We are hiding. We are shapeshifting. We are wearing a mask.
So often, we, as a society, find our “comfortable” behind our screens, lurking in the virtual world and stealthily pretending to be someone we aren’t.
A false sense of confidence seamlessly weaves its way into the cracks of our keyboards, and the light of our screens takes over the shape of the lightbulb over our heads as our ideas suddenly seem to only come to fruition when technology is present.
Is it easier to be who we want to be without showing our faces? Do we type things on an app, send messages to others, post pictures to mask our insecurities and put on a brave face of false security?
Some believe our generation to be simply of technology, one that hides behind our phones and sends out messages that they wouldn’t dare say to someone’s face.
Don’t you want to prove them wrong?
Don’t you want to be more than technology?
We can’t be the purest form of ourselves when we feel the greatest sense of accomplishment when we receive a certain number of likes on a post, when we stir up a good debate on the wall of an app, when we handle conflict online—in a manner that never really resolves anything.
There is so much hurt and unrest that comes from people agonizing over and misunderstanding the lack of influction from reading a text. No one will ever benefit from handling a horrible situation on the internet. Tweeting out your opinions and getting into an argument on countless topics will never truly fulfill you. Why continue to pretend?
We are becoming the product of the products we, as humans, produced. We are leaving the old ways behind us—open and honest and personal communication, preferring WiFi-to-WiFi over face-to-face—all in the name of “easier.”
But is it truly beneficial to write bold comments on apps rather than having a conversation about it in person? Are we doing ourselves a favor or a fault by relying heavily on the pretend life that we have made “real” online?
In a world in which there is so much hurt, so much brokenness, so much sin, it might make living in community and loving other people much easier if we learned to be authentic even when we don’t hold a little “world” in our hands.
We might find that we actually enjoy the real world, the tangible and natural life that the Lord made, if we quit pretending to be something different, if we got personal again, if we took off the mask.