It was a hot Sunday afternoon, too hot for spring. I try to nap on Sundays after church but I can’t sleep while the sun is up, though come to think of it I can barely sleep when the sun is down, so though I put on my pajamas and lie down in my bed with the curtains closed and the sound machines pumping out their stimulus drowning hums, I stare at the ceiling and think of all the things my brain can hold. Restless, I kick off the covers, change into my workout clothes, grab my phone, and pause for a moment before deciding to leave my headphones at home.

I walk my ordinary route because this walk is not for steps or observation or catching up on podcasts. It’s for thinking. I need my feet to carry me with muscle memory while I attempt to work out the threads of dissonance in my brain. It’s been nagging at me for months and months, this thing I know the Lord wants me to do. You know the feeling in the pit of your stomach and the darkest, dustiest corner of your heart where you try to hide the places of obedience you’d rather avoid. It might not be sin for some, but it has become sin for you. Even in areas where we can practice Christian freedom, I think you know when the Spirit is nudging you toward removal of a practice. He just won’t leave you alone.

So, I talked to Him about it. And I decided that repentance couldn’t look like setting timers or putting limitations into place when I knew I wouldn’t keep them. Repentance for the same overconsumption, the same mindless doomscrolling, the same relentless pursuit of an ever-changing integer of likes, follows, and comments that I know in my heart will never satisfy me. The thing is, nothing is ever enough. And it never will be. I want to have knowledge I wasn’t created to have, I want affirmation that doesn’t mean anything, and I want a steady stream of entertainment that I will certainly regret at the end of my life. The back and forth I’ve gone through in the last year has led me to the edge of quitting a few times, but in the end I always decide it’s not as damaging to my mind and heart as it really is. And so I either suffer the consequences of a stout refusal to obey or I keep playing a pretend game of repentance and feel far from the Lord who knows what’s best for me.

 

I’ve been wading through the book of Isaiah for eight months, and in recent weeks I’ve been studying chapters 41-44. I’ve been bowled over by the way so much of Israel and Judah’s sin problems were bound up with idolatry. On many occasions Lord gives long lists of His attributes and past works and wonders for His people. And then, generally, there is a “but” or a “yet” followed by the ways they have held fast to their idols and ignored the Lord’s call to repentance. In chapter 43, the Lord explains how He is the one who deals with sin, He has provided a way to atone for their rebellion. He is the one we run to with our sin for He is the one who deals with it.  But the people of God wouldn’t come to Him. Instead of wearing Him out with offerings and prayers, they were wearing Him out with their continued sinful idolatry. He would have welcomed the wearying repentance.

The thing about my feeble faux repentance is that I just keep coming back to the Lord with excuses for why I wasted so much time or why I was checking notifications or why I cared so much about something that matters so little. I pray, “Help me to be strong,” while holding in my hand all the things I should be fleeing from. There’s a way to deal with sin. The Lord has provided it through true repentance, but I’m not wearying Him with genuine prayer and a pursuit of repentance. If anything, I’m wearying Him with my pretend apologies we both know I’ll be praying again tomorrow. If I should be knocking down His door for anything, it ought to be with genuine repentance. Not weak excuses for holding on to the thing we know is killing me. For repentance to be real, you have to cut off the arm or gouge out the eye, as Jesus said. Don’t make allowances for the sin you want to eradicate. Don’t hold the little idol in your hand and expect it will be easy not to bow to it.

And it is an idol for me, I’ve discovered. “You’re so good at social media,” I’ve been told on many occasions by friends who do what I do in the world of Christian writing and speaking. What they mean is I’m genuine and none of it seems too scripted. And they’re right about that part—I am my real self and little of it is scripted. But the part they’re wrong about is the part where I’m good at it. Social media an albatross I’ve been desperate to wear. It has crushed my creativity, shortened my attention span, and fed a pride problem as someone who’s been “building a platform” for a lot of years. I actually really hate that phrase, “building a platform,” because it’s what I was told to do ten years ago in order to get into the publishing world by people I would never listen to today. I maintained a steady online presence to keep my work as a writer in front of people. I thought that is what I was supposed to do.

But you know what, not one publisher I’ve worked with has ever cared about my platform. They’ve cared about my writing and the way I live my life as a follower of Jesus.

I never gained tons and tons of followers, and that was okay with me. But I was always present for the work because social media was supposed to serve me. But instead, I ended up serving it. It became a chase and a time-suck and a thing I regretted at the end of every day for what it was doing to my brain (weaking my ability to write with the constant video feed) and my heart (pumping me full of pride with accolades or breaking it down with criticism).

In Isaiah 44, Isaiah describes the futility and folly of a man cutting down a tree and using half the wood to build a fire to warm himself and cook his food and then using the other half of the wood to fashion an idol to which he bows down and worships. It’s ridiculous when you read the satirical description in verses 9-20. Who would do that?

I would. I do. I look to a glimmering screen with fake promises of affirmation and amusement and satisfaction and I give it my time, my attention, my hope, my desires, and—let’s be honest—my worship. It’s ridiculous. Believe me, I feel the stupidity of what I’m sharing with you. Have some self-control, right? But how do you stand at the bar and refuse to take a drink day after day after day?

In Isaiah 44:20, Isaiah describes the person who worships what he can hold in his hands: “He feeds on ashes; a deluded heart has led him astray, and he cannot deliver himself or say, ‘Is there not a lie in my right hand?’” He can’t deliver himself. He can’t see the delusion. He can’t see the lie in his right hand or what worshiping the lie is doing to his heart.

What is the antidote?

Well, that’s what’s so beautiful about Isaiah 44. Before this description are eight verses about how God’s people belong to Him and how belonging to Him gives them a true, safe identity. And after the idolatry description is a long list of all the ways God has ruled the universe as its Maker. The antidote to idolatry is to remember the Lord. Because when you remember Him in the morning when you wake up, when you sit down to eat, when you pray, when you take a walk, when you talk to your spouse or your kids, when you work, when you watch the sun set, when you lie down at night—well, then your idol becomes ridiculous. The lie in your right hand appears exactly as it is—a lie. The antidote to idolatry is to behold our God. Our only true God.

I decided to quit the lie in my right hand.

So, I immediately removed the apps from my phone. I’ve done that dozens of times, but I don’t have plans to restore them because this is it. Not limits, but the end. On my hot Sunday walk that afternoon, I looked ahead to where I wanted to be with social media in six months, and I reverse engineered a plan that would keep my accounts active for my work without my actual presence on the apps. When I got home from my walk, I told my husband and typed up the plan. I emailed the plan to my sister. And then I journaled about it every day for a week, staying off social media more than I ever had in my history of this form of media.

The longer I stayed away, the more I wanted to stay away.

At first, there was a twitchy feeling. Social media is designed to keep you coming back. There is an actual brain issue here. I reached for my phone and opened without thinking why. It was a reflex. But it got easier to leave it alone. In a week, my screen time was cut in more than half. I had made plans to post content from a third-party app, but I didn’t even do that. I liked being alone with this. I liked processing my life and my thoughts without thousands of followers peering at me through a screen. I liked writing in my journal rather than immediately turning a new thought or biblical understanding into content to be posted. I liked sitting with what I was learning. And, as my concentration began to heal, I preferred reading to scrolling.

I had to sit with some boredom at first—what do we do when we’re waiting in line? Or sitting in a doctor’s office? Well, what we do is sit and think and feel boredom. It won’t kill you. I began sitting still with my thoughts and that was more pleasant than I thought it would be. Dozens of writing ideas swam their way to the surface of my mind now that they weren’t pressed underwater by all the on-screen intake. I discovered I didn’t miss knowing what was going on in everyone’s life like I thought I would. If something really important happens, I know my husband or friends or my mom or my sister will tell me. I don’t need to know everything that’s happening in the world. I wasn’t created for that.

Here’s the scary thing, friends. I’m a moderate social media user. I truly believe my usage falls somewhere around the median, maybe even slightly lower. So while my usage as a writer is different from most, I am willing to bet that the negative effects I’ve felt (both in my body and mind as much as in my heart) are commonalities we’re all either ignoring or weakly wrestling with.  

There’s a lot more I could say on this, and I will say it in the future as I pour my energy into writing rather than scrolling (as it turns out, you really do have more time in the day if you quit social media). But I’m still in the early days of trying to figure out how to live in the world of publishing and book writing while quitting one of the means of marketing many people rely on in that field.

I think I will just have to trust God with the fallout. I’m pretty sure He can handle it.

So what now? Some of you are here reading this because I (wonder of wonders) shared this link on social media. It’s a risky time with all this because I have a book publishing in eight days. I plan to schedule content for the book push without being on the apps myself. I might jump on through my laptop browser to acknowledge all the kind readers and “bookstagrammers” on launch day, but I’ve already distanced myself from social media so much lately that I’m hesitant to return at all. My goal is to take a good long break before I reassess and decide if I want to keep my accounts open for third-party sharing or to delete them altogether.

No one asked for this update, but it’s been such a fight in my own heart that I felt surely I can’t be the only one. I know social media isn’t good for me, but maybe you’re in a similar spot and wonder if getting out is possible.

Social media in and of itself is morally neutral. Sin creeps in in how we use it. I’ve been encouraged by so much godly content on social media, and I will miss those parts. I’ve tried to contribute content that feeds that side of the algorithm. But in the end, there was too much that was sinful for me to justify staying. So I left.

My accounts are still active, but I’m not there. There but not there, if that makes sense. And I can’t tell you how free I feel. I hope that a year from now I’m revisiting this and telling you how I have no regrets and wish I’d done it sooner. Maybe the accounts will be gone, if that seems feasible for my job. I’ve kept up with a lot of friends via social media, but I’m ready to return to more personal communication. So don’t send me a message; I won’t see it. Instead, feel free to email me. I have time to answer. Subscribe to my newsletter where I plan to pour more of my energy and better writing and personal updates. Keep up with this website. Read my books. In my opinion, long-form writing is always a better way to know what’s true and good. It protects me from the chase of likes and follows and gives you more thoughtfully shared words to read. 

The thing is, I don’t want to hold on to the lie in my right hand anymore. So this is me, letting it go.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash