Understanding the Culture: A Dissertation on Selfies, #Selfie, and the Like

I feel like the new #Selfie song encompasses the self-love found in today's American society. Because life is all about getting Jason's approval, earning 100 likes on Instagram, and sleeping around. Life is all about me. 

{Lyrics can be found here: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/chainsmokers/selfie.html}

This mindset carries over to our social media, filling up our newsfeeds with half-naked girls and guys, flaunting faces and eyes and lips and bodies to the glory of themselves. This mindset carries over to our shopping malls, colleges, marriage, and life in general. When we place ourselves upon a pedestal of self-love, we become our own little gods, and life becomes our personal kingdom.

But seriously. When has life ever been about us? 

Jesus commands us to consider others' needs before our own. He lived a life of complete humility and self-sacrifice, never exalting Himself or His own physical appearance. Instead, the Son of God was born in a stable to a mere carpenter. He lived in a little fishing village, dressed simply, and ate common food, because His goal was to bring glory to the Father. In fact, Isaiah said in chapter 52, "He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him...Like one from whom men hid their faces he was despised and we esteemed him not." Christ's focus was heavenward. He turned the spotlight away from Himself towards the Father. 

In the same way, we as believers are simply signposts here on earth, bright spotlights, pointing skywards, directing all praise and glory and honor to our Creator. Our lives are no longer our own but have been purchased by the redeeming blood of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. And so, we live not for ourselves but for God. 

Now, this is not to say that selfies are evil or unbiblical. I'm not against selfies in moderation. But to the half-naked guy parading his abs in front of the camera, to the girl with the protruding duck lips, to all these self-obsessed selfies clogging up my Instagram feed...why? Why all this attention to your physical features day after day after day?

First of all, the lives of believers should direct attention to God, not to ourselves. We as sinful human beings are proud, and we covet attention for our own abilities and accomplishments. We fail to recognize our complete dependence on God and the extent of His grace towards us. Only when we realize the enormity of our depravity and the immensity of His goodness can we direct all glory to God. Each day, it's a struggle. A struggle to die to self and live to righteousness, so that He might be glorified through us. Carrying the cross isn't easy, but it's a battle worth fighting.

God, would You glorify Yourself through my weakness? 

Secondly, true beauty is not captured by a click of the camera. People are not adequately captured by a picture. Physical appearance doesn't last. What really matters is how we love and treat those around us through our words and actions.

I can testify to this.The closest people in my life don't necessarily look like runway models, although many of them do. Yet, they're beautiful because they have beautiful hearts that desire to please God and love others in return. Charm is deceptive and beauty is fleeting, but man or a woman of God lasts forever. Physical beauty is great, but what really matters is the beauty of our hearts.

I find it sad how accurately #Selfie defines our society and even believers today. I find it sad that we spend so much time on selfies and something so fleeting and trivial. I also find it sad that instead of bringing focus and attention to our Heavenly Father, we care more about bringing attention to ourselves.

Lord, forgive us for we do not know what we're doing. 

This whole mentality of self and external appearance is killing me. Because this life isn't about us. It's not about our success or our appearance or even our happiness. It's about our Creator. The One who sent His one and only Son to die for our sins that we might be saved through Him. It's about Him. Not about us. Never about us.

Social media is a gift. And so let's use that gift, not for the exaltation of ourselves, but for the exaltation of the One who made us.

Dying for a Paradox

Emptiness has accompanied humanity throughout history as men hunger for something more, something beyond the hollow shell of straight A's, a steady paycheck, and a luxurious retirement. Life has evolved into a desperate search for satisfaction. Our expectation for perfection, the common denominator of mankind, began the crusade for fulfillment, which kindled Buddhist meditation, the hippie movement, and Karl Marx’s utopia among many other religions and worldviews. Men sought crude trinkets of sex, drugs, and money in an attempt to reduce the emptiness, but only succeeded in exhaling shallow breaths of carbon dioxide into an ever-increasing void. 

Although we longed for a richer existence and for the supernatural to complete the mundane, we knew of no other method, and so we flirted with the earth. In the unholiest of romances, mankind wooed the world in sheer desperation, lavishing love on an earth that never gave back. 

We drunk but were not refreshed. 

We loved, but our love returned empty-handed, and our emptiness seemed all the more immense for our vain pursuit.

Yet, Christ promised “whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (English Standard Version, John 12.25). Love for the world culminates in a lifetime of emptiness and a future of eternal damnation. To satisfy our otherworldly cravings, we must die, tightly embracing self-sacrifice on earth that we might live eternally. Relinquishing our selfish desires, we must offer our living bodies upon a sacred altar of altruism that we might obtain infinite satisfaction. This paradox Christ commands in us exchanges death for life, humility for future glory, and an affair for holy matrimony.

*written for Advanced Composition from The Potters School*