Author: Robin Brown

2. The Discipline of Intercessory Prayer

I separate this from devotion, not because they are not related, but because intercessory prayer is so much harder than devotion. Devotion is the oil and wine, the joy of communion. The prayer of devotion is praise, adoration, thanksgiving, personal confession and supplication. But intercession is the hard work of a priest. Intercession is more like Gethsemane. It may be our
hardest work. It is long. It is tiring. If you love your people, it can be agonising. But if you neglect it, spiritual apathy will grow. This is probably the discipline we are most likely to skip, because it is so hard. But we must do it. Set time aside. We read about Epaphras, who was probably the pastor of Colossians: “Epaphras, who is one of you, a bondservant of Christ, greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he has a great zeal for you, and those who are in Laodicea, and those in Hierapolis” (Colossians 4:12-13).

Make sure your own soul is nourished, and then pray with your boots on. Keep a list. I agree with Kent Hughes to split the various needs up according to different days. So for example, on day 1, you might pray for unsaved persons, the country and government. On day 2, you might pray for missionaries, fellow pastors, and for revival. On day three you might pray for pressing church needs, personal growth, and current problems. On day four, you might pray for church leadership, upcoming events, the corporate services. Each day you might be praying for your family, for church leaders, for the spiritual growth and protection of your church. If your church is larger, it’s not a bad idea to split the names up alphabetically.

3. The Discipline of Study

No pastor can be a shepherd without extensive reading, study. I am not here to lecture you on the time and method of sermon preparation except to say, keep yourself glued to that chair or on your knees until you have understood the text grammatically, contextually, historically and doctrinally. Keep yourself glued to that chair until you have considered and worked out the principles applicable to your congregation. Keep yourself glued to that chair until you have worked out helpful illustrations, clear applications, and a gripping introduction.

Go beyond sermon preparation. We must be reading what the church has said. We must be reading the greatest works of devotion, church history, biography, theology, practical and topical works on the ministry, preaching and counselling. We must be reading to understand our culture and its various phenomena. That’s a lot of reading. It can only be done with planning, and organisation. Plan your study time. Protect your study time. Have a time when you don’t take phone calls. Make certain hours inviolable. If you work on your computer, settle it that you will not surf the web or check emails or flit from task to task. List books you want to get through in the next year.

4. The Discipline of Pastoral Nurture

I think pastors seem to come in two flavours – bookworms and outdoors types. Some like nothing more than to be locked in a study all day. Some like nothing more than to be out and about, mingling, visiting. If you are the second type, then this discipline will seem like second nature to you, and the discipline of study is probably harder. If you are the studious type, the temptation is going to be to be in your study all day and never be out there as a shepherd. Certainly shepherds feed, but shepherds also tend. They inspect the sheep individually. They clean them, bind up wounds, discipline. Pastors must apply the Word of God to the people of God, not only teach it.

Making the phone calls, visiting the sick, getting into hospitals, having coffee with the men one on one, having Bible studies in your home, having one-on-one discipleship, having people over for lunch or dinner, spending much time after the services speaking to people and talking with them. If you are not this way, you must set up plans and structures to make this happen more often. Make sure you nurture the strong ones. How often we spend our time chasing down the unfaithful, the struggling the weak, assuming the so-and-so who comes to every service is just fine. Meanwhile, they may be wasting away spiritually. Jesus spent his time with twelve, not chasing down everyone on the periphery. Spend most of your time strengthening those who are committed. They will start shepherding others. Spend some time going after the weak and apathetic.

5. The Discipline of Evangelism

Some men do not need to plan their evangelism, it happens as spontaneously as breathing. On the other hand, many pastors find evangelism hardly happening. They are in their study most of the day, or they are visiting other Christians. If that is you, then you must structure things so as to interact with unbelievers. I would firstly say, make sure you pray for opportunities to witness. Second, keep a list of people attending your church, whose salvation is in doubt. Set up times to meet with them. Third, try to follow up on unsaved contacts that your church gives you. Fourth, if you haven’t already, work on some kind of corporate evangelism that your church can be involved in. Different communities require different approaches. Nevertheless, we should plan it somehow.

6. The Discipline of Family Worship & Family time

I would not think that many pastors plan to neglect family worship and family time. But I also don’t think many pastors plan not to. If you don’t plan not to neglect family time, the chances are, it will happen. By family worship, I mean a time together of loving God, learning from Him, speaking to Him, singing to Him. It doesn’t have to be advanced. It doesn’t have to be long, and when the children are little, it shouldn’t be. Just don’t let it be superficial or empty – kids pick up on that quickly. Try to be consistent – after supper on as many days as you can, or just after breakfast on as many days as you can. Just like your own times of devotion – you can vary the elements, but the point is to have a heart for God together. The point is to have a love for God as a family – not as individuals going their own way. Ministry tends to crowd in as much as you will take, so you must also structure a break. Have a day that your family knows they have you to themselves. Plan some times to be with your wife alone. Take your children on dates. Maintain the family dinner table. Do not let it disintegrate into TV dinners, into the teens being everywhere else. Foster a culture that dinner times are family gatherings. Exceptions can be made, but the rule is gathering together for dinner. Read, read, read to your children.

7. The Discipline of Bodily health

We pastors tend to live a sedentary lifestyle. A lot of sitting, and a lot of reading. We might walk short distances here and there, but it is often the case that we get little physical exercise. When we visit we get more coffee than we need, and cakes as well. We are sometimes up late and up early. If we neglect our bodies, not only will this shorten our lifespans’, but it will decrease our usefulness while here. Spurgeon said a pastor filled with depression often simply needs a stiff breeze in his face and a good walk in the woods. Spurgeon says this won’t give grace to the soul, but it will give oxygen to the body, which is next best. Paul says bodily exercise profits a little. He didn’t mean to say it is useless. He was comparing its usefulness to godliness. It does still have some profit. This body needs to be maintained with exercise, decent eating and adequate rest. However you do it, make time for some kind of exercise, even if it is a good walk around your neighbourhood for thirty minutes. Do not think that eating anything is a sign of spirituality. Just because you are a Baptist, does not mean that gluttony is allowed. Food is one area where we sometimes have to deny ourselves something quite lawful to maintain the atmosphere of self-discipline. Continual indulgence in one area, makes it more likely in all other areas. Do not neglect your body’s need for rest, and do not oversleep.

Now I am sure you might chide me for not including some other disciplines – the discipline of giving, or of memorising Scripture, but I am confident you can see where those might fit in under the ones we have listed. A pastor who gives himself to devotion, intercessory prayer, study, pastoral nurturing, evangelism, family worship and bodily health will not have a field overrun by the thorns of spiritual apathy, dryness or ineffectiveness. The thistles of poor family relationships will be less likely, the hard ground of indifferent church members less likely. Solomon said something else. He said, “He who has no rule over his own spirit, is like a city broken down, and without walls”. We know that in the ancient world, a city’s walls were its main defence against enemies. Solomon is saying, the man without discipline is defenceless. Against what? Against all that wars against his soul and his effectiveness. These disciplines are bricks. The Spirit of God is the power on that wall defending you against ruin. If the city of your soul is without the wall of discipline, it will take a miracle to defend you against attacks. The Spirit will not do a
miracle for you when He could have simply used your obedience.

So, pastor, if the man is not Solomon, but the Lord Jesus, and the field is your life – what does He see?

  – David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa

So we might want to ask at this point, what is the aim of our discipline? Unless we know what we are aiming at, we will miss it. If we are going to embark upon a disciplined structure, we want to understand the shape of what we are building.

The Aim of Discipline

1 Timothy 1:5 – “Now the purpose of the commandment is love from a pure heart, from a good conscience, and from sincere faith.” The law is amongst other things, a kind of discipline – a kind of structure. The Bible says correctly understood, God’s structures are there to lead us to love Him, purely in good conscience with all sincerity. The aim of discipline is the aim of the Christian life – to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, soul and mind. Now, again, I will reiterate, discipline by itself does not enable you to love God. Loving God only happens when we are exposed to God’s glory by the illuminating work of the Spirit, and our response is to love Him. Furthermore, since laziness is a sin, the laziness of ill-discipline grieves the Spirit and quenches what He might otherwise do. “The way of the lazy man is like a hedge of thorns, But the way of the upright is a highway” (Proverbs 15:9). Discipline makes possible continual access to the means of grace by which God reveals Himself. It is when we see God and are illuminated, that we love Him and respond to Him. Your primary goal is to love God by seeing Him through the Word and prayer and ministry, therefore, discipline is the structure you build so as to make that possible.

The Problem of Discipline

However, one of the dangers of emphasising discipline is that it attracts something in us that is proud. There is a certain nobility, a certain strength in disciplined people, and very often, the flesh wants to capitalise on this. If we are not careful, we can come to idolise the disciplines. Whenever discipline becomes an end in itself, it has malfunctioned. Whenever it becomes bigger than the thing it is supposed to help you achieve, you have lost focus. If you are more impressed with how faithful you have been in your Bible reading plan than the truth of what is in the Bible, you have missed the point.

Another problem we have with discipline is the same problem we have with works and grace. We think the one nullifies the other. We think we must major on one or the other. We think if it’s about our discipline, we are rejecting the empowering work of the Spirit. Or we think that if we are Spirit-filled that we must be passive and not striving in our own strength. So you have people on the one end, who strive in their own strength, but without depending on the Holy Spirit. Or you find people on the other end, who wait for desires to produce a discipline in them that their desires are not big enough to do. The simplest way of resolving this tension in our minds is Philippians 2:12-13 – “Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; 13 for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” The Spirit will stir up desires and enable obedience, but sandwiched in there are the acts of surrender, self-denial and submission that constitute discipline. So here is how we can think about discipline: While discipline is not self-empowered, it is self-imposed. Discipline is a fruit of the Spirit – temperance. But from Paul and others we can tell God’s will, that we impose it upon ourselves, and He will grant the power. In other words, pay the price and God will supply the goods. “To avoid this danger the minister should voluntarily impose upon himself a life of labor as arduous as that of a farmer, a serious student or a scientist. No man has any right to a way of life less rugged than that of the workers who support him. No preacher has any right to die of old age if hard work will kill him” (Tozer).

The Types of Discipline

“Many a minister who would be shocked at the thought of doing nothing, nevertheless gets nothing done because he has acquired the habit of frittering away his time. Late hours, requiring compensatory late sleeping, several trips to the store, assisting with the family laundry, standing in line to buy a reservation for his wife’s niece who is going on a visit to [another city] —these things, or others like them, eat up the time and leave him spent and empty at the end of the day. After a day occupied with trifles, our prophet faces his audience in the evening mentally and spiritually out of tune and altogether unprepared for the holy task before him. His confused smile is attributed to his humility. The audience is tolerant. They know that he has nothing worthwhile to say, but they figure that he has been so busy with his pastoral duties he has not had time to study. They generously forgive him and accept his threadbare offering as the best they can expect under the circumstances” (Tozer).

I’m going to suggest that the following seven disciplines should form part of our days, some of them part of every day.

1. The Discipline of Devotion

There seem to be debates amongst ministers today as to whether a pastor should have a quiet time, since he is going to spend time in sermon preparation anyway. The Biblical answer is: regardless of your vocation, every believer should set time aside to adore and commune with their Lord. Pastors who spend hours on sermons, but are perfect strangers to communing with God, will quickly become powerless, hollow and eventually loveless. Now it is true the Bible lays down no commands for having ‘the quiet time’. It does not command a time, nor lay out a methodology. But flowing out of the Scriptures are examples of devotion,
beginning with the Lord Jesus, and flowing out to include the apostles, the prophets, David, the other psalmists, the kings, the judges, the priests, the patriarchs. God is worthy of His people presenting themselves before Him individually – adoring Him for who he is, thanking Him for new mercies, confessing failures and sins, surrendering to His work, hearing His comforting, rebuking, challenging, promising Voice.- responding with submission and commitment. God deserves it, commends the examples of it in Scripture, church history and biography is replete with the examples of those whose lives were marked because they were devout.

I find it interesting that in Israel’s law, there was both a morning sacrifice and an evening sacrifice as well as a fire that was always to be burning on the altar of burnt offerings throughout the day (Exodus 29:38-39; Leviticus 6:13). This, brothers, is how we must see the discipline of devotion. Kindle the flame of love for God in the morning; keep it burning during the day, close off well at night. In other words, if by quiet time you simply mean ticking off a chapter of Scripture or mindlessly reading some clichéd devotional book, then, sure, it’s not worth doing. But if it is the means of blowing on those sparks of love for God, so as to set the tone of abiding in Christ throughout the day – it must be done. We are to pray without ceasing, meditate day and night; in everything give thanks. In other words, devotion is not something you switch on and switch off. But it is something you need to strengthen and foster – from the start of your day till the end. Our hearts need to be aflame. Sleep does not revive us spiritually. Every day, we need to rekindle the embers, get them burning, keep them burning and close off with some extra oil.

I will lay no method upon you except to say that critical to devotion is prayerful meditation on Scriptures and honest heart praise, thanksgiving, confession, surrender and submission. I think you should keep a hymnal with you and sing as you should. If you meditate better when you write, then write. If you will remember your surrender better if you write, then write. But plan to give yourself enough time. Set your alarm if appropriate. Vary the elements but remember that the commitment is what keeps it intense. If it costs, the devotion is felt. Costly devotion rises up to God as a sweet savour.

 

  – David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa

Proverbs 24:30-34: “I went by the field of the lazy man, And by the vineyard of the man devoid of understanding; And there it was, all overgrown with thorns; Its surface was covered with nettles; Its stone wall was broken down. When I saw it, I considered it well; I looked on it and received instruction: A little sleep, a little slumber, A little folding of the hands to rest; So shall your poverty come like a prowler, And your need like an armed man.”

I imagine Solomon riding his chariot, perhaps in entourage, and suddenly a vineyard catches his eye. He diverts his course, brings his horses to a halt next to the stone wall.  He props one leg up on it and looks over the vineyard. Growing through the wall is a tall and healthy weed – thorns, thistles. Instead of lines of trestles with vines hung, there are vines growing on the ground. Some have been choked out of life, and are just dead branches, but here and there some vines survive. But without the trestles, the pruning, the protection, there is little or no fruit. As Solomon looks, he is being taught by the owner of this field. The sluggard of the field is instructing Solomon without saying a word. Solomon is no doubt thinking, “All this land, land which was purchased at a cost, land which could be bringing the owner the joy of its fruit, and money through the sale of it, instead lies here, being used for no other purpose. Sheer laziness, sheer slothfulness has brought about this state of affairs, and instead of
fruitfulness, we have a sad and tragic waste.”

I wonder if it is too much to say that this scene might picture the lives of many pastors. Like the field, they have been purchased at a great price. Like the field, they have been seeded – not with grape-seed, but with gifts – spiritual abilities to teach, lead, help, administer, exhort. But instead of great fruitfulness, their lives are characterised by the thorns of poor family relationships, spiritual dryness in their own lives, spiritual apathy at church, a narrowing effectiveness with the lost, and an overall sense of ineffectiveness. Instead of fruit, there are thorns. But the reason is the same: instead of the discipline of a farmer, the evil of slothfulness has entered in. The farm illustration is certainly valuable. A field does not organise itself. If you neglect it, it will revert to chaotic, wild and random growth. Creation tends to go from order to disorder, unless you intervene and impose order upon it.

The human heart is the same. Left to itself, it does not organise itself into goals, plans, schedules, tasks and accountability. Left to itself, it pulls the blankets over its head, sleeps longer, watches more TV, surfs the web aimlessly, putters away its time. The truth is, without spiritual disciplines, a pastor can be like the field Solomon saw – full of potential, but lying in effective ruin, useless to God and man until the hardship of discipline is applied. A.W. Tozer spoke about the great temptation to laziness in the ministry: “It is easy for the minister to be turned into a privileged idler, a social parasite with an open palm and an expectant look. He has no boss within sight; he is not often required to keep regular hours, so he can work out a comfortable pattern of life that permits him to loaf, putter, play, doze and run about at his pleasure. And many do just that. The ministry affords limitless opportunity for the lazy man to indulge his talents. Doing nothing can be accomplished more gracefully in the Lord’s work than anywhere else, for the simple reason that the minister has no one to check up on him. The average church requires little of its pastor except to mark time decorously; the preacher with a propensity for loafing is strongly tempted to do just that. “However much we may dislike to hear it, loafing and puttering are deadly habits for the young minister. Hewill either conquer them or they will break him” (Tozer – A Word In Season).

A pastor without discipline will soon show the signs of his neglect. His barren prayer life will show up in his powerless preaching and ineffective witness. His lack of meditation will show up in his irritable spirit, and joyless attitude. His lack of illumination will show up in his counselling and decision-making which lack wisdom. His lack of sermon preparation and further reading will show up in his messages being repetitive, clichéd, and shallow. His lack of family time will show up in the increasing distance between him and his family. His lack of pastoral oversight will show up in the multiplying problems and discontent in his church. In short, his personal life, family and local church will start to look like that field.

Discipline for the pastor is like furrows and trestles to the vineyard farmer. Making a furrow in the soil won’t get you grapes, but you won’t get them without one. Building a trestle to tie the vines to won’t make you grapes, but you won’t get grapes without them. In the same way, spiritual disciplines will not give you spiritual fruit, but you won’t get fruit without it. Discipline is simply responding to the realities of the Fall. Our hearts tend to go from order to chaos, from diligence to sloth, from organisation to mess. In a world where the current pushes us downstream towards making a shipwreck of the faith, discipline is the hard row upstream. Discipline is imposing order upon disorder, opposing the bent of a depraved heart.

In fact, Paul made it clear that the reason he imposed discipline upon himself, was that without it, he feared he would be disqualified: 1 Corinthians 9:27 – “But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.” He believed disqualification, failing to make the grade, was a real threat if he simply followed his whims, impulses and comforts. When speaking to the young pastor Timothy, Paul enlists the illustrations of three of the most disciplined professions: 2 Timothy 2:3-6 – “You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier. And also if anyone competes in athletics, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.”

The hard-working farmer must be first to partake of the crops. The farmer is known for his consistent discipline. The soldier is known for embracing rigorous military discipline. The athlete is known for undergoing rigid bodily discipline. You couldn’t make
the point more if you wanted to. Pastors are not compared to playboy actors, to Internet stockbrokers or to part-time landscapers. They are compared to the people who day-in and day-out live by a rigid form of structure, organisation and self-denial so as to accomplish their goals. Put simply, discipline makes something else possible. Discipline by itself doesn’t do anything. Tying your shoelaces does not make you walk; it just stops you from tripping over them, or from slipping out of your shoes. Lifting the handbrake doesn’t make your car go; it just helps you to go without much hindrance.

Hebrews 12:1 – “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

  – David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa

7. Adultery

Sadly, social media has opened another temptation in man’s heart: the temptation to cheat and be unfaithful to one’s spouse. This can be an actual adulterous relationship which social media’s enables through contact with members of opposite sex that otherwise would not occur. Flirtatious comments and flattery easily becomes something more. It can be adultery of the heart, by peering at pictures and updates of someone who is not your spouse.

8. Privacy and Surveillance

In his book Terms of Service, Jacob Silverman shows that what seems like a ‘free service’ is really a massive commercial machine. Information about our likes, dislikes, age, income, movements, connections is being continually harvested, and sold to advertisers. The more information we volunteer, the more we make ourselves into a commodity to be bought and sold. Social media profiles can be used by Governments, intelligence agencies, terrorists, sexual predators, hackers and ransomware criminals, for identity theft and fraud, or for individuals seeking to harm.

Seven Ways to Use Social Media Wisely

1. Have a clear goal for your use, particularly one or more of the first five mentioned.

2. If you are using it for social sharing, reduce your ‘network’ to those you would show a family album to in the privacy of your home.

3. Do not put anything private, that you would not want shared, on the web. Regardless of your privacy settings, once it is in cyberspace, it can be found and used by others. Tighten up your security settings. If your job requires a Facebook or Social media profile, you might want to consider a separate one for work.

4. Time yourself when you go on social media. Set a limit for how long you will be on it. For every half-hour you spend on social media, spend an hour in the actual presence of family and fellow believers.

5. Whatever is tempting you to envy, lust, or to peer into another’s life, cut it off. Whether that means unfollowing, unfriending, deleting, do not make provision to sin (Rom 13:14), and be willing to cut off what causes you to sin.

6. Be hesitant to comment: weigh your words, reactions, and comments before you post them. Digital words will still be judged by God. If you really need to say it, and the person is close enough to you for you to influence, pick up the phone.

7. Cultivate contentment, and repent of the need to show off or find validation through social media.

– David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa

3. Superficial and Unclear Relationships

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Haque notes, “Despite all the excitement surrounding social media, the Internet isn’t connecting us as much as we think it is. It’s largely home to weak, artificial connections, what I call thin relationships. . . . Thin relationships are the illusion of real relationships.” He goes on to explain that, thanks to the explosion of so-called friendships in the world of social networking, the very word “relationship” has lost its value. “It used to mean someone you could count on. Today, it means someone you can swap bits with. Social media can give us the artificial sense of a busy social life with much fellowship when we have 1500 Facebook ‘friends’ or 500 ‘followers’. Genuine relationships require patience, forbearance,
forgiveness, time in one another’s presence, shared loves.

Is it unkind or rude to ignore or refuse Friend Requests? Is it acceptable to “friend” an ex-boyfriend/ girlfriend if you are married? Should married men and women have a host of friends from the opposite sex? How should Christians deal with someone who has been disciplined by a church of like faith? Should they all un-friend? Should they refuse to ‘like’ or comment on posts? Should they remove the person from the newsfeed? Or should they keep him or her to find out if there is any repentance/ or of others are interacting?

4. Ungodly Speech

Reviling, rudeness: The unkind, aggressive and vicious language which takes place on social media has caused some psychologies to coin the term “online disinhibition effect.” This simply means that behaviour which would be considered unacceptable face-to-face becomes common when people are behind screens, particularly if they are anonymous.

Slander, lies: It has become possible to destroy a person’s reputation by posting a video, photo, or comment, and waiting for it to ‘go viral’.

Gossip: Much of what is shared on Social media, whether by permission or not, is simply gossip. To learn details of another’s life, when you are not a part of the problem or a part of the solution, constitutes feasting on ‘tasty morsels’ (Prov. 18:8).

Careless words: Every 60 seconds on Facebook: 510,000 comments are posted, 293,000 statuses are updated, and 136,000 photos are uploaded. “Every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it” (Matthew 12:36)

5. Time Wasting

In a Time Magazine article entitled “It’s Time to Confront Your Facebook Addiction,” Kayla Webley shares some startling statistics. “One-third of women ages 18 to 34 check Facebook first thing in the morning. . . . Of the 1,605 adults surveyed on their social media habits, 39% are self-described ‘Facebook addicts.’ It gets worse. Fifty-seven percent of women in the 18 to 34 age range say they talk to people online more than they have face-to-face conversations. Another 21% admit to checking Facebook in the middle of the night.”

Dr. Joseph Garbley says Facebook addiction is becoming a very real problem. . . . unlike alcohol or drugs, social networking addiction is psychological not physical. The nature of Social media is to absorb your interest with continual curiosity, until you have literally lost hours at a time. Catching up with a long lost friend, leads you to another friend, going through all his posts and photos, till you come back and see the links and videos shared by others. If you have hundreds of friends, that may be hundreds of items in your newsfeed everyday, enough to keep you absorbed for hours.

“See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. (Eph. 5:15-16)

6. Envy

Social media works like advertising: look at my life – the one you don’t have! Look at the places I have been to, the food I eat, how good I look, how cute my children are. Look at the fod I cook, the clothes I wear, the house I live in, the car I drive. My life is all at once glamorous and homely, exotic and cosy, extravagant and normal, fun and meaningful. Keep clicking through my life, and keep getting angrier. Social media can feed one of the darkest sins – the sin of comparing. Social media is entirely an exercise in comparing another’s life to your own. Singles comparing boyfriends or girlfriends, mothers comparing their children’s success with others; people comparing their material success with their peers; people comparing how they have aged in comparison to others.

Now I cannot control the envy in someone else’s heart. But I can do two things: 1) I can refuse to flaunt God’s good gifts in ways that will tempt others to envy; 2) I can refuse to spend too much time thinking about what others have. What would happen to your heart if every time you visited a friend, you were taken on a tour to see his most expensive possessions, and he showed you videos of his exotic holiday?

– David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherd’s Seminary Africa

By 2017, Facebook had over 2 billion active users. Social media sites have not only become used by most people with Internet access, but the amount of social media platforms have increased exponentially: Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram. The genius of social media is a platform to create and share content with others. Most often, social media will include a user account, a profile, a newsfeed, a network of ‘friends’/ connections, a comments or feedback facility. The primary use of social media is mostly forms of entertainment, interacting with others, sharing content, and ‘keeping up’.

The Traps and Idols of Social Media

1. Boasting and Self-Promotion

Much of what goes on on social media is little more than boasting. Parading one’s travels, purchases, children, grandchildren, spouse, all takes place routinely. Staged, and sometimes doctored pictures of oneself are supposed to support the glamour of Me. As the Tabloids follow celebrities, so Facebook provides tabloid news coverage for every person. Kevin Bauder: ”In other words, it allows every user a small sphere within which she or he can act like a celebrity…Facebook is an opportunity to put one’s self on display continually”

This is simply known as narcissism: being in love with yourself. Many people, when using Facetime or Skype, are looking at themselves far more than the person they’re supposed to be talking to. Many people upload pictures and info, mostly to see the reaction it will get from others. Social media offers you the opportunity to build and portray an image of yourself as near-perfect, so as to be fawned over, flattered and validated by a circle of friends. In polite conversation, talking about nothing except your own life would be considered rude. Social media, of course, demands that you do that. The line between showing pictures of the children for Granny overseas and showing everyone how wonderful my life is is a fine one.

The difference between sharing and showing off is something the technology usually flattens out. Certain events are treasured memories to be shared with particular people. But when ‘overheard’ by everyone, the nature of the sharing changes. Social media allows us to thinly veil our self-promotion under the guise of “good times!” “so thankful!” “feeling so blessed”

“Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling”; “Let another man praise you and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips”; “If you have been foolish in exalting yourself . . . put your hand over your mouth.” (Prov 16:18; 27:2; 30:2).

2. Exhibitionism and Voyeurism

Facebook encourages you to share personal, even intimate, details with ‘friends’, who may be little more than acquaintances. The fact that a ‘friend’ becomes a silent witness of your self-broadcasts creates a strange situation of exhibitionism and voyeurism. An exhibitionist is one with a compulsive desire to get other’s attention, and display what should be hidden, while a voyeur is a prying observer, secretly watching what is private for the sordid or the scandalous. Facebook and social media creates unwitting exhibitionists and invited voyeurs.

Facebook encourages me to focus on sharing personal moments with the few who have some right to see, and to forget the many who do not. Facebook encourages me to peer into someone’s life, and to forget that I have very little reason to do so with most. Posting a picture of my wife for everyone to comment on is not that far from setting up a screen outside my wall and live-streaming what goes on in my house. The essence of modesty is to understand that what is not for other’s consumption is to be kept veiled. Shamelessness has taken over when we are comfortable to be gawked at, or to gawk at others. The nature of loving relationships is a voluntary, mutual, progressive self-disclosure (Eph 5:12).

– David De Bruyn, Professor of Church History, Shepherds’ Seminary Africa