The Gospel in the Marketplace of Identity
As identity replaces information as the driver of social media, Christians must boldly proclaim a Gospel that offers an identity greater than anything the marketplace of identities has to offer.
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This is the final of four posts adding some additional commentary to my recent piece on ERLC.com, “4 social media shifts the church should know about”. Each of the four shifts could be an entire article by themselves, and this week, I will be focusing on the fourth shift in that article, “a shift from information to identity”. As has been for this series, I will be opening up a thread in Substack Chat for further discussion, with Ian Harber chiming in some thoughts as well!
How We Got to This Point
Let’s briefly recap the first three posts in this series and the road we’ve been on up to this point:
First, all of social media is shifting to short-form video. TikTok has replaced Facebook/Instagram as the center-of-gravity for social media, and the rest of the industry is desperately playing catch-up. For churches, this means that the era of treating social media like a newspaper or magazine, with text and images at the center, is coming to an end.
Second, all of social media is becoming location-neutral. As social media shifts to short-form video and TikTok’s discovery algorithm, it is bringing TikTok’s location-neutral emphasis with it. For churches, this means the era of using the geographical networking backbone of social media, driven by personal and local networks and connections, is coming to an end.
Third, all of social media is shifting away from brands and institutions to individual influencers. As trust in brands and institutions continues to free-fall, personal marketing driven by influencers has filled the void, and companies like CeraVe have already demonstrated the immense success of shifting to personalities to promote products over institutional branding. For churches, this means the era of assuming your church institutional presence can do the heavy lifting of representing your church well is coming to an end.
Taken together, these three shifts combined create this fourth shift: a shift from the social media as being driven by information to being driven by identity. These first three shifts are the legs of a stool; all three of them are necessary to support the weight of this final shift.
At this point in this series, there is little left to say about what churches can do with their social media. Even for those who decide to jump into this new social media landscape as influencer-evangelists, this shift is not exactly a practical shift, and I have little concrete advice to give here. Instead, I want to describe something more ethereal: the shift in the oxygen of social media. You may not know this, but if you still maintain even an inactive presence on any social media platform, your lungs have already adapted to breathing this new air. You might find, though, that you’re having a harder time speaking with it than you remember - especially when it comes to the Christian faith and the Gospel.
Living and Breathing Identity
This time a year ago, I was wrapping up a nearly four-hour audio commentary on Chris Bail’s groundbreaking book, Breaking the Social Media Prism, for my podcast Breaking the Digital Spell (available wherever you get your podcasts!). In the ensuing year, I have only become even more convinced that this remains the single most important book Christians should read about social media. Here is the thesis of the book:
I will argue that our focus upon Silicon Valley obscures a much more unsettling truth: the root source of political tribalism on social media lies deep inside ourselves. We think of platforms like Facebook and Twitter as places where we can seek information or entertain ourselves for a few minutes. But in an era of growing social isolation, social media platforms have become one of the most important tools we use to understand ourselves—and each other. We are addicted to social media not because it provides us with flashy eye candy or endless distractions, but because it helps us do something we humans are hardwired to do: present different versions of ourselves, observe what other people think of them, and revise our identities accordingly. But instead of a giant mirror that we can use to see our entire society, social media is more like a prism that refracts our identities—leaving us with a distorted understanding of each other, and ourselves.
In other words: we do not use social media to gather information. We use social media to form our identities. If we happen to gain new knowledge or information along the way, great! - but that is just a side dish, not the main course.
The problem is that using social media to help us understand ourselves is like taking someone’s doodle of a map and using it for a cross-country roadtrip. While we use these tools and platforms as reliable guides for finding our place in the world and navigating it, in actuality we are given a crayon-drawn map and a compass with a needle constantly redirecting where "north" is. Instead of "north" being anchored in truth, knowledge, and wisdom, "north" is determined by my ever-shifting desires. "North" becomes not just what I want, but who I want to be, and my compass will lead me to wherever “my people” dwell.
Of course, one of the most important questions driving identity (who do I want to be?) is the equally important inverse of that question: who do I not want to be? Both of those questions are important. However, only one of those questions can answer the other. Knowing who I am will invariably shape who I am not - knowing who I am not still leaves me in the dark on who I actually am.
For many, however, confidently knowing who I am not is more than enough to get the journey going. You may not exactly know where the destination it, but it certainly isn’t Mordor (much less Texas or California). And along the way, you may find many other people whose course is driven by the clearest piece of direction they have: who I am not. You may not have a destination on your journey to nowhere, but at least you’ve found camaraderie in the company of people who are also not going to the same place you’re not going.
The term for what I am describing here is something called “negative partisanship”. It is a political term, but has wide application outside of politics as well (particularly, American Christianity). Negative partisanship, in a nutshell, refers to the “[g]rowing shares in each party [who] now describe those in the other party as more closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent than other American1” (emphasis mine). The defining feature, the selling point, of affiliation is not driven by a shared conviction of who we are, but who we are most definitely not. The sad irony, of course, is that in the name of supposed unity and belonging, we begin to identity with people who are not like us over and against the people we have more in common with. As Patrick Miller and Keith Simon say in their stellar book Truth Over Tribe (emphasis theirs):
“With the exception of our families, coworkers, and closest friends, our fellow citizens have become strangers. Our lack of proximity to people whose lives are wildly different from our own makes us insensitive to their plights. Vehicles allowed us to segregate socioeconomically into suburbs and gated communities. The few places where we once rubbed shoulders with those whose economic circumstances were different from our own are disappearing. Without these shared spaces, all you have are the media proxies of our neighbors. You only know the caricatures presented to you by the news or on social media. And like all caricatures, they are clownish, revealing more about the artist than the subject. But you forget this, beginning to hate the clown you don’t know, defining yourself by a tribe that looks and thinks like you and, perhaps most importantly, is not like them2.
Of course, it should go without saying that this is not a good thing. And yet, this is the landscape that Christians - and local churches - now operate in. As Ian and I write in the ERLC piece, “[this shift] does not mean people have stopped using social media for information, but they seek that information through shared identities first and reliable sources of a fact-finding second. Not only is it harder to find reliable information, but it’s also even harder to find reliable information without going through someone who communicates from a tribalistic frame of mind.”
Social media is no longer the Marketplace of Ideas; as the Marketplace of Vibes ‘n Tribe, it trades in identities, not information; influencers, not institutions. And for the local church, the most pressing question for this particular shift is not “how can we adjust our social media strategies to compensate for these changes” - its “how do we proclaim the Gospel in the Marketplace of Identities?”
The Gospel in the Marketplace of Identities
Imagine you have a big circle. This circle represents your “identity”. You can choose to put whatever you want in that circle - parent, spouse, sibling, Baptist, drummer, literally whatever you want - and as many different things as you can cram into that circle.
There is just one rule: only one thing can go in the center of the circle. Whatever goes in the center of the circle is the most important identity you have. Everything else orbits around whatever is in the center of the circle.
What would you put in the center of the circle?
For Christians, preaching the gospel in a marketplace driven by identity (especially one driven by the question “who I am not”) involves recognizing the fundamental error of the previous question. For all the choice and competition that exists in the marketplace of identities, the number of different ways we can answer “who do I want to be?” has not made our lives easier, but worse. The number of options, and the pressure to chose the correct option, does not bring freedom, but a suffocating restrictiveness. Because you can put anything at the center of the circle, suddenly everything becomes a legitimate option for going in the center of the circle (or at the very least, a handful of equally-important choices).
The Gospel offers something different. The Gospel takes the question “What would you put in the center of the circle” and says that God will put something in the center of that circle: a child of God, a member of the body of Christ and a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The term “Gospel” has its roots in Roman culture and the Roman military system. After a victorious battle, before the army returned to the city, a herald would be sent ahead to announce the victory of the Roman army and, in light of this victorious battle, the city and its residents ought to prepare themselves to celebrate the return of the Roman soldiers. Because of their victory, they can take heart that their safety has been secured for them. In the case of Jesus, the Gospel of Jesus is the announcement that Jesus Christ has conquered Satan, sin, and death itself through his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. Having lived a perfect and sinless life in complete obedience to God, in which our first parents failed to do, Jesus Christ was unjustly condemned as a sinner to die a death that he did not deserve, and in fulfillment of all the types and shadows of the Old Testament, Jesus Christ goes to the cross as the sinless sacrificial lamb of atonement. Being both fully God and fully man, Jesus Christ not only dies the death of a man representing men, but being fully divine, he is able to bear the full wrath of God reserved for us as a punishment for our sin - in both body and soul, Jesus Christ stands in our place as our substitute as an atoning sacrifice that we did not deserve. But not even an unjust crucifixion spurned on by Satan, nor the weight of the sin of man, nor even death itself could destroy Christ - having been buried in a grave for three days, he physically rose from the dead with a resurrected body, and in doing so signaled the beginning of the end of Satan, sin, and death.
The Gospel, then, is the announcement that Jesus Christ has not only defeated all our enemies - the sinful nature deep inside us, the record of the debt of our sin that stood against us that we could never repay, the brokenness of creation and the death we and everyone we love will face, and our chief spiritual enemy responsible for it all, Satan himself - but it’s also the announcement that, as a result of his victory, Jesus Christ has secured for us a righteousness before God that is apart from being conditioned upon our fulfillment of the law.
But it’s not only an announcement of everything Jesus has accomplished; it’s also an announcement of everything Jesus is going to do because of his accomplishments. Jesus has defeated Satan, sin, and death in the sense that the Allied forces defeated Nazi Germany on D-day; although the outcome of the war has been determined, the battle will continue to rage on as the end closes in. A short time after his resurrection, Jesus physically ascended to heaven and now sits at the right hand of God the Father, serving as our mediator and high priest until he comes again. When he does, Jesus will bring about V-Day against all his enemies, having secured their defeat on the cross and now bringing that defeat to its final conclusion. Not only will Jesus defeat Satan, sin, and death, never to exist again, Jesus is going to make a new creation, a new heavens and a new earth, perfect and greater than anything our minds can comprehend.
In light of Christ’s victory on the cross and his impending return, what should our response be? Christ’s terms are simple: we are to repent of our sin and place our faith in him as our Savior and Lord and receive from him the righteousness we cannot secure for ourselves. In repenting of our sins, we turn away not just from our individual sins, but from all forms of sin and all forms of participation with Satan and his kingdom. We admit that we cannot attain a righteousness of our own and agree that our sin deserves eternal death and separation from God. We believe that Jesus Christ has attained a righteousness that can save us through his life, death, and resurrection, as the Gospel announcement tells us.
But perhaps most importantly: we confess that Jesus Christ is our Lord, resigning any attempts to play God in our lives and placing our allegiance to Christ and his coming Kingdom above any other allegiance, including our countries, our families, our heritages, or any other defining identity that we have.
In other words: we lay down our claim to choose an identity to put in the center of that circle, and allow God to make that decision for us instead.
To seal this new identity that we have as those who belong to Christ, we receive the Holy Spirit as a deposit and down-payment affirming that we have a new identity, and that we can enjoy a small taste of the life waiting for us now. This new life consists of a new heart, given to us by the Spirit, that loves Christ and desires to know and obey him. Although we remain in a world where Satan, sin, and death rage on, we know that just as their days are numbered and the outcome of the war has already been determined, the same is true for the sinful nature and desires that compete with our new identity and desires, as well as the physical death that awaits us as well. Just as Christ has been victorious over both, we will share in his victory as well.
As long as we draw breath, the Gospel announcement compels us to respond, and we can respond in one of two ways. We can reject the Gospel, and pay the full penalty for our sins and experience eternal destruction, or we can accept Christ’s terms put forth in the Gospel, and receive not only his perfect record of righteousness in replacement of our record of sin, but receive a new identity and a small taste of the unimaginable life that is to come for those whose central identity has ceased being in themselves, a country, a political party, a philosophy, a lifestyle, or anything else other than being defined by Jesus Christ.
The Gospel, then, is not a self-help message. It is not generic encouragement or ‘good vibes’. It is not manifested merely in kindness and generosity in a vacuum. The Gospel is not a political platform or voting guide. The Gospel is not a program on how you can clean up your life, or how you can make the world a better place, solve whatever social cause you’re passionate about, etc. The Gospel is an announcement of what Jesus Christ has done, which is something you couldn’t do: save yourself from your sin and defeat the greatest enemies in your life. Our response to the Gospel is predicated entirely as a response to this announcement of what Christ has done and what Christ is going to do because of his victory, and it is through this Gospel proclamation that God transforms us and gives us new identities and new lives built on that new identity. In this new identity in Christ, it is who you are that determines not what you do; it is because you belong to Christ now that determines how you ought to live for him. Much of the preaching and evangelism in American Christianity today has inverted this: if you do X, Y, and Z for God, then you will be a Christian. Instead, it ought to be that because you are a Christian through repentance and faith in Christ, you ought to do X, Y, and Z in accordance with your new identity.
But this new identity that we have in Christ does not mean that we abandon our secondary identities; what it means is that those secondary identity can never become the primary identity through which we see ourselves. All our other identities - our family status, our education, where we live, what political affiliations we have, our hobbies or other interests - can go in the circle of identity, but at the center of that circle is an identity we did not choose for ourselves: a child of God, a member of the body of Christ, and citizen of Kingdom of Heaven.
What the church has to offer to a world driven by identities is an identity greater than any identity we could select for ourselves. It is not an identity we achieve or attain for ourselves, but one we receive by faith as we lay down our claim to be the rulers of our lives and submit to the gracious and loving yoke of Christ.
Of course, this is not the sole thing the church offers the world - numerous forms of prosperity and partisan gospels abound. But just because others offer a cheap imitation of the Gospel does not mean that we can’t offer the real thing. In fact, that’s all the more reason for us to descend to the social media platforms we do not want to go to and seek and save the lost where they are found. Unlike those cheap prosperity and partisan gospels, the true Gospel has power to do something no imitator can do:
Save lives.
Programming Note + Substack Chat for This Week: Open Q&A
Thanks for reading Passing Through Digital Babylon. In the past two weeks, I have seen a small but consistent uptick in new subscribers; to all you new readers, welcome! Last week, I also had a fantastic conversation with a new reader in Substack Chat that has proved the potential and value of this new feature. I intend to keep investing in it with each new newsletter because I want to have the best connection to readers as I can. If you’re reading this on email or desktop, consider downloading the mobile app so you can chime in as well!
As a programming note: there will not be a newsletter next week. In August, I was hired as the producer of a project that I pitched called “Mending Division Academy”, and after months of planning and preparation, next week is filming week. While the phrase “I covet your prayers” has always rubbed me the wrong way, it is nonetheless true: I very much covet your prayers. Anxiety and imposter syndrome runs rampant, but I know that God has purposed me for this work, unqualified as I am. I will write more on Mending Division Academy when the project gets closer to launch.
In light of this, for this week (and next week’s Substack Chat), I am going to create an open Q&A thread. Feel free to pepper me with questions about anything you want, be it social media or something else!
The next newsletter will be a shorter piece on Chatbot GPT and how it ought to challenge some notions we have about discipleship. If you enjoyed this piece, please consider sharing it on your socials or texting it to a friend who might enjoy it too!
Together, we are passing through Digital Babylon,
Austin.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/
Miller, Patrick Keith; Simon, Keith. Truth Over Tribe: Pledging Allegiance to the Lamb, Not the Donkey or the Elephant (p. 111). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.