How to Show Grace on Social Media

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Gavin Ortlund
So we’re going to talk about social media and how we can show kindness and grace on social media. Honestly, the first thing in my heart about this is just a sense of lament, and how frequently, and I’ll include myself, we, as followers of Christ, don’t do that. And just what a big deal that is. And I almost want to pause there and just sort of feel the weight of that for a moment, because it is such a significant thing. Jesus said, by our love, the world will know that we are Christians. And yet, if you look at generally speaking how Christians speak to each other on social media, I think we’ve got a lot to repent of, and seek to change. So I guess we’ll talk about, you know, what should we do about it, but I almost want to start by just acknowledging this is a real problem.

Sam Allberry
Yeah, I have various comments online to repent of over the years. And I think that that’s a danger with all of our words in any context. But there’s something about social media that makes it really easy to be flippant, to be harsh to be unkind. We’re not seeing the other person, we don’t know who they are half the time. It’s just an avatar of some opinion. That’s, that’s annoying us. So we forget there’s a flesh and blood human being the other side of the screen. And we forget what they might be going through where they might be in their own life. So it’s, it’s so easy just to sort of vent our spleen and not really think about the kinds of words we’re saying and how we’re saying them and what that might actually mean about our heart.

Gavin Ortlund
Yeah, it’s been sobering for me just to study about how social media works. And just you get into it a little bit, and you realize, we’re not using social media, it’s using us, it’s making money off of us. And it is designed, in many cases, to kind of play us off of each other and increase outreach, I remember reading an article about how Twitter affects our brains, compared to reading the newspaper. And they’re completely different. You know, Twitter is designed to provoke outrage, or some spike of emotion. And so part of what I have come to feel is that, we just have to realize how limited these mediums are, for what we’re trying to use them for. And I’ve even found myself wanting to complain about social media, on social media, and then checking myself and realizing well, that also doesn’t

Sam Allberry
help the prime outrage of all the outrage.

Gavin Ortlund
So then you say, Okay, well, what, you know, part of it might just be we need to be less ambitious in what we think we can accomplish on social media,

Sam Allberry
I think we certainly need to be more cautious and to to acknowledge what you’ve just said that actually, when we when we go online, when we go on social media, we need to recognize we’re going on to a medium that is, in one sense, trying to bring out the worst in us. And I think part of one of the first things we need to do is just know that we’re not going into a neutral space, we’re going in actually into a sphere of temptation. So we need to sort of, you know, gear up and be and be ready for that to be trying to protect our, our own souls, our own hearts, to go in mindful of the need for self control. I’m struck by in Colossians, four, when when Paul says, Let your conversation be filled with grace, and seasoned with salt. He doesn’t put any conditions on that that’s to be our general posture, especially towards outsiders, especially towards those who might even be critical of us or hostile towards us. We have, as far as I can see, no excuse for not applying that verse to all of our words online. I don’t think that has always defined my words online. But I hope if I had to say to myself now if I can’t say something in the spirit of Colossians, four, I don’t need to be saying it online.

Gavin Ortlund
And just one simple piece of advice I’ve thought about is, if I’m going to say something critical about someone else on social media, which at times I mean, I don’t want to be legalistic and saying you can never do that. But if I’m going to do that, to always ask the question, is this the right medium? Or should I reach out directly to them in a private message or an email or better yet, maybe a phone call or something like that?

Sam Allberry
It’s it’s really hard through social media. It is really hard to effectively correct someone. It’s the medium is so set up against that kind of that kind of impact. It’s not impossible, and as you said, there may be times we feel we ought to try but we need to recognize that the grain of the medium is not designed for that. If that’s not going to be our our natural natural use of that that’s not going to be our main calling to be fixing the world through social media