“Even a fool is considered wise when he keeps silent – discerning, when he seals his lips.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We live in a day when social media dominates the cultural landscape. It has become our public square in all sorts of ways. None of this has served to make us necessarily more social – in fact, a growing body of evidence suggests that it is isolating us more and more from one another and feeding into what multiple public health experts have described as a loneliness epidemic across the developed world. What it has done, though, is given everyone the ability to contribute their voice to public discussions. The trouble is that while all of us have opinions about the goings on in the world around us, being able to share those opinions with the world don’t make them well-informed or necessarily worth sharing. Still, many people seem to feel the pressure (whether actual or only imagined) to share their thoughts on everything. Sometimes this is helpful and beneficial to the people around them. Sometimes it falls somewhat short of that. So then, how do we know whether to share or not? Let’s spend a few minutes thinking that today.

There are a number of different angles from which I could approach the question of whether or not to share on social media. I’m going to keep things focused fairly narrowly on the question of whether churches or individual believers should take public stances on public issues on the public forum that is social media. And I’ll say right out of the gate here that I am not going to even come close to totally resolving this question in this brief blog post. Rather, what I want to do is to simply pose a series of questions we should ask ourselves before we click the “share” button with our thoughts on one public issue or another. These questions can serve as rules of thumb to help guide our thinking on a particular post we are considering making.

The first and most important question for followers of Jesus to answer here is whether or not God has called us to say something about it. Do you have a specific call from God to publicly address the issue in question? Is it really a call from God, or did that last post you saw about it that you disagreed with rather vigorously simply get you fired up to add your own two cents to the conversation? Those aren’t the same thing.

Generally speaking, social media is not a good platform for reasonable and constructive conversations. If you want to talk to someone about something they have said or done with respect to some cultural issue, go and talk to them face to face about it. If you won’t or can’t do that, then you almost certainly don’t have the kind of position or authority to speak into their lives or the situation in a way that will make a meaningful, positive difference in it. And if you don’t have that, you’re probably better off not saying anything at all.

Another question to consider is what level of clarity we have from the Scriptures on the matter. Is the data we have from the Scriptures on whatever the issue is so clear that there are no debates or widespread misunderstandings about what the “Christian” position on the issue is? If that’s the case, a convicted conversation with a fellow believer who is erring on the matter with the goal in mind of calling them back to greater faithfulness to the path of Christ may be in order. Simply trumpeting a social media post about it, though, is probably not going to accomplish very much. So why bother doing it?

Do the people involved in whatever the issue is claim to be followers of Jesus? If not, then criticizing their behavior on the grounds that it doesn’t align with the teachings of Jesus isn’t going to be a very productive thing to do. More than that, it will be perceived as being unhelpfully judgmental of them, giving justification to their likely belief that Christians are just a bunch of judgmental busybodies who are more focused on regulating the behavior of people who never signed up for their weird club in the first place than they are about making sure the people who already have are representing Jesus well with their own lives. Don’t feed into that belief if you can help it.

If the people involved do claim to be followers of Jesus, are they part of your church family such that you have the position to publicly call them out on some matter or another? If not, you should probably keep off of social media about it. Churches have authority over their own members. There’s biblical warrant for that. But the members of another church are the responsibility of that church, not you and yours. It’s okay to have a convicted and charitable conversation with a friend who happens to be a member of another church about a place where you see their behavior deviating from the example of Jesus. But if they aren’t part of your church, you don’t have the authority to exercise any amount of judgment over them. And social media isn’t the place for those kinds of conversations anyway.

Here’s another matter to consider. Is staking out a particular public position on some question going to serve to advance the Gospel in the hearts and minds of those who hear your position? Or will your public posting serve to create an artificial barrier other than the Gospel itself for someone who is currently far from connecting with Jesus through your church?

I once saw a fairly prominent pastor post publicly about a hot button social matter in a way that expressed his deep and vigorous disagreement with those who held a position on it that didn’t line up with his personal convictions. Now, I happened to personally share his position on the matter. But to post publicly about it like he did sent a signal to anyone who didn’t happen to agree with his position in the community where his church was located that they were probably not safe or welcome in his church. He created an artificial barrier to the Gospel that likely alienated some of the very people he ostensibly wanted to reach with its message in his community. Don’t create those kinds of barriers if you can help it.

Now, just those questions are probably going to eliminate the justification for a great number of the social media posts believers make by way of “taking a stand” on one issue or another. Here are a few more questions to consider before you post, lightning round fashion.

Has your view on the matter been sought by enough people in enough places that a public statement is the most convenient way to respond to all of them? In other words, does everyone really want to know what you have to say? Or have you simply convinced yourself of that in order to justify your desire to post something about it?

Will staking out the position you are going to advance help or hinder your church’s reputation and ability to minister effectively in the community where you are located?

Are you sufficiently informed on the issue such that your view is fully reflective and considerate of all the relevant data on the matter? That is, do you have all of your facts straight?

Could a private conversation with the people involved in the matter in question be a more effective way to move the needle on the issue than a public statement?

In making your post, especially when it is going to declare someone’s behavior or thinking to be in the wrong, are you making your assessment based on the standard of the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone, or are you casting judgment on them for failing to uphold a standard they haven’t even adopted for themselves in the first place?

Is the statement you will make about helping people see the difference between the Gospel and the world in a way that will positively point them toward the former and away from the latter, or are you just opining for the sake of receiving a chorus of “attaboys” from people who are already inclined to agree with your position?

If you stake out this position, what will be the impact on the people around you? On your church? On your family? On your career? Are there going to be social or political or even legal consequences associated with your efforts to speak truth to power, and are you prepared to pay those consequences without grumbling or complaining or criticizing the people enforcing those consequences for doing their job?

If you do wind up facing some kind of consequences for your position, are you prepared to represent Christ faithfully and well even in the midst of fierce persecution? Are you prepared to take advantage of the opportunities those consequences will create to share the Gospel with the lost people involved in the system that has now been turned against you? To perhaps put that another way: Do you have a good theology of getting fired? Jesus Himself said that we should be prepared to take up our crosses if we are going to follow HIm. If we are going to follow Him by making a public statement on some public issue, we had indeed better be ready to shoulder our crosses for the effort.

Whew…that’s a lot. Take a breath for a minute.

That’s probably not all of the questions we need to think through before moving forward with our intention to make a public statement on a difficult or dicey or divisive political or cultural or even theological issue. But it at least gives us a good start. Thanks to the ethics of social media today, we are often far more willing to make public statements about hot topics in that format than perhaps we should in most cases. Before you post, think through these questions and answer them honestly. If you can answer them all the right way, post away. If not, you might want to consider hitting delete instead of post. It may save you, the people around you, and even the entire kingdom of God some grief. After all, even a fool is considered wise when he keeps silent – discerning, when he seals his lips. Let them all think you’re wise. The more you take up the act, the wiser you just might become.