Personal acclaim and a desire for social influence must be secondary (at least) to our acclaim of and influence for the Kingdom of God.
“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us” (2 Corinthians 5:20).
“He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
When I started writing this series all I had were ideas. I don’t pretend to hear directly from God, but I do pray for His direction and wisdom as I go. Most of the time I hope my work is meaningful, but now and then God drops a source in my lap that not only validates my concept but offers direction as well. Today (March 2) was one of those days.
I subscribe to The Free Press (formerly Common Sense) on Substack because I find their journalism to be reasonable, balanced, and articulate. This morning the editors dropped a new feature they’re calling “The Prophets.” They introduced me to Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian philosopher from the middle of the 20th century whose insights into media and what might come of it in time were both prescient and astonishing. Like other mid-century writers Ray Bradbury and Aldous Huxley, McLuhan looked at the logical conclusions of technology’s rise in a culture of wealth and leisure.
McLuhan coined the phrase, “the medium is the message” in his 1964 book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. He wrote, “It is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (ch. 1). He saw television, much as Bradbury did, as a major shift in how people relate to each other and as a loss of personal identity. He observed in a 1977 interview that,
“Everybody has become porous. The light and the message go right through us. At this moment, we are on the air. We do not have any physical body. When you’re on the telephone or on radio or on T.V., you don’t have a physical body- you’re just an image on the air. When you don’t have a physical body, you’re a discarnate being. You have a very different relation to the world around you. I think this has been one of the big effects of the electric age. It has deprived people really of their identity.”
Cue goosebumps.
I have been thinking about social media influencers and the pressures they put on themselves to continually sell their “brand.” I’ve known a few people with followers in the tens of thousands and listened as they talked about the pressure of keeping their numbers growing to monetize their places on whatever platform they use. It’s exhausting to consider the amount of time and effort required to stay on top of an evolving medium. Add to that the cultural dictate to be fully “inclusive” or face the prospect of personal attacks and cancellation and it’s no wonder that many are anxious and depressed behind the smiling façade.
I did some background acting for a bit, and while it was fun, I watched as would-be stars chameleoned (yes, I invented this word) themselves into whatever they thought the directors wanted. I’ve been invited to promote different products as a social media advertiser (I’m not very good at it, but the free product and the little bit of cash were nice while it lasted.) Those ads you see on Facebook and TikTok? Paid actors who are working up the career ladder, promoting products that don’t work any better than the tried, true, and natural things that your grandparents used. They aren’t real.
Closer to home, it’s easy to wear the I-have-it-all-together mask when texting, posting, or writing the Christmas letter every December. We all want to look good and be liked or admired. We know it’s not real, yet we wear the masks willingly, almost unable to remove them. In every sense of McLuhan’s words, we discarnate ourselves into an image, a shadow, a vague reflection, less than a vapor and non-corporeal.
Ironically, I created this image using Bing’s AI image generator, DALL-E 3
One thing we know for sure about the early church is that it relied on the essence of community, the in-person, hand-in-hand, face-to-face realness of living life together. It’s part of the reason so much of the New Testament emphasizes personal interactions: anointing with oil (James 5:14), worshipping together in one place (Acts 2:1; Hebrews 10:24-25), gathering to pray (Acts 1:14), laying on of hands (Acts 8:17), eating meals with each other (Acts 2:42), sharing their resources (Acts 2:44; Acts 4:32-34), singing together (Colossians 3:16), and serving people both in the Church and in the community (Acts 6; Romans 12:9-13; Galatians 5:13; Ephesians 6:7-8; Philippians 2:4; Hebrews 6:10; 1 Peter 4:10). Why? Because human touch matters. Jesus touched most of those he healed. The woman who suffered from a 12-year hemorrhage touched Jesus and was healed. He touched the blind, the leprous, the deaf, and even the dead. Hands-on. Physical touch. Incarnate. Corporeal. Real.
Is there anything necessarily wrong with promoting the Kingdom through the media and modes available to us? Not at all. Paul wrote letters from prison when he wasn’t in person. Online church services are a tremendous blessing to those who, for whatever reason, can’t attend on Sunday mornings. Platforms like Substack, Medium, and even Facebook, Instagram, and others may be places where people encounter the love of Jesus. I wouldn’t be writing this if I didn’t believe that. Even the Bible is a medium, a book of books, written over time by multiple authors, none of whom are currently walking this planet. God uses technology through us to reach the world, encourage the saints, and prepare the way for Jesus to once and for all infiltrate the powers of earth for His Kingdom and glory.
Having said that, it is clear that media, both digital and analog, are not the same thing as meeting together physically. There is a place and a time for all sorts of community, but the local church should be foremost because this is the place where we meet Jesus “with skin on.”
If, as McLuhan believed, the medium is the message, then the Church is the Kingdom of God icon in this world, becoming more corporeal day by day as we live to acclaim Jesus and influence for the Misseo Dei, the process of God reconciling all things unto Himself, things both in heaven and on earth. Jesus must be preeminent (Col 1:16). Living the Kingdom life is hands-on, in-person, and utterly real.
Resources
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Benjamin Carlson. “Marshall McLuhan.” The Prophets: A Saturday Series from The Free Press. Substack. 2023, Mar 2.
Jason Cook. “Belong: Go” [Sermon]. Belong: Membership at Fellowship Series, Fellowship Bible Church, Roswell, GA. 2024, January 28. https://fellowshiproswell.org/sermon7/belong-go/
Jason Cook. “What is your Why?” [Sermon]. Why Church? series. Fellowship Bible Church, Roswell, Ga. 2023, March 12. https://fellowshiproswell.org/sermon7/why-church-part-ten/
Ryley Heppner. “Self-promotion and the Kingdom of God.” The Gospel Coalition, Canadian Edition. https://ca.thegospelcoalition.org/article/self-promotion-and-the-kingdom-of-god/
Marshall McLuhan. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Signet. 1964. https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf
YouTube:
Marshall McLuhan 1977 Interview – Violence as a Quest for Identity
This Is Marshall McLuhan – The Medium Is The Massage (1967) (sic)
Marshall McLuhan – Predicting Social Media in 1967
Marshall McLuhan in Conversation with Mike McManus – Friday, May 7 2010 2010 at 10:30 pm ET
1961: Aldous Huxley on the power of TECHNOLOGY! | In Conversation | Classic Interviews | BBC Archive
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