Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You. Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m.. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online at Madison Church.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our sermons podcast, madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
Welcome to class tonight. Hope everybody's doing well. If you are joining us tonight for the very first time, welcome to Analog Faith in Digital Babylon. We've been talking about the intersection of faith and technology and how technology impacts and forms and shapes our faith spiritually. If you wouldn't mind, just for a minute, go ahead and scan that QR code. If you've got anything that we've talked about that you'd like to talk about more that you feel like we didn't discuss to its entirety, or if you have any other questions that you would like for this class in this realm of topic to discuss. Excuse me. I would certainly appreciate your feedback on that. Hey.
Bye.
No eye contact, nothing. Okay, move on just a little bit. Thanks. I appreciate that. A tasteful amount whatever a tasteful amount of eye contact is, the algorithm will let you know.
Last two weeks, we've talked a lot about sexuality, and tonight we're not going to use any of those words. You're welcome. Tonight we're going to move on in our discussion and we're going to talk a little bit about social media. Again, we talked about this a few weeks ago, specifically what it means to be created in the image of God and how social media directly impacts our identity, especially for young people. But tonight we're going to move in a little bit different direction. And I'll begin with asking a question of what we say online goes away when?
Eventually? Never.
All right, show of hands for eventually what we say online goes away eventually. Say it with confidence. Vote. Yeah. You got one, two. I think the person who actually said it out loud does not have their hand up. That's interesting.
All right. If you think never, raise your hand.
All right. Most people say never. Well, survey says it goes away until it can be used against us, right? Then it comes back up. And I'm staring at 2024 election year in the face right now because we get it in high doses when it comes to election season, right? Folks that are running for public office, something they said in 7th grade that was off color, offhanded or in some way could be leveraged negatively against them. Someone's going to find it and then publish it and use it against them. What is said online has a false sense of security. Sometimes when we think it just fades off in the distance and all of a sudden you get your memories from 14 years ago, from when you were in college or high school that pop up. You're like, oh, I informed people on what I had for dinner on a Tuesday night at 06:30 P.m. By myself. Super cool. And then even worse stuff, or even better stuff. All the in between. So tonight we're going to start with the most logical place paw Patrol Face Tatoos.
Paw patrol face. Tatoos are pretty funny.
This is a picture of Sarah Michelle Geller and Freddie Prince, Jr. The heartthrob couple of the late 90s, early two thousand s. And they actually were in several movies together, and then also in real life got married and had children.
Sarah Michelle Geller was quoted as explaining to, talking about social media to her child, her young children, and explaining to them that you as a ten or a 13 year old having social media is just not a good idea. It would be like me letting you as a five year old get a Paw Patrol Face Tatoo, which at five years old, there's nothing wrong with Paw Patrol anywhere. Can be on your clothes, on your backpack, apparently also on your face. However, when you're 1011, 1213 year old years old, it just doesn't age too well. How many politicians, how many celebrities, how many people have we seen make a post tweet something, or now X, it just doesn't work. I'm sticking with tweet. They post something online either because they were drunk or because they were just idle, because they just thought it was going to be a commentary on a game that nobody knew of that then it came back and it haunted them and it caused them to either step down or to lose tremendous significance or influence or occupation. We could probably all have a flood of people that's happened to, and maybe even folks that are closer to you than just celebrities or politicians. I thought Sarah Michelle, her comment was pretty perfect. A Paw Patrol Face Tatoo is probably a bad idea in most every context, but to a child, it's a really good way to explain, or to an adolescent to explain the idea bless you of permanency, or really the lack thereof. Children in particular don't understand consequence. Science has told us, and we've talked about the brain a lot in this class, that our prefrontal cortex. The part of our brain that is responsible for decision making, that is responsible for really, maturity. It doesn't fully develop until well into our mid twenty s. And so when we give a high powered nuclear engine to a twelve year old or a 14 year old or a five year old, hopefully not, then the ability to discern what is good, healthy, right, wrong is just not there. They don't have the capacity for it just yet. They don't have the capacity to weigh what the potential consequence could be. And really and truly, even as adults, we don't fully know the consequence. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can't put it back in there, right? That's an illustration. We give our kids a lot of times to teach them that our words matter. And what you say you can't take back. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me. Apparently it's just a lie because the data says otherwise. Words carry a lot of weight and a lot of pain and a lot of hurt. They do a lot of damage and we willed them in various ways. We use our words to bless and to speak the name of God. We use our words to defame people and to hurt people and to weaponize our vocabulary. In many ways, james talks about that to a great extent. Almost 15% of kids ages nine to twelve we couldn't have class without stats. Right? Age nine to twelve have seen cyberbullying. While nearly half of teens are affected by it. High school and middle school teachers also report that cyberbullying happens frequently. At least one in five classrooms have significant cases of cyberbullying. This comes from common sense media surveys and questionnaires that they've done over the last few years. I have a reference to a lady that her child played softball with our daughter last year. At the time, she was a vice principal of one of our local middle schools. And she said the rise of cyberbullying is just exponential and it hasn't slowed down. They're actively trying to get tablets out of the middle school where she was because it continues to cultivate this culture that they don't want as educators, that they can't overcome as people who are responsible for children for 7 hours out of the day. But the things that happen there at school, from bell to bell, don't linger anymore. They don't linger in those hallways anymore. They linger at home, they linger everywhere they go. Mark Graham did a lesson, I don't know, probably 13 years ago now, on joint retreat, where he talked about an example of a young lady who was at a school and texted a picture of her body to a boyfriend who then circulated it amongst their school. And the bullying became so catastrophic that she transferred out of the district. Didn't just transfer schools, they moved to a new community. And she was at soccer tryouts that following year at a completely new location, new community, and she noticed a group of girls over in the distance laughing at her. And she approached them and found out they were looking at the picture that had been circulated and course memified a million times over by that time. And shortly thereafter took her own life, and she was, I think, 1516 years old. That's not an uncommon story. If you do a quick google search, you'll get a lot of headlines like that, because the overwhelming nature and weight of words are being just given an onslaught to our young people in particular at an age when they're ill equipped to deal with it and unfairly exposed to it. At a time when our bodies are awkward and our voices and faces and everything is changing. You add to that now, you feel like the entire world that truly the entire world that we are connected to knows it not just the world that you exist in. And that's the challenge of this digital and analog living. We now have a persona in the digital space that sometimes is separate from the persona and the actual life we're living in this analog, real, tangible world.
And so for christians, it's very important for us to identify what are the core values of scripture. What does scripture describe as a faithful, resilient person, a follower of Jesus online?
We have to identify that and articulate that.
So with the rise of social media in particular, this actually happened even before we had social platforms like facebook or meta, twitter, instagram. I was talking to a friend this week, actually, and he made the comment that email was actually where for him, it started to kind of started to cultivate in his world. He said there were years ago when we first started using email where I would send or type out a scathing response to someone based on an interaction we had. And I'd save that to drafts, and I'd let it sit overnight, and I'd come back to it the next day and then hit send and feel very whether or not I still wanted to hit send or not.
Oftentimes that enter or that post now button, it's glowing, right? And so we feel like we got to get it out.
What is it about having an online persona that is different than in person? What is the online anonymity? Easy for you to say. What is the difference in online anonymity and living and existing in our physical workplace or families or community?
[00:10:27] Speaker B: Something of an alter ego.
[00:10:29] Speaker A: What's that like? An alter ego? Yeah.
It's not a really well worded question, was it? What makes us act differently online with anonymity than in person? Jeff easy to avoid the consequences of your actions.
Okay. How is accountability online different from accountability in person? Typically, there's no what?
No facial contact. Why is that important? Why is that significant?
[00:11:12] Speaker B: Email won't really see that picture, how you're affecting them, how they're interpreting what you're saying.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Yeah, there's no body language when it comes. Emojis are often pretty great gifts. Even better because there's an office quote for everything. But when it comes to communicating with a person, how important is facial expressions and body language? It's critical it's critical when it comes to reading someone's body language in person, you know, how they're accepting everything you're saying. Right now, a lot of you are puzzled by what I'm actually trying to articulate because I see a lot of when you see that, how does that change how you communicate? Yes, sir.
[00:11:52] Speaker C: There's no face to face.
There's no emotional feedback from the person, good or bad, but especially anything that put a break on you. In normal human communication, you wouldn't sit there and kick somebody while they're down, make somebody cry right in front of you. That natural emotion.
[00:12:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So for most people, there's a visceral reaction to someone's pain or discomfort or even joy. And when you take away that physical interaction, then you take away their compassion. I thought was it a great way to say that you were going to say something?
[00:12:37] Speaker C: For me, it's kind of the same way spending digital money over a debit card or credit card. All the research shows that if you actually spend cash, it hurts more and it's harder for you to use that opposed to swiping a debit or credit card. And it's kind of the same as communicating in person digitally, whereas you just have that tangible thing you can access in cash form or in emotion, face to face, all that. Whereas in the digital side of it, there's absolutely nothing that ties our brains and bodies to whatever credit card or.
[00:13:16] Speaker A: That'S a great illustration. Illustration for those online that weren't able to hear talked about the digital and in person, it's kind of like cash and debit cards that's a great illustrator, Dave Ramsey would be aiming you all day long.
[00:13:29] Speaker C: It's a lot harder to empathize with somebody when you're having a conversation with them. If you're not seeing their body language and their facial expression. If you're not face to face with them, then it's harder to empathize with them. And so if you're online, it's a lot easier to not care about what their feelings are. Just ignore that because you have that anonymity and you're not seeing like you said, you're not seeing their reaction to what you're saying. And so you don't have that same empathy for the other person.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Yeah. That's great. Yes, ma'am.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: I also feel like there's a lack of relationship. Like, I'm friends with a lot of people on Facebook that maybe I was high school with them or I worked with them at one point or another, but there's no living relationship there.
And I feel like that makes a big difference, too.
Those people who you're going to have conversations with where you might be led to say something like that, you might say on social media, there's a relationship there, so you're going to handle it with maybe a little more tenderness or more compassion as opposed to being cold and whomever you want to be.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Yeah. So relationship, empathy, compassion, when there's more separation between us and the next person. There's four or five Kevin Bacons between us. Then it's easier to lose the humanity side of it. And what I'm hearing is we're saying that when it comes to the digital space, it's very easy to dehumanize people.
The digital space is great for information exchange, so you can even see a post that there's something difficult going on in their life. But you can't fully read the depth of the difficulty. Sometimes just over text, right? Because text looks the same. Sometimes it's bold, sometimes it's italicized but it's just a font, it's not an actual person. There that's articulating that. So there is a little bit of a loss in that communication, I think sometimes online anonymity gives us this false sense of freedom by obscuring the perception of consequences. What I say is just going to go out into the universe or to the metaverse or to whatever verse and it's just out there and it doesn't actually hurt anybody. We talked about that the last couple of weeks when it comes to pornography that we feel like it's a victimless crime, right? Because I'm not actively hurting someone. Well, there's no such thing as a victimless crime, and there's no such thing as victimless sin either. And so freedom in Christ will never lead us to harm someone else. But our words, we feel we have the freedom to say whatever we want without consequence and without actually giving deeper thought to them, can absolutely hurt people. And so the freedom in Christ is not used to leverage to hurt anybody. That's not what the Bible teaches in any capacity. Turn with me to Matthew chapter twelve.
Matthew twelve, verses 33 through 37, either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad. For the tree is known by its fruit. You brutal vipers, how can you speak good when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. We've referenced that saying of Jesus so many times in this class so far. The good person, this is verse 35 of Matthew twelve. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of Judgment, people will give account for every careless word they speak. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned. Have you ever had a post or a status update pop up in your history and it startle you, disappoint you?
Because what I'm reading here is Jesus talking to this group of pharisees is everything you say. There's going to be an accountant for that. You will be held accountable for all of those things. So in a very real way, Jesus is saying that the algorithms are right, they're going to bring it back up. We live in this world, we're going to get into some of the details of algorithms here in just a little bit. But we live in the world of discovery algorithms. They're no longer giving us content to explore based off of chronological posting and the people that are in our lives. It's based on all kinds of things, which means that what was posted three years ago can still become viral today because it's in this explorer algorithm based data set. It just pops up.
So what's in the past is no longer always in the past. At some point, it's going to be churned up into the present again and again and again.
Jesus said, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.
Our words are so very important, and they always have been.
Our words are how we preach the gospel.
How shall they hear without a preacher, right? Unless they are unless they are taught.
Scripture is inspired by God. God spoke the world into existence. Words have always had a lot of meaning and a lot of weight. As humanity, we weaponize it, and so then we try to minimize some words over others. But that's never been reality. That's never been the case. Ephesians, chapter five, starting in verse four. Let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking which are out of place, but instead, let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure or who is covetous, that is an idolater, has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Let no one deceive you with empty words.
Therefore do not become partners with them. For at one time you were in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them, for it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. You see, this idea of anonymity that is leveraged by social platforms in particular is meant to entice people into more freedom. And that's usually the context with which it's leveraged, is that this platform is anonymous. It allows you to say what you want to say, and then you can find people in your geographic location that agree with you. That sounds like we're cultivating our own echo chambers, right? In a lot of ways, the idea of community is very biblical, but it's used in a lot of different ways, a lot of different ways by humans.
We talk about creating a community. Sometimes that only speaks the words that we speak. Well, that's not realistic either, not reality. Social media then becomes the algorithm is filtered through it's based on what it thinks that you will engage with the most.
And so it builds this chamber not just for learning, but for echoing and for you to be satisfied with what you're given, what you're hearing, so that you crave more of just that, not necessarily diversify your portfolio. But then when we go to work and all we've been hearing is the same thing over and over again, and someone else has been on their platform that gives their narrative over and over again, we have this clash thinking like, how can you be so obtuse? To quote Shawshank Redemption, how can you be so obtuse in your understanding? Don't you see all of these things that are saying the same thing I'm saying?
Then you go and look at their feed and it's saying the same thing they're saying. And so we think this is what everybody's saying. And then it just gets louder and louder and louder. Social allows everyone to amplify their voice. And when it's leveraged for good, the church has a presence on YouTube, on Facebook, on Instagram. We're trying to leverage the amplification process for the betterment of the kingdom and of the gospel. So we have a presence there. We feel like we can justify that.
But when it's weaponized and when it's used in a way that's malicious and evil and broken and carnally, I think Paul would say, well, then there's destruction and there's bitterness and there's hurt and there's pain.
And then that's what gets cycled over and over again. And then our analog interactions become fed and led by these digital manipulations that are actually happening in our minds and in our hearts, take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible. For anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Look carefully, then how you walk, not as unwise, but as wise, making the best use of the time because the days are evil. Now look at John, chapter ten.
John Ten is one of my favorite, favorite chapters of scripture, partly because I had a professor in college that he's really good at teaching the Bible. And John Ten is where we spent a lot of time in one of our classes, so it had a big impact. But listen to what Jesus said, how he describes his role. Truly, truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in by another way, that man is a thief and a robber. Now in verse two. But he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the gatekeeper opens, the sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name, and he leads them out when he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow, but they will flee from him, for they do not know the voice of strangers. This figure speech Jesus used with them, but they did not understand what he was saying. So verse seven. So Jesus again said to them, truly, truly I say to you, I am the door to the sheep. Door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
He goes and says it again in verse 14 that I am the Good Shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me, just as the fathers know me knows me, and I know the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep.
The sheep of Christ know his voice, and Jesus knows all of his sheep by name.
When it comes to our relationship with Christ, it's all about being known by Him. Those who know the Son know the Father. If you've seen me, then you've seen the Father. If you want to know the Father, no one comes to the Father except through me.
Anonymity has no part in a relationship with Christ, but I think it's a man made invention that we've tried to take and twist and turn and we've used it to become God like in a lot of ways.
But I don't think that Anonymity describes the relationship that Christ has to his followers and vice versa. Nor does it describe the relationship of Christ's followers to each other, because we are one in whom?
Christ.
Exactly. If we're one in Christ, then we're not individual, spiritually speaking.
We don't have to be anonymous.
A lot of times we'll be anonymous here at the church building because we feel like there's reproach that comes from each other.
Remember in James, chapter one, where James writes that if you don't have the wisdom from above to see value in trials or tribulations, then ask God for that wisdom and he will give it in abundance. And without what reproach?
Reproach comes into the picture usually with us, not so much with God.
God's the one. Jesus is the Good Shepherd. He's going out and finding the one sheep and he's pulling them out of the river, pulling them out of the creek. He's pulling him out of whatever hole he got his head stuck in. If you remember, Brandon, a few months ago, had a sermon, and at the beginning he had a picture of a sheep that got wedged down in this little ravine, and the guy came and got it out and jumps up or down and right back down. Like that's us. Right. The knucklehead that just keeps on getting stuck. And Jesus is the caring, loving shepherd that keeps on getting dirty, being uncomfortable to pull that sheep out of the place where he's stuck or where she is stuck.
Anonymity is something that should cause our radar to go up a little bit. If an app is advertising anonymity, why?
What's the difference in anonymity and privacy?
How would you answer that?
I'm sorry.
Intention. Okay.
Ketter, elaborate.
[00:26:16] Speaker C: Privacy.
[00:26:22] Speaker A: Yourself.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Private.
[00:26:26] Speaker A: Okay.
All right. What else?
[00:26:30] Speaker C: If you had a neighbor who lives next door to your hands, offense. That fence is worth privacy, but if.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: You don't know who he is okay, say that one more time.
It's good. I just didn't want to butcher it. I was afraid to quote it.
[00:26:43] Speaker C: If you have a neighbor and you know who he is, but he has a fence, but you know who he is.
[00:26:51] Speaker A: I gotcha anybody else thinking of Wilson? Wilson? Wilson from Home Improvement. All right, private. Because all you saw was nose and above. What did you say? What did Joseph say? One more time. Joseph, literally, for the man in the back.
I'm like questioning my own.
You said it with a little less conviction every time, but I think we're all with you.
[00:27:14] Speaker C: If you had a neighbor and you knew who he was, but he had a fence around his house, you know him, but you don't know what he does.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: There's some privacy to his property.
[00:27:24] Speaker C: Know who he is as a terrorist. And he's anonymous.
[00:27:27] Speaker A: Yeah.
Yes, ma'am.
[00:27:33] Speaker B: People that want to remain anonymous usually have nefarious purposes. They're more for, I think, have evil privacy.
Your data or your family.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm in no way anti having your own privacy. I'm for it. I'm an american. I love privacy. Right. And freedom. Yeah, I think that's right. I love the freedom of my own privacy in my own hands.
We try to protect our privacy so that other people don't exploit things. Right. Specifically in the context of online data. When it comes to anonymity, that's usually used in the context of someone, like, you said, nefarious or someone just having no common decency and no respect for a person on the other end. And that's what I see as the main differences between those two. Privacy is something that, as a digital citizen, we kind of have to fight to steward properly. But when it comes to being anonymous, we should not feel this desire to hide behind our words. We should feel confidence to stand behind our words. I mentioned at the beginning of this class that I think there are two main challenges to emerging generations that I see when it comes to technology, and one is rightly. Identifying the proper relationships that are worth investing in technology is not a relationship worth. Investing. It's a tool to steward and to figure out how to leverage for the good of the kingdom and to make things maybe more efficient in my life so then I can be more effective for the kingdom. But it's not a relationship to invest in. We'll talk more about that next week when we talk about artificial intelligence. And then number two, the ability to rightly identify and discern truth.
And I think that's probably been true of every emerging generation since the first generation emerged. Right. It's becoming more convoluted now because it can be hijacked in some really sophisticated ways due to technology. But those two things are very important. And what Jesus says here is that I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. In John Ten, he says, I am the door, I am the entrance and the exit through which the sheep pass. They don't go anywhere without hearing my voice because my voice gives them comfort, security. And it's true.
They know my voice and I know them by name. There's no anonymity in Christ. It's all about being known. Yes.
[00:29:55] Speaker C: Tom, one of the things you talked about being able to discern the truth, well, that requires critical thinking. And critical thinking is something that we are losing generations, especially as we lean on social media or multimedia or whatever it is.
[00:30:18] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the automation of information has caused us to lose some of those critical thinking skills. That's a good point. Anybody else? Yes, sir.
[00:30:27] Speaker C: To me, when we talk about discernment, we've loosened the definition right. We think of discernment as being able to see right from wrong. But I go back to what Spurgeon said, and that is discernment is determining what is right and what is almost.
And so for me, we've lost that kind of lost that idea of discerning what's almost right from right. I mean, we as Christians can't be private. If we're private, that means we're not sharing the gospel. Jesus said, if somebody offends you, you go to them as private. You don't go to them American. And we've applied it to our can't. As a Christian, I can't be a private person. That means I'm not sharing the gospel. I'm not excited about sharing the gospel.
[00:31:29] Speaker A: I think there's also the aspect of faithful Christian living involves community, deep community and relationships. And in order to have that, you have to have an openness about you to allow people into your world. And that's what we've talked about at length over the last two weeks in particular, to allow people in to have difficult conversations. That's a great insight, mike? Yes, sir.
[00:31:50] Speaker C: I agree with Mike Said, but I do think that looking at this Matthew seven seven this is kind of disturbing me.
If you then being evil and talking to everybody, nobody gives good gifts to your children. How much more of your Father?
So the fact is we're all evil. We all have evil. Yes, sin family. Young lady who took her own life could have turned around and said, okay, I made a mistake. I'm human.
But again, the judgment is a level of maturity and understanding.
Back to the point we all have things that we're ashamed of. There are things I didn't know, that I didn't know. I had certain things in my head until certain drivers cut me off a few times.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: I'll give a hearty amen to that one. That was you.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: We all have things we're ashamed of.
That's it. Bob even talks about talk to someone the way you talk and just compare the way that you have it, you cover over a multitude of things. There's a point at which privacy is necessary, and it's the wise thing to do and to how to treat each other as well. So I don't want all my privacy on the Internet again. These young people, especially some of us, that we listen to language and follow that along, we get looking inflamed and angry. We might do the same thing, say something that that's really not me. I don't really want to be able to kill somebody. I don't want to choke anybody or whatever, but that's within us. Without the Holy Spirit God, I don't think we can know truth, fully understand and know truth and know Jesus without the Holy Spirit working inside of us, we have to make room for that. So my life is most of us here. There's not enough time and space in my head in my life to listen to a bunch of nonsense.
[00:34:04] Speaker A: Flip over to Matthew, chapter five. Thank you for your observation, Mr. James. In Matthew 523, this kind of leads us into some of that. So if you are offering your gift as an altar and they remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, judge to the guard, and you be put in prison.
You see what happened there, jesus prioritized reconciliation over worship.
We talked about this a pretty good bit on our CYP retreat this past weekend.
When it comes to the identity of a church, typically worship is front and center, right? It is the centermost point of when you talk about going on vacation, you say, hey, does anybody know of a good congregation in wherever you're going? What are you asking? What does their Sunday morning worship look like? For us, worship is tied deeply to the identity of the church and therefore to the individual Christian. But here, Jesus says, if you know that somebody has something against you, before you actually go in and offer that sacrifice for worship, you leave it right there.
First go and be reconciled to that person and then come back because I don't think that we can actually worship properly when we're not reconciled to each other fully.
Newsfeeds algorithms, they don't really optimize for reconciliation. They optimize for engagement. And engagement is what anything that keeps your attention and what sells sex and conflict.
And so that's what they're generally optimized for because that's what gets the most clicks or gets the most shares or gets the longest attention span.
These algorithms, they're really like digital mirrors. When you go and look at your newsfeed, like on Instagram, if you go and you click that little magnifying glass, it's going to give you a random population of things that's actually not so random. It's based off a myriad of things. I'll give you a little bit of peek behind the curtain of a couple of different algorithms. So for YouTube, it judges relevance or weighs relevance, engagement, quality, and user search and watch history. So what you've watched and how long you've watched it, how you've engaged with, did you click like or dislike? Did you actually leave a comment? Did you watch it all the way through? Did you watch it for 5 seconds? Did you just keep scrolling? When we post something on there in our stories, in particular Facebook and Instagram from the church platform, you can see this on your metrics as well. You can go in and see who just scrolled right past it or who paused it, or who watched it for its entirety, who clicked the next one. If you have a series of three or four in there, you can see who went and watched all four of them or who just skipped all the way to the next to the next account.
It tells you, depending on how sophisticated you're looking at your analytics and how much you paid to get access, it'll tell you where people are that are watching. It tells you what time of day most people are willing to engage with your content, which is really helpful if you want to get a lot of engagement. I'm going to post at 07:00 P.m. On a Thursday night as opposed to 09:30 A.m. On a Wednesday morning because there are vastly more people that are willing to look at it or apparently going to look at it right there at the beginning. And that feeds it into another wave of algorithm fed metrics from TikTok. The for you page is a stream of videos. This is from their actual website. So you know, it's got to be honest and true. A stream of videos curated to your interest, making it easy to find content and creators you love, powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to that particular user. How do they know what you like?
Because you tell them. Yeah, so they like that video more than they like this video. So I'm going to give them more videos that are like that video from Meta. As of 2023, Metaways who posted it, you're more likely to see content from sources that you interact with on some capacity. So you remember all those things that you liked back in like 2014, all those TV shows you went on just a mad dash and liked everything from USA Network or from whatever. Well that's why you're getting those random shows from Bones and stuff like that type of content.
Or if your wife got on your social media at some point. Anyway, if you most often interact with a video, you'll see more of that video or more videos like it. The interactions within the post. So the algorithm will prioritize posts with lots of engagement, especially from people that you interact with. So even the friends that you are connected to that you know in real life, the things, the content that they interact with. If you're friends with them and you have a lot of mutual friends, algorithm says, oh well, they like each other, they like these people. These people have some mutual interest. Let's throw some mutual interest over in their stream as well. Inventory all the content available from people pages and groups you're connected with, plus relevant ads and recommended content based on your Facebook activity. We had a baby almost nine years ago. Within about a month of having that baby, I started receiving Facebook ads for Boudreaux butt cream.
Facebook knew my world. Signals, these are ranking signals that are discussed above. Predictions. The algorithm, it crunches all the data, all the rankings across platforms. So Meta now owns it's got a whole conglomerate. It's trying to get more and more and more and more. It's going to leverage all of that. I think it was 2016 or 18, don't quote me on that. A few years ago, Meta made a crucial change in how they interact with data. After they purchased Instagram, they decided to open the floodgates and to analyze all of your data across platforms and to use that to leverage their marketing and their algorithm. Before that, they stayed nice neat little compartments, but they made a conscious decision to open it all up.
I don't know about you, but I didn't get an email to vote about that. And then of course, relevance. Each piece of content gets a relevant score with the highest score post closer to the top of your feed. So they are ranked most interesting to least interesting in your feed.
These algorithms are changing quite a bit on a regular basis and it's kind of challenging to keep up with if you follow any content creators or influencers out there. Every couple of years, they're updating how they go about doing content. Algorithms now are really leaning towards vertical video content. Why? Because we've talked about how video engages a person differently and maps the brain differently than a static image does.
Have you noticed how threads now have popped into your Instagram feed because they want you to jump on there as well. Yes, sir.
[00:40:33] Speaker C: My wife's not here to kick me.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: No, but Will is just a heads up.
[00:40:38] Speaker C: So I think one of the things we need to make sure we teach our kids in reality, in a digital world, there's no such thing as mean. Everything has a digital footprint.
There is no such thing. It's stored. Even though you're anonymous, they know where it came from, what the Mac address is. Yesterday, I talked to a car company that wants me to sell their telematic. So they want me to sell how you drive, where you speak, to use for analytics. So we need to make sure our kids and we realize that even if you think you're anonymous, you're not anonymous.
[00:41:17] Speaker A: Yes, and that's actually a really good reflection of scripture, that there are no idle words that are just out there that are inconsequential. That's a spiritual concept that we read about in scripture. I want to read this quote real quick. The offline world in the offline world, rude messages might have been forgotten, but in the digital world, it never is really forgotten. So at the end of a round of free expression of views, those involved in such debates end up hardening their original stance. In any conflict where the identities of those involved are known, there will always be social pressure on them to work towards reconciliation. But anonymity absolves the conflicting parties of the need for reconciliation. So the anonymity afforded by social media, while facilitating a freer expression of views, tends to consolidate and aggravate existing conflicts. This is not from a spiritual standpoint. This is just from an observation of society standpoint. Right. And so they see it too.
It's not geared for reconciliation, but Paul says we have a ministry of reconciliation. Thank you. See why you were on the retreat?
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: That's what we're all about. The essence of God himself. Father, son, holy Spirit, unity. Right? God is reconciling us to him through his Son. That's the whole purpose for Jesus to come and die on the cross. Reconciliation is a really big deal to God's people. It's a priority. It's not a priority necessarily to what's online. So just a couple of questions to leave you with as you go through. And especially for parents, I think these are reasonable questions to ask your kids when you're talking to them about social media. What kind of content ages well?
What kind of content do you want to see pop up every year in your memories?
Five years down the road, what you had for dinner is not a huge deal, but doing something nice for someone or celebrating someone's achievement, that would age pretty well. What kind of content do people need to receive from your feeds and from your timelines?
We talk about how we can leverage all of these different algorithms. We can leverage those for the good, for the positive, to put scripture out there, to put biblical concepts out there, to put encouragement out there to people. How does our use of social media cultivate the fruit of the spirit? Ultimately, that determines whether or not what kind of presence and priority it should have in your life.
And oftentimes that comes down to how we're using it. Not just its presence, but how we use that presence in our life. Any comments real quick before we close?
All right, bow with me and then we'll be dismissed. Father, we're grateful for the opportunity to gather again in Your name tonight to closely examine the role of technology in our lives, specifically social media. I pray, Father, that you would give wisdom and discernment to those of us that have social media that choose to use it. I pray that we would continue to get better, become wiser, and using it in a way that glorifies you and grows your kingdom. I pray that through social media and churches in particular and Christians, that the Gospel will go into all the world in ways that it's never done before. And I ask that you would give us the wisdom and the discernment to pull back when it starts crossing in the lanes, that it doesn't need to be in our lives when it takes up time and takes up attention and energy in ways that are not forming us more into the image of Christ. Help us to hold each other accountable and to encourage each other in those directions. Help us to teach the next generation to be good stewards and to use it effectively and powerfully for your kingdom and not for the kingdom of Satan. We love you, and we thank you for hearing our prayer and answering it tonight. In Christ's name. Amen. Love you guys very much. Have a great week.
