Do you know why social media are so addictive? Well it’s quite simple: the platforms you use, like Facebook or Instagram, keep track of everything you watch the most. They feed you these topics to hold you on their platform as long as possible, and they can show you as much advertising as possible. To keep you active they will present you with posts that are always a little bit extremer than what you watched before. In doing so you get a very colored and one sided perspective on things. This is one of the main reasons why the hatred between Democrats and Republicans in the US has never been so extreme as in this election. It’s because Social Media have turned so many into haters of the competition. If you’re a Democrat you might feel real hatred for Republicans. You just can’t understand why anybody would be a Republican. It’s very logical from your perspective because all you have been seeing on your Social Media is posts about how evil these Republicans are. The same goes for the Republicans hating the Democrats. The result is that the US is almost falling apart. The rest of the world is watching how this strong nation is struggling and many rogue nations like Iran applaud it.
As Christians there should not be any trace of hatred towards other people in our lives. If this is the case anyway, then now is the time to do something about it! Hating people is what the devil does. We, as followers of Jesus, should be praying for people. We should be loving people; regardless of their opinions. We are called to be the salt of the earth, peacemakers and not angry, yelling, middle finger showing people.
I want to encourage you to be very aware of the polarizing effect of Social Media. There is a lot of fake news out there. You can find many cheap one-liners that discredit people in the spotlight, but often they’re not true at all. The Bible shows us gossip is a sin. Let’s not be a part of this! I pray you may find wisdom in handling everything that is thrown at you by the internet. The bride of Christ should be ready and without blemish when He comes.
Photo by camilo jimenez on Unsplash
