Selfies

                                          Mark 8: 34-37

 

 

          Selfie.  It’s a new word for a new century. Selfie is the word we use to denote taking pictures of ourselves, most often to post on social media. We take selfies to show that we can be cute. We take selfies to show that we have been somewhere. We take selfies to be funny or to identify ourselves with someone more important or more famous, like a sports star or a celebrity. This new phenomenon has so permeated our culture that in 2013, the word “selfie” made entry into the Oxford English Dictionary. It didn’t just make the dictionary. In 2012, Time magazine pronounced it one of the top ten words of the year, and in 2013, the Oxford Dictionary awarded it the status of word of the year.

          Selfies have become so popular that other gadgets have been made to promote them. For instance, now you can buy a selfie stick to hold while you snap a selfie. It has the effect of extending your arm to take in a wider panorama. Selfies are used to communicate, to self-promote, to publicize. Samsung commissioned a poll to find out who is taking selfies. Among its findings was that in the 18-24 age group, over thirty percent of camera use is for selfies.

          Of all the many changes that have accompanied the digital age, the use of social media is the most profound and penetrating force. On Facebook (which now has 1.86 billion users per month), members put up “walls.” They “friend" each other. They “un-friend” each other too. On Twitter, they “follow” each other to the tune of 144 typed characters at a time.  In 2013, Instagram reported 53 million photos tagged with the hashtag #selfie. The sociology behind all this picture taking seems to suggest that the selfie gives these self-photographers control over how they present themselves.  And yet, a recent study of Facebook users seems to indicate that users who use it frequently actually risk damaging real-life relationship, rather than deepening them.

          Isn’t it just like us all to keep on trying to present ourselves in the most favorable light? Isn’t is just like the human race to build “walls” to post all our selfies on, as if all we are about is who we are.

We travel. We see beautiful places. We see great works of art. We visit national monuments and parks. And how do we remember our journeys? Most of the time, we look at pictures which amount to nothing more than selfies with a new background.

          We have a self problem. Eugene Peterson, the author of the Bible translation called “The Message,” writes that America is in conspicuous need of unselfing. He goes on to say that social science observers lay the blame for the deterioration of our public life and the disintegration of our personal lives at the door of… the self. Our worldviews for thousands of years began as the created ones. God was outside that creation and we sought to understand and explain our existence from that worldview. Today in America, where only twenty percent of Millenials (those born between 1982-2002) look to a God centered world, we are just as likely…or perhaps much more… to look at someone’s Facebook wall to determine who they are as we are to actually sit with them and talk about who they are. In our rush to “see” the faces of our personal communities on the walls of our computers, we run the grave and life changing risk of valuing all on that one dimensional “face” on the wall.         

          But life is not one dimensional.  Life is at least three dimensional. We are not just selfies in the scrapbooks of the tech age. We have flesh on our bones, blood in our veins, emotions that run the gamut of human existence, brains that even in this hard drive age can out think and out reason computers in hundreds of ways. And we have spirits. That’s right. We have spirits. We are fundamentally eternal spiritual beings encased in bodies with a shelf life.

          Why do we over-engage in all this self-adoration, this self dealing? The fact of the matter is that it’s been going on since the beginning of time. In the Garden of Eden, Cain was mad about his inferior offering being rejected by God, so mad that he killed his own brother to become No. 1. Then, he sought to evade God on the issue of being his brother’s keeper. King Ahab pouted over a vineyard until his wife had the owner murdered and presented the vineyard to Ahab as a gift. That was Ahab’s selfie. He gave no further thought to the means by which he had acquired it. Even King David, when tempted with the beauty of Bathsheba, couldn’t resist the selfish use of power to put that selfie on his wall for all to see. It was only later that he saw the incredible selfishness that had led him to even more incredible sin.  In the New Testament, we even see James and John, two of Jesus’ disciples, vying for position in the kingdom to come. They wanted what they wanted. They want to be posted on Jesus’ Facebook wall as the princes of the kingdom of God. Even in that inner circle of discipleship, people were more concerned with themselves than with others.

          You remember Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He was the Russian writer and historian who spent years in prison and exile for daring to write about the dark side of the Soviet Union and Communism. In 1978, Solzhenitsyn delivered a speech, or sermon if you will, at Harvard University. Listen to this excerpt from that now famous speech: “We have placed too much hope in politics and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possessions; our spiritual life.” In other words, we want our own social inventions to take the place of God in our hearts.

          In today’s Scripture passage, the disciples had accompanied Jesus to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. The story is famous for Peter’s recognition of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. But there is more to that day than Peter’s recognition. Mark’s gospel tells us that Jesus then called the crowd to join him with the disciples. By this time in Jesus’s ministry, he was seldom without a crowd. They went looking for a meal, a miracle, maybe even a man of God. Believers and sceptics alike followed Jesus wherever he went. And so, Jesus turns to them and he says this: If you want to come after me, then deny yourself, and take up the cross and follow me.  He went on to give some very serious advice about self. And what he said next is the most clear example of unselfing I have ever heard. In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates it like this:

             Calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, “Anyone

             who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re

             not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering;    

             embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is

             no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving      

             yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get   

            everything you want and lose you, the real you? What

            could you ever trade your soul for?

 

          You may not realize it. It comes on so subtly. Work a few hours more each week. You need that new car. You will have time later to visit a friend. You’ll get to church when you can. Two or three Sundays a month is enough. And Sunday school is boring. Or worship service is boring. After all, you have a growing family and they take all your time. You do enough. Subtle, isn’t it, the way our faith dwindles and erodes one little step at a time. One day you wake up and realize that everything you do is all about you.

          God may ask you to be more faithful in your attendance. God may ask an elder to give communion to a shut-in. God may ask a minister to uproot himself from familiar surroundings and answer a call. God may ask a teenager to ignore the lure of social media and to engage in one to one conversation with someone, maybe even someone not his choosing. There is no difference in the way Jesus calls each of us. The difference is in the way each of us will respond. God doesn’t press us like Satan does. We have to let go our wants and reach for our needs. We have to come willingly.

          As a general rule, differences and diversity are good, healthy things. But there is one thing I can think of in this world in which I really wish we all acted and thought alike. I want my wall to be full of unselfies. I want to want to sacrifice myself. Because I really want to save myself, my true self. I want that for you too.

          What good would it do to get everything you want…and lose yourself, your real self?