- Feb 5, 2002
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One day my 7-year-old came home from school asking me what he could do to get “likes.” My kids do not have access to social media, but they are growing up in a world governed by it.
In our attention economy, celebrity is king. We want to be seen, and we want to be admired.
If I’m being honest, this is not just a struggle for my children. In my work as a Christian minister and writer, I am tempted to evaluate my efforts in terms of visibility or popularity with others. In fact, ministers are often trained to think this way, privileging Christian leaders with sleek websites and large followings. Our market-driven mentality makes it lamentably easy to confuse spiritual substance with sales.
In the late modern West, we can’t conceive of life apart from the twin pillars of consumerism and celebrity. Everything is a commodity, including ourselves. Most of the time these dynamics are invisible to us even as we participate in them. We don’t need to be professional influencers or public figures to be lured into the quest for disembodied accolades on social media (as my seven-year-old can attest). We reduce our personal and spiritual lives to the size of a Tweet or a #latergram. Sometimes, we take toxic measures to be seen, creating clickbait or even rage bait to expand our influence at any cost. Sometimes we even do this in the name of Jesus.
Continued below.
www.christianpost.com
In our attention economy, celebrity is king. We want to be seen, and we want to be admired.
If I’m being honest, this is not just a struggle for my children. In my work as a Christian minister and writer, I am tempted to evaluate my efforts in terms of visibility or popularity with others. In fact, ministers are often trained to think this way, privileging Christian leaders with sleek websites and large followings. Our market-driven mentality makes it lamentably easy to confuse spiritual substance with sales.
In the late modern West, we can’t conceive of life apart from the twin pillars of consumerism and celebrity. Everything is a commodity, including ourselves. Most of the time these dynamics are invisible to us even as we participate in them. We don’t need to be professional influencers or public figures to be lured into the quest for disembodied accolades on social media (as my seven-year-old can attest). We reduce our personal and spiritual lives to the size of a Tweet or a #latergram. Sometimes, we take toxic measures to be seen, creating clickbait or even rage bait to expand our influence at any cost. Sometimes we even do this in the name of Jesus.
Continued below.
Forget your social media celebrities. What about the saints?
The saints, in their weirdness and willingness to be unseen, make the most important thing visible
www.christianpost.com
