You may not have noticed a huge shift began in news media back in the 90s. Instead of reporting the news, whole channels were created to tell you what they thought about the news. These channels, on all sides of the political spectrum, grew and have now overwhelmed any pretense of simply reporting facts.
In fact, no one trusts your facts anymore, unless you first tell them your opinion. Then they decide which side you’re on and determine whether to believe your facts.
Thus the “Age of Opinion” was born. Now today, people on social media have taken their cue from the news channels. And we still haven’t learned how to shut up.
We love nothing more than expressing outrage and disapproval about anything and everything. While I too have given in at times to the “rage of this age”, I’ve wisely backspaced over more posts than I can count. I realized something while looking at everyone else’s political rants and doomsday predictions, mixed between the photos of their cats and what they ate for supper…
There are two kinds of people today. There are those who do things that actually change the world, bit by bit, one microstep at a time. And there are the rest who just talk about it.
Right now on this social media platform, you can enjoy long lectures from your friends (like this one ;0), often copied and pasted from some celebrity pundit, announcing the great injustices in our world. Many of these injustices are valid and terrifyingly real. But one glaring thing is missing that dissipates their power…
There are no accompanying actions, because we don’t thing anything more than expressing our opinion is needed. And this is a dangerous conclusion to arrive at.
We have conflated the idea that “saying something”, or “raising awareness”, or “speaking truth to power” is the moral equivalent of taking substantive actions to alleviate the problem.
This is also the age of “virtue-signaling”. That’s when you say or post something that sounds noble, but your real motive is merely to pat yourself on the back for being enlightened, spiritual, or smart. You make yourself look concerned and compassionate, but it’s merely a symbolic gesture.
But “symbolic gestures” never fed a kid in India. Our opinions are nothing more than verbal “cotton candy”. It tastes sweet at first, but dissolves in our mouths minutes later. But there is no “meat” on the bones of our words.
Christians are some of the worst at doing this, and social media has become a perfect billboard on which we can broadcast our righteousness. The Pharisees that Jesus mocked for praying loudly just to get attention were amateurs compared to us! Forget their puny Middle Eastern market squares: I’ve got 2000+ followers to proclaim my righteousness to!
It disturbs me how easily I forget one of my favorite books of the Bible, written by Jesus’ biological half-brother James. It’s one I rarely hear Christians quote anymore, probably because the words would indict most everything we are doing today:
“Suppose you see a brother or sister who has no food or clothing, and you say, “Good-bye and have a good day; stay warm and eat well”—but then you don’t give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? So you see, faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless.” – James 2:15-17
In other words, my left-leaning friends, you want to talk about the “plight of the unhoused”? Then first tell me how many homeless people you’ve taken in your car to get a meal.
Or to my right-wing friends, want to talk about the horrors of abortion? First let me know how many kids you’ve adopted or how many unwed mothers you’ve supported.
Or maybe to both sides, with all your solutions for poverty, crime, violence, etc. What at-risk young mother are you mentoring? What troubled child are you fostering?
Put more bluntly, what the heck are we actually DOING to back up all our big talk about loving a lost world the way Jesus does?
The Jesus I serve saw the sick, said “your sins are forgiven”, and then healed them. He saw both spiritual and physical needs, and met them all! He preached amazing Truth with a capital “T”, but then put feet to it.
But if He had only preached and never backed it up with actions, He’d be nothing more than a footnote of history. He didn’t just say “God so loved the world”, He willingly crawled up on a cross, embraced the instrument of His own destruction, and saved a world-full of us sinners from getting exactly what we deserved. But He didn’t give us that example so we could paste some silly meme on our Facebook page and pretend we have joined Him in His Kingdom work.
Words mean nothing unless accompanied by actions. They’re the equivalent of that photo of the sad puppy with the tagline, “I bet I won’t even get one like…”. The gullible like it, and the person posting gets what they wanted: attention. And the resulting endorphins are what anesthetize us from the obligation to actually do something that matters.
Instead of virtue-signaling, how about some virtue-doing?
The world criticizes us sending our “thoughts and prayers” during a crisis because for too long that’s all they’ve seen from us. Sure, we know we should pray when things happen beyond our control. But the problem is when we’ve done nothing about the problems that are WITHIN our control.
Protests and postings are just theatre, accomplishing nothing unless supported by action.
To my non-Christian friends: Jesus saw all the things you’re upset about and proclaimed the root problem is found in the human heart. And then, He took the most extreme, radical action of self sacrifice to fix it. He gave Himself, and died doing it. So if you really want to change the world, join Him. He’s the only one who can truly change the world, not your political parties that just talk about problems then pocket the money they asked for to fix them.
To my Christian friends: “Put up or shut up”. Forgive my bluntness, but no one cares what we have to say anymore. With all our big talk about “loving the sinner” but avoiding them like the plague, we’ve pretty much lost the right to be heard. The only thing that matters now is WHAT WE DO.
Will we get our hands dirty, or just keep talking?
Will we help the hurting around us, or just keep preaching?
Will we fill the needs God shows us today, or will we post another smug meme?
The scary part is our actions betray what is truly in our hearts. While actions are not what save us, our actions are the one true outward measure of whether we really know Jesus. That’s not just my opinion; it’s what Jesus Himself said:
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’
“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’
“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” – Matthew 25:44-46
As the great Christian musician and prophet Keith Green once proclaimed, the only difference in this passage between those sent to eternal punishment or eternal life was in “what they did, or didn’t, do”.
Lord, have mercy on me. And get me off this couch!
