Since joining the team at Adventist Record I’ve helped run several social media accounts and have engaged a lot more with online circles within the Church. Some of the things I’ve seen said online have surprised me.
Social media is an interesting sort of place. I say place, because it sometimes feels like the online world is a bubble, separate to our daily face-to-face lives. That bubble can feel like a safe space; it connects people and allows stories to be shared with a wider audience. But it can also be harmful—a place where cyberbullying rages unchecked. Cyberbullying is a form of bullying that occurs online and can take many forms: harassment, sharing embarrassing content, intimidation, mocking or spreading rumours.
Cyberbullying is often labelled a younger generation’s problem and may not be something you think you’d ever engage in, but as our world has shifted and become increasingly polarised, the lines seem to have blurred between what is deemed acceptable and what is not—even within our Church.
There is something about being online which makes it easier to have an argument. Something challenging to articulate or to have the courage to say in person is easier to type out and click “comment”. Typing without thinking has fewer personal consequences than speaking without thinking. We don’t have to face the person we have written to or about.
Social media algorithms personalise our content based on what we’ve engaged with, easily leading to echo chambers that confirm our existing beliefs or opinions, despite potentially being built around misinformation. This can easily feed the rumour mill and breeds the perfect playing ground for cyberbullying—saying untrue, potentially harmful things and mocking others.
This doesn’t bode well for a community of believers that are supposed to “live in harmony with one another” (Romans 12:16). It’s easy to live in harmony with one another in our echo chambers, surrounded by those with similar opinions and backgrounds to us. It’s harder when they are different from us in every way possible. It’s harder when we feel wronged, or when we feel someone has gone against our beliefs. It’s harder when the discussion is online.
So what can we do as a community of believers encouraged to “do good to all people” (Galatians 6:10) and “wash one another’s feet” (John 13:14)? The first step is understanding where harsh online posting comes from: a place of fear. Fear of interpreting the Bible or God’s commands incorrectly, fear of change, fear of the state of the world or our Church.
Fear causes us to lash out and lay blame. But the world does not need to see more angry disciples of Jesus so convinced of their rightness that they forget to be like Him. I suspect the way we speak to others online is often overlooked when we think about how to love our neighbours—the second greatest commandment besides loving God (Mark 12:31). Jesus revealed who our neighbours are in a story about a Samaritan man who helped a Jewish man in a time when their peoples were united against one another in hate (Luke 10). We would do well to remember this story before our thumbs get busy on our phone screens. Let’s not be quick to judge. Let’s not assume bad intent. Share your perspective in a way that is patient, not dishonouring others, not easily angered, keeping no record of wrongs (1 Corinthians 13).
This doesn’t necessarily mean staying silent while others spread hate because we are afraid to offend. We are called to “seek justice” and “defend the oppressed” (Isaiah 1:17). If you see an inconsiderate comment or post, call it out. Expose the cyberbullying that has crept into our online circles. The important thing is to do it in a way that is gracious and compassionate.
Watching our words can be challenging, and we can’t do it alone—we need God to change our hearts. And just like choosing Jesus is a daily decision, each day we choose how we respond to others. We will mess up, but what matters is that we keep coming back to Jesus and keep striving to be like Him.
