of my conscience.’ A Christian has a happiness that he can stand by and prove. No one else can do that. They will feel embarrassed and guilty if their happiness is found in something that is outside of themselves. They cannot say, ‘this is what makes me happy’. But a Christian has the approval of his ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

Incarnation and Modernity

[The Bible] resituate modernity's prejudices within a wider context from which they were originally wrenched, showing them to be reductive heresies of a more complex biblical reality. So whereas modernity privileges an unchanging a-historicity, in the incarnation God enters history at a particular moment to gather a people to be with him not in a Greck eternity of unchanging timelessness, but in a biblical eternity of never-ending and ever-renewed intimacy and relational richness. Whereas modernity subordinates the particular to the universal, the Bible perfectly marries the universal "image of the invisible God" together with a particular first-century Palestinian Jewish man. Whereas modernity seeks the abstract over the material and finds itself painfully akimbo between the twin idols of materialism and immaterialism, in the same gesture the incarnate Christ validates material reality and prevents his followers from ever worshipping it. Finally, whereas modernity secks ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →

I am what I am by Gloria Gaynor

Beverly Knight closed the opening ceremony of the Paralympics with what has been dubbed the signature tune of the Paralympics. I had no idea Ms Knight is still in the singing business. And clearly going by the raving reviews she will continue to be around. One media source says her performance was so electric that "there wasn’t a dry eye to be seen as she sang the lyrics to the song and people even watching at home felt the passion in her words" . The song was Gloria Gaynor's I am what I am . Clearly not written by Gloria Gaynor but certainly musically owned and popularized by her. It opens triumphantly: I am what I am / I am my own special creation / So come take a look / Give me the hook or the ovation / It's my world that I want to have a little pride in / My world and it's not a place I have to hide in / Life's not worth a damn till you can say I am what I am The words “I am what I am” echo over ten times in the song. A bold declaration that she ...
Post a Comment
KEEP READING →