During the Covid pandemic, I closed my Facebook account, having concluded that it was not good for my holiness to be continuously irritated by what I was reading. I detected a persistent self-righteous desire to correct much of what I was reading. It also seemed to me that, at times, I was not content with simply being right, I wanted others to agree that I was right.
After quitting social media, I have concluded that this desire for human applause and affirmation is a pressing danger for many followers of Christ today. In one sense this inner desire for applause is perfectly natural. God has created us as communal beings who care about what other people think of us. It would be terrible if we didn’t care to listen to each other.
The opinions of other people about us can enrich our lives by encouraging us to keep doing good and help us restrain sin through wise correction. We do not know everything, and we are not always the best judges of ourselves.
