The Church's Capitulation to Social Media Reactivity
In fighting worldly positions, we shouldn't be following worldly practices
There’s no ignoring the reality that public discourse on social media is often spiteful, incendiary, and uncharitable. Tragically, professing Christians are quick to blend in with the crowd; it’s almost as if they imagine social media as a “no man’s land” where Scriptural commands against evil speech don’t apply. Such a practice is inherently grievous, but especially when ungodly and unloving tactics are employed in the name of truth and orthodoxy.
This problem is addressed in the book Reactivity: How the Gospel Transforms Our Actions and Reactions, by Paul Tripp. One of the book’s endorsements comes from blogger Tim Challies, who writes the following:
In this timely book, Paul Tripp calls us to react to the chaos around us in a distinctly Christian way that counters the toxicity that exists deep within our hearts and deep within our culture. If we would heed his call, the world would be blessed, the church would be strengthened, and the Savior would be glorified.
Don’t be fooled by the book’s simple, one-word chapter titles (“Identity,” “Grace,” “Limits,” etc.); they contain a complex evaluation of cultural trends, heart motivations, and gospel solutions. And rather than write a book review, I wanted to share ten quotes that I found especially powerful.
Ten Words of Wisdom
“A love for truth that doesn’t produce a life of love is a love for something else masquerading as a love for truth. Theology that doesn’t produce a life of love is bad theology.” (27)
“Paul puts enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, and envy right up there with sexual immorality and sorcery as unfruitful works of darkness [Gal. 5:19-21]. It should be sobering to us that while we decry the sexual immorality of the surrounding culture, we have permitted into our Christian social media culture many of the things that the Bible names as the ‘works of the flesh.’” (61)
“When the Bible calls you to Christlikeness…it calls you to take up your cross and die to yourself. If your responses are in more of the flipping tables category, I am afraid you have misunderstood the ongoing plot of God’s grace and your part in it.” (62)
“In a consistent gospel worldview, truth and grace are never pulled apart, one is never valued more than the other, and neither is ever abandoned. If you speak truth in ways that are devoid of grace, you have, in fact, done violence to the ‘truth’ that you think you are speaking. If you handle grace in a way that compromises truth, the ‘grace’ that you are offering is not really grace at all.” (63)
“It takes grace to invest the patience necessary to fully understand your opponent. It takes grace to answer him with calm wisdom. It takes grace to respond lovingly to personal attack. It takes grace to work so that your emotions and your biases don’t get in the way. It takes grace to be humbly approachable. It takes grace to speak the truth in love. It takes grace not to compromise Christian community in the name of truth. It takes grace to trust God to do what you are unable to accomplish in the life of another person. It takes grace to hold truth with humility and love. Godly reactions are always infused with grace.” (64)
“I am convinced that many of the theological battles on Twitter are motivated not by a love for theology after all but by self-glory. When ruling your heart, the truths of the word of God will never produce cruel mockery, angry accusations, or a willingness to judge motives or assail another’s character. . . . If tenderness, gentleness, kindness, patience, and love seem like weakness to you, it’s doubtful that the glory of God is shaping how you act, react, and respond.” (87)
“Generosity is not just a financial thing but also a giving and serving spirit in every area of your life, including your communication. Generous people listen well, give you the benefit of the doubt, and endeavor to think the best of you. Generous people aren’t stingy with patience, love, sympathy, understanding, and grace. Generous people don’t use words as weapons.” (89-90)
“Truth not spoken in love ceases to be the truth, because it gets bent, twisted, and distorted by other emotions and agendas.” (115)
“Knowledge is a way of thinking. Wisdom is a way of living. Knowledge meditates on what is true. Wisdom decides what is right to do. . . . Biblical knowledge was never meant to be an end in itself but a means to an end, and that end is wise, godly living. . . . Wisdom understands that you do not know what you know until you can live what you know.” (124)
“In this world [of social media,] people…get reduced to their last comment or post. They are shrunken down to ideas we love or hate. They bear the likeness of a theology, a political position, a product, a worldview, or a tribe, but not the image of God. . . . [S]ocial media has become one big dignity black hole, where we give ourselves permission to treat one another in ways that most of us probably wouldn’t think of doing if we were standing face-to-face with the person.” (148-149)
An Online Excerpt
If you’d like more of a preview of Reactivity, you can read an adapted excerpt on Crossway’s website, entitled 8 Ways We Normalize the Abnormal. The norm for the Christian, says Tripp, should be love, but there are ways in which our everyday responses to others (whether online or in-person) represent what, Scripturally speaking, should be abnormal:
Emotionally driven responses
Anger-driven responses
Disrespectful responses
Self-righteous responses
Vengeful responses
Individualism
The love of controversy
Tribalism
You can also check out a Crossway Podcast in which Tripp explores the dehumanizing habits that social media has normalized.
For Further Edification
While social media reactivity is a modern phenomena, the root problems are not. Thus, there are two other resources I would highly recommend for personal edification, one from the 1970s and one from the 1700s:
The Mark of a Christian is a booklet by Francis Schaeffer, which functions not only as a prescient and scathing indictment of the Christian’s capitulation to internet culture, but also as a biblical antidote.
On Controversy is a letter written by hymnwriter John Newton, exhorting a fellow minister on how a Christian is to rightly provide criticism. Newton’s letter is available for free online. If I could recommend only one piece of writing on the topic, On Controversy would be it. It is overflowing with biblical wisdom, well worth reading, re-reading, re-re-reading, and possibly even memorizing. It is an outstanding piece of Christian commentary on how to react without being reactive.