Fasting From Social MediaÀpẹrẹ

Matthew 6:22-23 ESV says, “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” Although my friend list was pretty clean, meaning I don’t follow vulgar or inappropriate posts, somehow or another, I began to see more offensive things. I noticed that many of my friends were becoming desensitized to images. Before the days of social media, I couldn’t bear the thought of watching someone get shot in public or folks mocking the church and the disgusting comments I saw people write, mocking the disabled, the poor, and those going through a divorce. All of it was becoming too much. Though my posts were always encouraging, it was very discouraging to see so much hate. 

Because the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we must be very mindful of what we allow our eyes to see. Once an image pops across the screen, even if you don’t engage in it, you can’t unsee it. This began to weary my soul, and the tug on my heart to give it up was becoming a greater burden. I believe this is especially true on media outlets such as TikTok. The videos play at such a fast rate that before you can even think of skipping the video, you may have already heard or seen something ungodly and inappropriate.

God has given us the responsibility to guard both our eyes and heart. We cannot feed our inner man an unholy diet and expect to have holy thoughts. We see this principle in nutritional therapy. When an individual is first diagnosed with a disease resulting from having a bad diet over many years, the first thing the doctor does is order the patient to change their eating regime. Sometimes, there are extreme measures that have to be taken to prolong the patient's life. This is true for us as believers as well. In the passage Matthew 4:4 KJV, Jesus replied to the tempter with this truth. “It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” Our appetite and the media we consume can become a deadly disease to our spiritual man, causing us to become gravely ill spiritually. Therefore, we must return to the doctor, The LORD, change our habits (media consumption), and redirect our impulses to healthier choices like reading the Bible and other books that will mature us in our faith.

Be encouraged.