This month, Essena O’Neill, an Australian teenager with more than half a million followers on Instagram, made headlines after announcing that she was quitting the platform because it is “contrived perfection made to get attention”. She said it promotes a ‘dishonest and contrived’ sense of beauty.
She’s not alone in recognising (and rejecting) the pressure social media puts on people to put on a perfect outward appearance to cover a very different underlying reality.
The Guardian (Nov. 4th 2015) quotes the young Canadian professional Michelle Linker:
‘I absolutely feel insecure’
“I get serious Fomo (fear of missing out) with Instagram, and with all social media
People are publicizing usually something really cool or fun that they’re doing, or at least they make it appear that way. I absolutely feel insecure.”
“I feel anxiety over how many likes I get after I post a picture. If I get two likes, I feel like, what’s wrong with me?”
‘Without Instagram, I’m free’
The same article quotes Madeleine Dalkie, 24:
“Without Instagram, I don’t think that there’s a pressure to look a certain way or to be doing the right thing, or going to the right party. I’m more free, doing what I want to do as opposed to what people want to see me do.”
Somewhere along the line we seem to have created a very dodgy idea of what it means to be an acceptable sort of person
But where are people who try to make this sort of break to going to go to handle the suspicion they’re not acceptable?
Actually NOT that acceptable
The underlying reality is that most people (megalomaniacs and sociopaths aside!) have a reasonable grasp on the less acceptable side of their own character … it’s just that we don’t want that to be too public!
Hiding it doesn’t seem to work
Jesus Christ called people to ‘come out’ about all this and look to Him to deal with their underlying previously unspoken unacceptability. (Churchy people call it ‘repentance’ – it’s in Mark 1:15 and a LOT of other places, and it goes along with trusting Him to sort it out – which is called ‘faith’ or ‘believing’).
The best way in the world to deal with guilt
Not many people realise this about Christmas, but what God meant it to do was to deal with the age old human problem of GUILT!
Even His name ‘Jesus’ was given Him before His birth to show He’d save His people from their sins (don’t take my word for it – check out Matthew 1:21)
Find out more
We have informal midweek farmhouse meetings all over this area where you can get amongst farming people who are working out what it means to be living and farming God’s way. There’s tea and cake but no nonsense.
Or find Grace Rural Wales Partnership on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter (@WelshRev), and follow the movements of the Landrover using #DefenderofTheFaith #DotF
Contact Us
Phone: 07748 644958
Email: HoWChaplain@gmail.com Web: www.yGRWP.com
Twitter: @WelshRev #Defenderofthefaith #DotF
(Check the calendar on the website for those farmhouse meetings
and what’s on)
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