Drowning in Pools of Narcissism

Social Media Influencers and the Greedy Peddling of Culture

It’s wild to see old sentences scribbled on my journal pages from years ago be the tagline of some new ministry; thoughts that shaped me, informed me, and healed me become the hook for a new influential platform.

And trust me, I get it, ideas don’t come easy. Thoughts take time.

Those sentences I scribbled came to me, were revealed to me, as I exited a Valley of Shadow, one that loomed over me for close to a decade. And as many of you know, given that rants I’ve had over on @swordandpencil, my experience isn’t solitary.

There are tons who, like me, have had some kind of “intellectual property” swiped, gathered, and then commoditized by some new social media up and comer. The idea gets a sexy new make over, glammed up in all kinds of relevance and best practices, and it becomes another product. One sold as a cure-all to your spiritual problems.

And while the rants over at my IG page have focused on discernment and the effort to push against the immediate / masturbatory machine of social media by building something with substance, something that lasts; this post is going to go a bit deeper into the ethos of those who take for their own good. Not a psychologizing, but an experienced explanation.

Love and the Need to Be Seen

Our time is an addicted one.

We salivate, like Pavlov’s Dog, with every ringing bell of our cell phones. We sing and dance for so many chimes and beeps, notifications that prove we deserve love. These little devices we carry with us, they are, by my estimation, more prison than anything else, but they capture our minds, our attention, not our bodies.

And that attention, that desire to be seen, shapes us - forms us. It becomes a lens by which we interpret self and situation, a framework for all our living. We relate to life through a meme, we capture moments with video and photos, we read and study in order to share. And all of that might seem innocent enough, just a byproduct of a the technological revolution; but I promise you it isn’t.

I think social media is an inversion of what humanity was intended to be; it is primarily self-focused, turning the eyes inward, and it is self-aggrandizing, the elevation of one person, namely “me”, above everyone else. Our created intent is to be other focused - our eyes reveal this to us. We cannot see our own faces, we cannot see the back of our heads; we look forward, out towards the rest of the world. We need trusted community in order to understand self. Our created intent was also self-giving - the sacrifice of self, in love, for the sake of the other. Which is an elevation of neighbour.

But this inversion, this twisting of intent, cuts right through us, the same way our first parents were cut through by the temptation of the Serpent. Promises of fulfillment and power, of pride, of eyes on us, of being worshipped - because what else could it mean to be their own gods?

We were made for Love - the Love of God and Love of Neighbour - and our modern time, in ways darker than any time previous, has turned that upside down. We traded Love for attention, we crush neighbour under foot as means to climbing the ladder to heaven, where we can, finally, be on top.

That Guy On Steroids Who Tells You Alcohol is Bad

I was doomscrolling the other day ( yeah, the plank and spec thing, I know ) - and I saw some super tanned behemoth advertising his new zero alcohol beer. His traps and shoulders and arms were the size of a small family, and as he held the can of beer in his enormous mits, he said that alcohol is brutal on our bodies - poisoning our livers, and it wreaks havoc on ability to interact socially, a kind of slippery slope to addiction and giving up of self.

The irony, of course, is that the steroids he’s on do way more damage to his liver than a few beers a week. But that’s the grift, the swindle; he’s guilty of the very thing he is pretending to fix. He doesn’t care about your liver, he doesn’t care about his liver - and he can grandstand all he wants at those who call him out, haters gonna hate, or it’s easier to tear down than it is to build, or whatever other kind of banality that keeps the product moving off the proverbial shelves.

So what does the zero alcohol beer pusher care about?

Money.

Status.

Clout.

Maybe all the above?

I don’t know, because I’m not psychologizing - but that beef cake, juiced up on some cocktail of tren and clen and HGH was the perfect analogy for what this post is about.

Pietistic Parasites

We’re sort of lucky, those of us who follow Jesus - we have a book and a history that outlines virtue and what it means to be Good. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s the kind of stuff that gets to our cores, divides bone and marrow - leaves no part hidden. Jesus was a master at this - moving beyond every kind of superficiality into the kind of virtue He desires - one that starts with our motives.

Jesus says, yeah, murder is bad - but you know what’s just as evil? Unfounded and uncontrolled anger.

Jesus says, you’re right, adultery is evil - but you know what is just as corrupting? Lust.

And, when He turns His gaze to the Pharisees, the religious leaders, He says, you guys are whitewashed tombs - all put together on the outside, even praying in the streets for everyone to see, but inside? Dead. Man’s. Bones.

And there we have it.

The ones who take these ideas, these concepts, the ones who transform them into some product to be sold, are just like our beefy friend, the one pushing zero alcohol beer with his sausage fingers.

You see, Christianity is an all or nothing game, and we don’t have the luxury of turning blind eyes to our sin in the name of helping everyone else. We don’t get to steal, pretty sure there’s a commandment about this, while saying to ourselves:

I’m building God’s Kingdom.

Nuh-uh.

God’s Kingdom isn’t built upon theft and skullduggery; on shady dealings and greed. So we’re stuck with a difficult question, again.

What does the Pietistic Parasite care about?

Kingdom?

Virtue?

Holiness?

Generosity?

Doesn’t seem like it.

It seems strangely reminiscent of the inversion Adam and Eve fell for. The pride, the self-aggrandizement, the need to be seen and to dominate. Every thing is just means to an end, and that end seems to be self.

Drowning To Death

Spoiler alert: Narcissus, the one from Greek Mythology, drowned to death while staring at himself ( depending on which version you read, i guess ).

And there’s a lot in that.

Especially for us, in this social age, the ones where we carry the same reflective pools that killed Narc of old around with us in our pockets and purses every day.

Self-infatuation kills us.

The need to be seen, especially by self, destroys.

Orienting our lives around clout and prestige is a poison.

And the question arises:

How much virtue, holiness, are we willing to trade in to get what we want?

And what happens to us?

To our relationships?

To what we create?

It is all corrupted - by the same ringing bells and dinging chimes that promise to give us Love. Nothing can be the same, nothing can be what it was created to be; it’s just a way of achieving more views, more respect, more success.

Go down this road too long, and there’s no coming back. It’ll drown you. Take you in completely.

Slowness, Generosity, and Ways to be Redeemed

The only way out of this ubiquitous cultural disease is active choosing - choosing against the need to be seen, the need to be first, the need to be preeminent, the need to be someone and embrace slowness. Embrace the real and human pace of life. The one where people matter, the one where created intention is prioritized, the one that depends on generous community.

Sure, you might not get famous, you might not have as many products to push - and you might not be rolling around in an ever expanding profit pool.

But, you might also not be a whitewshed tomb.

So there’s that.