Searching for a Meme-less Christianity
How Christians' engagement on social media is leading to a more disembodied faith.
This past week, I have watched as several of my social media friends shared theological memes they created that erupted in debate. “Jesus was not born to die,” read the first one. Another one read, “Kingdom of Heaven is really just a metaphor for a state of consciousness,” a quote from Cynthia Bourgeault. These are just two examples of what has become a trend among church leaders and spiritual caregivers.
I grew up in the Christian world of the 1990s where Christian slogans were all the rage. If we could put it on a bumper sticker, a keychain, or a rubber bracelet we would. And if we couldn’t make a slogan fit, we would come up with acronyms or abbreviations. WWJD (what would Jesus do) and FROG (fully rely on God) were a couple of my favorites. It was like a cool secret code for Christians.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s that I heard pastors start pushing back against slogan-based expressions of faith like these, which by that time had taken over the marketplace for youth ministries. You weren’t part of the in-crowd if you didn’t have a Christian slogan t-shirt or bracelet on. The pushback shook me at the time. As it turns out, I took my Christian slogans a little too seriously. I came to realize that the pushback was necessary as I had put a lot of spiritual and theological import in these short pithy sayings that I felt summed up the whole of Christian belief.
We didn’t call them memes back then but they fit the textbook definition: an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. Social media has made today’s Christian memes more ubiquitous and, in my humble opinion, too easily received by the general audience.
I first observed the trend of online religious memes in the early days of Twitter when posts were limited to 140 characters. Some of my favorite Christian authors and speakers would sometimes comment on how difficult it was to articulate deep and complex ideas with limited words. Others saw the challenge as helpful in that it forced Christians to speak concisely and in ways that are easily understood and more receptive to the general audience. A few of those Christian leaders navigated the platform by writing long series of tweets and denoting them as 1/3, 2/3, 3/3, etc. I found those to be some of the best tweets. Nevertheless, to stay relevant on Twitter, shortening ideas into as few words as possible became trendy and acceptable among Christian influencers. Fast forward to today’s social media environment and we find algorithms that are designed to keep you scrolling. Posts and videos that are lengthy or linked do not perform well and get lost in the mix of most feeds; the least desirable outcome for creators striving for reach. It is no surprise that spiritual influencers have become prolific in creating short concise theological messaging.
But is it good for us? I do not believe so. I have found theological memes to be more divisive than helpful. I say this as an influencer myself who has succumbed at times to the sharing of Christian “hot takes” or my random spiritual musings in 140 characters or less. I mean, who’s ego doesn’t love quoting themselves and testing how their audience responds? I know I am not the only one. Being divisive is part of the game, though, if one plans on leveraging the algorithm for reach and influence because at the end of the day, every comment boosts your post, and nothing generates comments like scandal, division, and arguments.
Take the aforementioned meme that said, “Jesus wasn’t born to die.” In less than 25 characters this meme dismisses an atonement theory that has been considered orthodox and part of multiple Christian traditions’ beliefs and practices for centuries: penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). The comments following the meme are not a helpful dialog about the complicated features of PSA, as it certainly poses several theological and ethical conundrums, but instead reflect the same worldly dialog you would find on a political meme replete with condescension, virtue signaling, faux expertise, and googled come-backs. All vanity. Nothing that sounds like what you would hear at an actual theological conversation held by individuals seeking to understand one another in their pursuit of truth.
On the other hand, we influencers do need to find ways to make Christian faith and concepts accessible to a wider audience. It is not helpful to believe in things like penal substitutionary atonement and not provide ways for it to be discussed, and even critiqued, without needing a seminary degree or literacy in the writings of the patristics. Memes and online debates aren’t the answer though. I do not claim to have an answer, but I think Christians must begin by confronting what I see as the most obvious problem we must solve in the age of social media: that Christianity is an embodied faith trying to connect to people with more disembodied relationships than ever before.
He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him.
John 1:10, NLT
One of the core beliefs of Christians is the belief in the incarnation. We believe that the Creator became human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. To us, Jesus was fully God and fully man. Moreover, we believe that Jesus’ physical death changed the world and we continue to practice rituals like the eucharist where we ingest the body and blood of Christ as bread and wine. Our faith is one that is centered around concepts of touch, tastes, sounds, birth, life, and death. Christianity is an incarnational life; human life. We do not follow Jesus’ teachings as an avatar or social media personality. It is impossible.
We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him.
1 John 1:1-2, NLT
Yet, I see a rise in Christians who are promoting virtual church or faith communities in the metaverse. It seems to be the new edgy and radical thing to do. But I think one of the edgiest and most radical things Christians can do is to return to an embodied faith that is pure from the pseudo-entanglements of parasocial relationships and more intentional about being an embodied faith in a growing disembodied world. This looks less like arguments about memes and more like conversations around meals. Maybe it's time for all Christian influencers to be conscientious objectors to social media discourse about our faith and instead become promoters of a return to Christian simplicity and incarnational community. What do you think?