Following every basketball season, I would make a highlight video of all my best plays. That video made me look really good. Of course, I didn’t include any missed shots or turnovers. It was a five-minute video of me doing all the right things and nothing wrong. I knew my mistakes in each game, but the people watching that video didn’t. They only saw what I wanted them to see.
Social media is just like this. People only post what they want others to see. It’s everybody’s highlight reels, their best selfie, the best part of their family vacation, the best part of their relationship. Just like I didn’t want to include the turnovers and missed shots in my highlight video, people don’t want to include the parts of their lives that are less than perfect.
The problem is that we compare everybody’s highlight reels to our mistakes. We compare other people’s filtered lives to our unfiltered lives. We see the best versions of somebody’s relationship, house and family, and compare it to the worst version of ours.
It’s the perfect tactic from the enemy because comparison has always been the thief of joy. When we compare ourselves to others, it’s a lose-lose situation. We either feel inferior or superior. We are either full of pride or full of condemnation. We get so focused on what we have or don’t have that we forget to focus on Christ.
Social media steals our attention from God. It distracts us from who God is. It distracts us from what God says about us. And it distracts us from how God calls us to live.
Read the rest of the article to understand where you fix your gaze and heart makes a difference.
-FCA-