7 Days to Dethrone Social Media in Your Children’s LivesSample

Seek Humility

An entire book could probably be written on the many ways that social media engages our most vile, prideful instincts and squelches any mote of Christlike humility we may have. The simple act of posting to social media with any frequency makes a statement in itself, doesn’t it? It sort of implicitly says, “I have something to say and I am worth listening to.” Do your kids post a lot? Are they always keeping track of who is liking their posts and who responds quickly to their messages? Their pride problem may be seriously fueled by their relationship with social media. What can we do to push back against that?

1) You need to model humility.

Andrew Murray writes, “Humility before God is nothing if not proved in humility before man.” A parent or any other kind of spiritual leader and mentor who promotes a value to those who are in his or her care but doesn’t appear particularly interested in exemplifying those values won’t be doing much leading or discipling at all. You cannot lead where you will not go.

To lead people in your care to be humble, they must first see you as humble. Of course, not even the most spiritually mature leader will be perfectly humble, but our call isn’t to perfection—our call is to faithfulness. Calling those we lead to be humble when we can’t be humble ourselves will not only be ineffective, but it will also feel forced and unnatural for us as we lead.

2) Remind them that life is about sacrifice, not competition.

We need to remind the people we lead that life is not about competing with others but sacrificing for them. We are to image Christ, who is our perfect example of humility, and lay our lives down for both those we love and those we don’t. Our lives are not vehicles for personal achievement, but opportunities for sacrificial love. If we hope to love our neighbor as we’re commanded by Christ, we must not see them as competitors. We remind the people we lead that life isn’t a competition by living accordingly ourselves. Again, as I wrote before: none of our instruction on humility matters if we can’t model humility ourselves, with the understanding we can’t model humility perfectly.