DAY THREE: Act Justly, Love Mercy, Post Humbly

Stories flood our timelines about famines and fires, immigrants and the unborn, corruption and violence. We are inundated every day with a buffet of injustices, hitting us with alerts, populating our feeds, dominating our media intake. And if we are not careful, we will use our fresh awareness of injustice as a means of exalting ourselves.

This manifests in different ways. One way we do this is when we begin to treat the vulnerable not as people but as weapons in a war against those with whom we disagree. Are we really working hard on behalf of the unborn or are we just rage-tweeting against Democrats? Are we really concerned with the children at the border or are we exercising digital catharsis against Republicans?

Neighbor love is risky and hard. Advocating for the vulnerable often means we have to take positions that are not popular with one tribe or another. Because I care so much about an issue, I can easily let my passions reign in such a way that I’m not walking humbly as Micah says.

If we are not careful, we can easily adopt a kind of messiah complex, always casting ourselves as the savior for those who we think need saving. We slowly begin to write a story casting ourselves as the hero.

The Internet allows us to showcase our heroism publicly, to project a kind of digital righteousness before our peers.

Jesus sees right through this, as is evident in his parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke 18.

You can imagine this Pharisee tweeting, “I’m so glad I’m not like that tax collector, who exploits the poor by skimming from the top. #stoptaxscam.” But Jesus saw through his performative righteousness. The Pharisee didn’t really care about the exploitation of people by this tax collector—a real issue. Instead, he was both exalting his own identity as not being a greedy tax collector and projecting his goodness by boasting of his generosity. 

Social media often brings out our inner Pharisee. Every day, it seems, we are at our digital temples crying loudly, for everyone to hear, that we are so very unlike those other people.

This kind of activism isn’t neighbor love. It’s self-love, a misguided quest for retweets and shares, the pursuit of digital approval. The truth is, we often mistake cathartic social media rants for real work.

Christians should be outraged at injustice and use their voices on behalf of the vulnerable, but we don’t have the right to use them as outlets for our outrage and props for our personal identity crafting. This kind of activism is not only not what Jesus intends when he calls us to follow him into the world, it’s also highly ineffective in producing actual change. Do we really care about injustice, or are we only here to elevate ourselves?

READ:

Micah 6:8

Luke 18:9-14

PRAY:

Lord God, Give me a posture of humility. Help me to use my voice on behalf of the vulnerable but keep me from exalting myself. In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.