Why I left ‘Social Media’ Christianity

Social media is a powerful tool for sharing our lives with others, but I fear it’s become more toxic than helpful in this age of hyper-identity politics and influencer ethics. So I have chosen to leave. Ideological divisiveness, self-interest and echo chambers define much of the space and narrative, where scapegoating is convenient, ideological accusations are rampant and “strong-men” are made into rockstar gods of fame and fortune. It’s a place where narcissists thrive and the reviled hide. And it’s completely contrary to the theology of the cross.

Health care professionals are raising the alarm about social media’s negative impact on mental health, but I haven’t heard much discussion among Christians on whether social media might be negatively impacting our spiritual health. What’s the effect on our hearts, after months and years of following online rockstars? “Celebrity, in the final analysis, is a worldly form of power and evaluation of human worth. It is not a spiritually neutral tool that can be picked up and put down, even for godly projects,” Katelyn Beaty writes in Celebrities for Jesus: How Personas, Platforms, and Profits Are Hurting the Church. “The moment celebrity is adopted and adapted for otherwise noble purposes – sharing the good news and inviting others into rich kingdom life – it changes the project. And it changes us.”

All the trappings of social media are something other than the incarnational reality of Christ, which is the lens from which Christians are called to see and operate in the world. “Christ on the cross is the full expression of God’s reality in and for the world,” H. Gaylon Barker says of German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s theology. “There the reality of God intersects with the reality of the world.” The theology of the cross, according to theologian Larry Rasmussen, “means, among other things, that the community of the cross is the source of unrelenting critique, a questioner of ideology, a destroyer of idols.”

Despised and rejected

Though he died nearly 80 years ago, Bonhoeffer addressed the ethics of power, success and reality, so what he has to say bears greatly on how we approach our lives online. Woven within the fabric of social media is a cheap grace that fails to recognize the all-embracing love of God or to acknowledge the frailty and vulnerability of human beings. But central to the gospel story is a God who loves the unlovable and accepts the unacceptable. A friend of Jesus is one who has suffered like him and kept his faith in the Father of goodness, who rewards those who truly love him no matter what the cost. “The Church does not need brilliant personalities,” proclaimed Bonhoeffer in Life Together, “but faithful servants of Jesus.”

Ironically, I have been scapegoated by mimetic theologians, bullied by Laurentian elites, rejected by Manitoba Mennonites and written off by post-evangelical heavyweights. But Jesus extends a friendship richer and deeper than likes, followers and posturing. Incarnational ethics resists hero worship, Christian nationalism, echo chambers, and the “crucify him!” culture of cancellation.

Jesus resists the dehumanizing impact of social media optics on real human beings. Incarnational ethics transcends and subverts algorithms and self-interested influence, instead opting for the humanizing love of Jesus for every human being, especially the broken, hurting, insignificant and unpopular – those who “fail” to manifest social media success.

The love of God in Jesus is brimming with deep substance, because it cost God’s Son to love real human beings. The Church is likewise called to exist for others, not over others, a posture that we ignore at our peril, as Bonhoeffer would say. Christians who care more about success and “looking good” disregard the very substance of God in Christ, the suffering One. It’s a dangerous mix of fallacies that can lead to the disintegration of Christian community and cause lasting damage to the Church.

The spiritual discipline of obscurity

Many years ago, I was hired by a consulting firm to travel to Colorado Springs to study a cluster of Christian non-profit headquarters. This is the home of Ted Haggard, the original celebrity pastor and former president of the National Association of Evangelicals who fell from grace, foreshadowing a domino effect felt right up to recent fallen heroes like Jean Vanier and Bruxy Cavey. In 2006, Haggard was accused of multiple indiscretions, including an ongoing relationship with a male escort, use of “crystal meth” and an inappropriate relationship with a male congregant at New Life Church, the megachurch he founded and pastored before resigning after the allegations became public. Revelations of abuse of power in the church puncture the empires of social media Christianity. When we build our brand around optics, we are not far from being illusionists. Illusion can lead to delusion, and delusion to disrepair and the disintegration of incarnational ethics. No church should lose a pastor to emotional burnout and moral injury, but pastors are quitting in record numbers. What does all of this say about the substance of Christian communities in the age of optics?

“God became human so that human beings could become truly human,” stated Bonhoeffer in his magnum opus, Ethics (emphasis added). Here’s how Katelyn Beaty says it: “In a time when large swaths of the American church have merely mimicked worldly concepts of power, going for bigger, louder, and glitzier, we have to return to the small, the quiet, the uncool, and the ordinary. Obscurity may very well be the spiritual discipline the American church needs to practice the most in the coming century.”

Leaving social media Christianity and churches built on individualism, cheap ethics and cultural meritocracy has helped me rediscover the humanizing love of Jesus. And so we pray with Dietrich: Lord Jesus, teach us how to be human in this age of optics. And give us the courage to act in resistance when the reality of the world contradicts your reality of all-embracing love and costly incarnation. Amen.