How Has Social Media Changed Bible Reading?
00:00:00.000 | We're joined again with our friend Jen Wilkin, wife, mom, Bible teacher, and author of the
00:00:09.640 | fabulous book, Women of the Word, How to Study the Bible with Both Our Hearts and Our Minds.
00:00:16.200 | The book turned four years old this summer, and it's already sold 200,000 print copies
00:00:20.480 | alone, an amazing achievement.
00:00:22.120 | We talked about the book last time, but today I want to talk about your blog, Jen, because
00:00:25.900 | you caused quite a stir with a 2016 article titled The Instagram Bible.
00:00:33.020 | You opened that piece by writing this, "Beware the Instagram Bible, my daughters, those filtered
00:00:39.360 | frames, festooned with feathered verses, adorned in all matter of loops and tails, bedeckled
00:00:45.040 | with blossoms, saturated with sunsets, cold and curated just for you."
00:00:51.760 | Wow.
00:00:53.800 | What is the Instagram Bible, and what was the warning you were sounding in that piece?
00:01:00.000 | I've noticed that on certain social media platforms, people have a propensity to cherry
00:01:06.560 | pick scriptures more egregiously than elsewhere.
00:01:13.760 | And so, if you're a woman on Instagram, your feed is, a Christian woman on Instagram, your
00:01:18.640 | feed is going to be clogged with these hand-lettered verses that are scrolled and embellished.
00:01:27.320 | And they really are lovely and suitable for framing, but they're often pulled completely
00:01:32.280 | out of context.
00:01:33.480 | I think that they can create the illusion that we are interacting with Scripture in
00:01:40.400 | a healthy way.
00:01:42.040 | But if you think about it, you're only going to hand-letter certain kinds of verses out
00:01:47.740 | of the Bible.
00:01:48.740 | And the Bible is full of many different genres and covers many different subjects.
00:01:53.660 | So for the purpose of the post, I tongue-in-cheek created an Instagram frame quoting about the
00:01:59.680 | cutting up of the concubine that you find in the book of Judges.
00:02:03.720 | And I think I offended every hand-letterer on the internet by doing so, which was not
00:02:09.800 | my intent.
00:02:10.800 | And honestly, I love that people create beautiful art that is celebrating beautiful passages
00:02:17.820 | in Scripture.
00:02:19.420 | But when we begin to succumb to the illusion that all of the Bible is Instagram worthy
00:02:24.580 | and is inspirational, that's a dangerous place to go to.
00:02:28.620 | The Bible should exhort and convict, not just warm the cockles of our hearts.
00:02:34.460 | So women, I think in particular, are drawn toward wanting an emotional boost from what
00:02:41.540 | they're reading in the moment.
00:02:44.380 | And I don't know that that's a uniquely feminine problem, but it does seem to color the pages
00:02:49.060 | of Instagram.
00:02:50.540 | And so I wanted to challenge women in particular to think about what they're reading and to
00:02:58.300 | read what comes before and what comes after the verse that they're seeing put into a frame
00:03:03.300 | out there.
00:03:04.300 | But it's not really just an issue with social media.
00:03:07.700 | It's an issue with how we read the Bible in general.
00:03:10.780 | The Instagram Bible presents a devotional view of the Bible, and exclusively so, almost
00:03:16.580 | exclusively so.
00:03:17.980 | And the Bible does not lend itself neatly to devotional reading on many of its pages.
00:03:23.860 | And if all Scripture is God-breathed and profitable, we should be reminding ourselves to spend
00:03:29.580 | time in all of it versus loving certain verses or certain passages to excess.
00:03:37.580 | Such a good word.
00:03:39.260 | How else has social media changed our private Bible reading?
00:03:42.860 | I'm thinking of personal devotional setup where the coffee cup is full.
00:03:49.340 | It's in a choice mug.
00:03:50.900 | The coffee's been creamed to the perfect shade of soft brown.
00:03:54.500 | And the whole setting is staged like a Thomas Kinkade painting with light beams of sunrise
00:03:58.540 | inspiration beaming from one corner.
00:04:01.580 | The arrangement is perfect.
00:04:03.220 | What do you say about this staging of the devotional setting?
00:04:06.660 | Yeah, I kind of get a kick out of seeing what women will put out there.
00:04:12.140 | Honestly, a lot of times it's one of my books with a coffee cup next to it.
00:04:15.620 | So I have mixed feelings about it.
00:04:19.340 | Because I do think it is worth noting to take Instagram for what it's worth.
00:04:23.860 | I actually refer to Instagram as the last happy place with social media because it's
00:04:29.540 | still a place of optimism.
00:04:31.540 | But when you see it as a place of realism, that's when you run into trouble.
00:04:35.820 | And so to understand someone is creating a vignette is different than saying, "Oh my
00:04:40.420 | goodness, her life is so perfect."
00:04:42.420 | So to see it almost as a lay level art form, that does not offend me.
00:04:47.780 | But to believe that someone's life is that picture perfect is where the problem comes
00:04:53.140 | in.
00:04:54.140 | And I hear people report frequently that Instagram is a source of woe to them because of the
00:04:59.700 | comparison issue.
00:05:01.340 | They compare their lives to other people's and they feel like their life comes up short.
00:05:05.500 | And I would say that's to miss the point of Instagram.
00:05:08.900 | But also obviously be aware of your own weaknesses.
00:05:11.260 | And if that's an issue for you, then get off Instagram.
00:05:14.060 | But for those who understand it as, yeah, it is offering sort of an idealized version
00:05:19.300 | of our lives.
00:05:20.580 | And as long as we can acknowledge that, we can take it with a grain of salt and enjoy
00:05:24.980 | it like we would enjoy other forms of art, but not ask it to be more than it is.
00:05:32.660 | Well, speaking of things radiant, you have a new book, In His Image, 10 Ways God Calls
00:05:39.060 | Us to Reflect His Character.
00:05:40.580 | In it, you wrote this, "Everything we say or do will either illuminate or obscure the
00:05:46.300 | character of God.
00:05:49.500 | Sanctification is the process of joyfully growing luminous."
00:05:54.060 | I love that.
00:05:55.740 | Explain that quote for us.
00:05:56.740 | What do you mean by that?
00:05:58.660 | I think that we don't always consider how our understanding of God will either make
00:06:04.180 | us into saints or heretics in the way that we communicate about him.
00:06:09.020 | And so the reason that I wrote In His Image, and actually its predecessor, None Like Him,
00:06:14.620 | was because my common admonition to people when they sit down to read the Bible is to
00:06:20.700 | read it as a book about God.
00:06:23.580 | And that's a very obvious statement to make about the Bible.
00:06:26.500 | And I have never met a Christian who would disagree that the Bible is a book about God.
00:06:30.500 | But what I have found is that when it comes to our practice of reading, we often read
00:06:35.260 | it as a book about ourselves first.
00:06:37.900 | And some of that is because we've been told to do so by well-meaning people.
00:06:43.100 | But the other impetus there is just that we tend to think that the whole world is about
00:06:47.580 | us just by default.
00:06:49.340 | And so when we come to the scriptures, the next obstacle that I found that men and women
00:06:54.060 | ran into after recognizing, "Oh, right, I do need to read this as a book about God first,"
00:06:59.620 | was that we have an atrophied vocabulary about the things that are true about God.
00:07:05.380 | We don't have minds that are trained to look for His attributes when we read.
00:07:10.180 | So I wanted to write on basically the doctrine of God in a way that was accessible and that
00:07:16.420 | would help people to recognize how their words or their actions or their thoughts were either
00:07:23.780 | pointing people toward Christ or obscuring who Christ was.
00:07:28.940 | Because the unbeliever is not going to pick up the Bible and read it, not unless there's
00:07:33.340 | already some process in place where they're already feeling pulled by the Spirit.
00:07:37.100 | And so that means that when they wonder what Christianity is about, they're going to look
00:07:40.740 | at us.
00:07:41.740 | Not only that, but for the building up of the body, relationships between other believers,
00:07:46.480 | we need to be able to look at one another and see the character of God emerging in us
00:07:51.620 | through the process of sanctification.
00:07:53.600 | I wanted to write a book, or actually two books, on sanctification because I am learning
00:07:59.720 | increasingly that in the communities of believers who call themselves gospel-centered, we often
00:08:08.600 | think of the gospel as justification only.
00:08:12.900 | We understand that we have been freed from sin's penalty, but then any conversation about
00:08:19.940 | obedience to God can be very quickly labeled as legalism.
00:08:24.460 | And I believe that the gospel is good news in our justification and in our sanctification,
00:08:30.400 | and I would say also in our glorification, of course, that sanctification has been a
00:08:34.320 | missing piece of the conversation for many of us in the gospel-centered movement, that
00:08:38.280 | we have perhaps talked less than we should about the beauty of the work of the Spirit
00:08:46.560 | in the life of the believer to re-image us and to be the humans that we were created
00:08:52.900 | to be.
00:08:53.900 | So, again, obedience and justification are inseparably tied together in our union to
00:08:59.500 | Christ.
00:09:00.500 | That's a good and timely word for the church today, Jen.
00:09:02.500 | Thank you.
00:09:03.500 | Jen will be back one more time with us because I want you to explain to us what you mean
00:09:08.420 | by the Xanax approach to Bible reading.
00:09:11.260 | Oh my.
00:09:12.260 | This is also a trend you've seen crop up in Bible reading, and it's shaped by social media,
00:09:16.620 | and I think these patterns are really important to address.
00:09:19.220 | We'll do that next time.
00:09:20.420 | On Monday when we return with Jen Wilkin, I'm your host Tony Ranke.
00:09:23.500 | Have a great weekend.
00:09:24.300 | Bye.
00:09:24.800 | [END]
00:09:26.800 | 1. What is the Xanax approach to Bible reading?
00:09:28.800 | 2. What is the Xanax approach to Bible reading?
00:09:30.800 | [BLANK_AUDIO]