The eCrozier

This week on NPR’s Fresh Air there was an insightful commentary by music critic Sarah Hepola. In the piece (“When You Become the Person You Hate On the Internet”), she addressed social media, which gives us all a chance to expose the worst of ourselves to the rest of the world. One day, she heard the hit 90s song, “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” which she then described in a Facebook post “as the worst song of all time.” The song is about an estranged couple who reconcile after watching the Audrey Hepburn film by that same name. Her post incited some of her friends to pile on, asserting that they also hated the song. She wrote that she got great satisfaction for having created such “a delightful little bonfire of disdain.” She, however, forgot that among her Facebook “friends” was one who just happened to be in the band that had recorded the hit song.  

She thought of removing the post, but figured that would draw more attention. She just hoped this guy never checked Facebook. But he did. She didn’t quote his response to her post. She only described it as implying that she wasn’t “a very nice person.” This sent her into existential anguish. As a writer, she’d been on the receiving end of people cruelly critiquing her work. Now she knew what that was like. She’d become the type of person she herself hated. But she insisted: “I am a nice person, although I sometimes do not-nice things.” We all engage in such self-assessments that attempt to pronounce cheap self-absolution. How do we differentiate between being a nice person who sometimes does not-nice things and being a not-nice person who sometimes does nice things? Does a nice person do nice things 51% of the time? 75% of the time? 99% of the time? Where’s the cut off line for appraising yourself as a nice person? You see the problem here.

Ms. Hepola isn’t the first person to struggle with such things. St. Paul wrestled with the same internal opponent. In Romans 7, he declares: “I don’t understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Ms. Hepola, I think, would agree with Blessed Paul. Later, St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, wrote in his Confessions about a time in his youth when he nihilistically destroyed fruit from a pear tree. That made him ask himself why he also did the very thing he hated. St. Paul wrote that the Jewish Law, while being good, served to expose our sinfulness before God. In our post-Christian culture such an insight into God’s Law may not be possible for many people anymore. They’re simply unaware of it just as they’re unaware of how Jesus dealt mercifully and graciously with our sin on the cross.

Social Media now serves a similar purpose for us as the Jewish Law did for St. Paul: it exposes the less than flattering truth about ourselves. Many people, however, are left to a lonely, internal struggle all the while hoping others we’ll see them as “nice people who sometimes do not-nice things.” For what else can they hope in a culture that was once based on honor and is now based on shame? They’re trapped in the endless loop of self-shaming and then cheap, attempted self-absolution (“Well, I’m not as bad as others”). This is where our personal, relational evangelism matters. We all know someone stuck in this endless loop. We’ve been in it ourselves. But we must be truthful: The Gospel isn’t about us becoming nice people. It’s about Jesus loving and redeeming us anyway.
+Scott