The Overwhelmingly Positive

Note: I began writing this post almost 2 years ago. I realized I never posted it. I made a few changes to it, but ultimately, I still feel the same way.

My faith in Jesus is important to me and I have believed in Him all my life. My relationship with Him developed more in recent years than ever before. So it was quite surprising to me that I was irritated when I heard anything about Him, or Christianity, from other people’s mouths. 

Well… not actually from their mouths, but through the screen.

My mind has been racing with all kinds of thoughts that I can maybe discuss on a later day in another post. But today, I will focus in on one thought. Why am I irritated with something that should make me joyful? 

I have a question…if you didn’t have social media, how much of what you know would you still know? How many ideas and opinions that you have formed would you still have? What’s something that would have never even occurred to you if it weren’t for social media?

Back in the day, if you wanted information you had to wait. If you wanted to know what happened at the party Friday night, you had to wait until the next school day or work day. If you wanna go even further back in time, you probably had to wait a few weeks if not months. But now, this information is literally at your fingertips. You just do a couple swipes a few taps and then you’re seeing a video of someone dancing their life away. 

This abundance of information that we have is clearly not all good and we have come to that conclusion for some time now. We’ve heard the statements that social media causes body image issues and anxiety. That the amount of negativity on social media can be depressing. Social media sites can be so full of hostility and division. Often times on social media people take the extremist approach on subjects and are essentially saying “it’s my way of thinking or the highway.”

So, we’ve come up with one solution of many – other than just delete social media all together – that we should start following more positive pages. You know, the ones that quote things like “you are in control of your happiness” or “tips on living your best life”, or for me personally, it’s Christian accounts that quote scripture and give you ideas on how to live a righteous life. The idea is that following these types of accounts will have your social media feed full of positivity instead of negativity.

These accounts are helpful, encouraging, and give some truth. But it’s not really the accounts themselves (well, not all the time) that can become… let’s say unpleasant, but it’s the huge quantity of these accounts and the information they have to share. It’s like that too much of a good thing paradox. 

Let me explain. I was tired of seeing all these ideas on social media of what it means to be close to God, what it means to be holy, what I need to do to be a more spiritual person,  or what I’m not doing right that’s stopping me from being close to God. I also felt horrible for being irritated and annoyed with these christian accounts on social media. I felt like maybe spiritually there’s something wrong with me. Maybe the devil is toying with me to try and get me to stray away from God. That’s possibly what I would have been told by another christian. But when I talk about this annoyance with Christianity on social media I don’t mean that I didn’t want to be close to God or spend time with God. In fact, I still did. All the time. Every day. Looking back now, I realize this had nothing to do with God. 

But at the time I couldn’t understand why it annoyed me when I went on social media and heard from other “followers of Christ” on what I need to do to be good. Until… I looked at the worlds idea of spirituality and realized, I was annoyed with them too. All this talk about manifesting and self-care and self-love. Ideas on how to be “that girl” or to “get your life in order and build good routines.” It occurred to me, that it’s not JUST christianity… So if it’s not my “flesh” trying to deter me from connecting with God then what was it? 

Following positive accounts is good. Trying to improve yourself is not a bad thing. But the one thing about positive accounts, motivational accounts, christian accounts is that they point out flaws excessively. I mean how else are they gonna tell you how to be better. That’s the point of a lot of these accounts. They need to tell you what you aren’t doing and what you are doing that’s stopping you from being the person you want, or should, be. And if you follow multiple of these accounts then you have a ton of flaws of yours to think about. I’m not saying self-reflection is bad. I’m saying, the self-reflection became overwhelming when I tried to take all my possible flaws in at once. But when you follow and look to all these motivational or spiritual accounts you end up becoming so consumed with what you’re not doing right that it can be discouraging. 

When you scroll and one account is telling you “you’re not hearing the voice of God because womp womp womp” then you scroll again and another is saying “you’re not happy because blah blah blah” and then you scroll again and see  “this is what’s stopping you from living your dream life” you start to create a list of essentially ways to be perfect and live life perfectly. And because these things take time I run into the frustration of not being able to simply just fix these things immediately. Especially when social media presents things in a quick easy fix kind of way. 

Not only that, but these accounts also contradict one another. One person tells you the best way to connect with God is in the morning and therefore you’ll have a better day. Another person says it doesn’t matter the time. An account might say a morning routine is absolutely necessary and should not be dismissed while another may say that you should just wake up and go with the flow of the day. It causes this “I don’t know what to think” kind of feeling in you that causes you to be confused. 

I realized my irritation with these types of social media post was coming because I was feeling insecure and all over the place. Like I said my faith is important to me. So the feeling that I was not doing well enough in my faith made me feel pressured. I kept thinking “I’m not doing something right. I’m not doing enough. I’m not being enough for God.” Because the amount of differing information made me feel I had to fix all these different problems. 

But I overcame this feeling of dread over these post. When I see christian accounts and posts… I don’t feel this irritation anymore. I don’t feel insecure about my faith. I don’t question if God is disappointed with me. Because my mindset about what they post has changed. 

Number one… I realize that the person who posted it is a human. Who has flaws. Who doesn’t know everything. So sometimes they’re simply just wrong. And also they don’t know me personally to know what I actually need. 

Number two… I had a bad bad habit of believing that if a Christian post comes up on my page, I have to view it because maybe it has a message from God in it to me. Like I mentioned earlier, I felt bad for being annoyed and thought something was wrong with me spiritually just because I didn’t feel like looking at some christian’s post… on social media. My mindset was as if I had just turned down God Himself. I have experienced God using a post to bring something to my attention. God has many ways of speaking to us. But let me tell you that a social media post is  NOT always the case. I’ve learned to be careful with thinking that just because it was a christian who posted it or just because they mentioned God, that the post was from God and if I don’t view it then I’m being a bad christian. It’s just another post on social media. And if God really wants to get a message to me, He will make sure it gets to me. Social media wasn’t always there. How do you think He talked to everyone else in history? 

And again, these accounts aren’t bad in themselves. They can be helpful. But it’s the excessive amount of these “helpful tips” accounts that can be too much sometimes. My point is… I’ve learned to be careful of the mindset I have when viewing social media. Just because the post was posted with good intentions, doesn’t mean it can’t be wrong or just simply not for me. But also, I learned to not overwhelm myself with how to fix my life. 

I find it better when I just follow God’s words. Following His guidance. He knows that overwhelming me with all my issues is not the answer. He knows me and knows what I actually need to know. There’s a reason He doesn’t tell us everything we want to know. Because it’s just like that cliche saying; ignorance is sometimes bliss. 

Instead of using social media to be my Bible, or counselor, or judge… I take it all with a grain of salt. I don’t take it all at face value. Honestly, I like to use social media just for funny videos and some photography. I don’t even like following these “helpful” accounts. Because I know that I can be a bit obsessive with trying to be a “better” person. 

If you didn’t know it by now, just know that God already loves you and being “better” or “worse” won’t change His view of you. You are already His masterpiece in His eyes. In time and with His love, He will guide you into maturing. But it won’t be all the problems all at once. Instead of focusing on your problems, it’s really much nicer to focus on Him and who He is. 

The Bible states that “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 

See yourself as the clay in God’s hands. He knows how to shape and mold you because He is an expert potter.