Modern False God

What I wrote here is not to judge anyone or/and put the blame to anything else, this is just my reflection and confession and hopefully it could help to open the spiritual blindness to who ever felt the same like me deep down in their heart.

Matthew 6 : 24 said

" You cannot serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other or else ; he will hold to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon "

One fine day this verse was suddenly ringing in my mind. Indeed, by God's grace, He opened my spiritual blindness. I thought I already had spiritual maturity but actually I have not.

 I was blinded by so called self - righteousness, self focus, the world evolved is only about me.

For the past years, I've spent almost every seconds glued into social media. From the moment I woke up, the first thing that I looked for was my dear smartphone and scrolled down social media newsfeed or timeline.

Social media became my worship God without I realising it.

Not only that, I started to post about myself, felt happy when people praised, admired, and "liked" the post. I posted everything about my picture, my family's picture, daily life, shared something interesting or even just trash posts. When I saw other's people have more "likes", I started feeling envy and quickly looked for other creative ideas to post so that I could get more followers or "likes".

Becoming one of the influencers with bunch of strangers who follow my IG or page unconsciously became one of my life goals.

And these blindness rooting deeper and deeper, I was no longer know what was real and superficial. 

Slowly I became insecure and vulnerable, judging people and felt being judged were part of daily life. Instead of being a master of social media, I was a slave into it.

Even though physically, I was with my family, my mind was about myself how to look perfect in social media, having perfect family life, perfect body that everyone admired etc.

Until one day, I reached the ultimate emptiness, felt unloved. It's after all never ending rat race in the wrong way.

What I started off as pure joy and love to inspire others, it became a mess because the pride took control over me.

I reckon social media is a new false God that people love to worship without realising it.

It's very dangerous because it's not very obvious sin like murdering, stealing etc.

Being self righteous is a vice, it's not something that can be easily detected.

It needs an open and humble heart to reflect whether our life purpose has been driven by pride and envy.

Is social media the culprit here ? It's not entirely true.

Social media is just like other instrument for eg money, it's created actually to help us evangelise and spread good news widely and faster.

But because of our original sin - pride, it over powered our pure motivation and life purpose.

There are so many people in this world competing to be an influencer in social media. They are willing to showcase their daily life, their vulnerable young children, their family life even when they are praying or in the church,which I suppose it's sacred time between them and God alone, they still care to post it in social media just to get more attentions from bunch of strangers.

The impacts are tremendous, people are becoming someone who may not be themselves. They are starting to get confuse between reality and virtual life, they want to look good and perfect which sometimes opposite on what their current situation, they become insecure and vulnerable of what people think and say.

Their value is no longer who they are, what God has created and intended but it depends on other's approval and acceptance.

The question is should we exclude ourselves completely from social media ?

It's not necessary, if we are able to become the master of social media instead of the slave.

If we can control our emotion and utilise social media as pure instrument to spread love, by all means go ahead.

However, if we couldn't take control our emotion to what our truly motivation is when we start off, it's best we exclude ourselves from social media like what I did.

I challenged myself to live in real time without virtual life for 30 days until I am able to control my emotion and feeling, not feeling jealous and insecure about what others think and say and life has never been better than before.

I get up every day feeling positive, be who I am, maximise my time to do what's really important and adding value in my life and my family life.

How to become the master, it needs spiritual maturity and a virtue called HUMILITY

Humility comes from the latin : Humilis which literally means "low". If we feel humility in front of someone, we feel small, simple and insignificant and put others well being more than ourselves.

How do we practice humility in social media ? 

When we don't feel any envy or jealousy, we show genuine praise and appreciation to others, we truly feel happy about other's success or truly feel bad about other's misadventures.

We don't judge them from merely what they posts. When they posted all good things about life, it may not be entirely true that their life is as good as it is. 

Being true to ourselves, we should not feel insecure about how people think, say or judge when we post something.

The crucial thing is what our conscience says when we want to post something.

Is it for our pride or feeding our insecure and self righteousness or is it to inspire others and for the goodness of others? 

Conscience is gifted by God to judge what is right and wrong and it can't be fooled how many times we want to justify our deeds.

After all, we are created as God's image, to love, serve and praise God.

Rule of thumb, social media is created not to glorify ourselves but it's an instrument that we can leverage to spread the good news and love to others.

It's better to cut ourselves off from social media if we are not spiritually ready.  There are many ways to be God's living testimony, be true to ourselves and make ourselves available to others, spend more real time with family, smile and care to whoever we meet in daily basis are more self-fulfilling life than becoming the slaves of this modern false God and pull us further from true joy and love.