I think that Pastor Robby’s message Sunday on Perspective hit the mark for a lot of us yesterday. (If you missed it, you can watch the service HERE.) It is all too easy to miss the opportunities God has placed right in front of us because we get locked into our current circumstances and our feelings, and we fail to open our eyes to see that our current situation might be just where God wants us to be.
Social media doesn’t necessarily help us to see God’s perspective either. Sure, social media is a great way to connect with old friends, to find interesting recipes, and watch cute cat videos. At the same time, it can really distort our perspective:
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- Seeing someone bragging about their promotion and raise can distort the perspective of the person in a job they don’t like and for which they have not received a raise in a long time.
- Posts from friends celebrating their kids’ accomplishments can be hard for those whose kids are really struggling.
- Those great vacation pictures from your friend’s exotic vacation can be a hard reminder that you haven’t had a vacation in a while–and it doesn’t look like there will be a vacation this year either.
Skewed perspectives manipulated by social media get our eyes off what God is doing, and can easily mire us in sins like jealousy, lust, and covetousness, just to name a few.
At the same time, social media also affects our priorities. A 2024 study found that internet users worldwide average 143 minutes daily viewing social media. (Americans are slightly below average in this category, coming in at only 136 minutes per day.) To put that in context, a Lifeway Research study found that only about a third of Americans who attend a Protestant church read their Bible daily, and another study found that the average time those believers spent in Bible study was around 15 minutes. Is it any wonder we have trouble seeing our situations from God’s perspective?
Skewed perspectives manipulated by social media get our eyes off what God is doing.
I’m preaching to myself here too. It is so much easier to sit and watch reel after reel than it is to read the Bible, or even to spend quality time with loved ones.
So, what can we do? I know some people who have given up social media altogether, and some who have taken extended breaks. If that sounds too extreme, try what I did: it is pretty easy to set controls on your phone that will limit the amount of time you spend on social media. Here are links to instructions for Android users and for iPhone users.
Maybe a little less time spent on social media might reduce the background noise just enough that we will be able to hear what God is saying to us and would help us gain his perspective for our situations.
–Stephen Case