Sermon - CoSMI - 1.1.3 - Reputation
John 14:9
Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
Since this series of sermons is directed at those who are influencers in social media, reputation is pretty much everything. On social media, perception is reality. Your reputation is who you are. How you present yourself is pretty much everything that anybody knows about you. Your reputation is your brand, and your brand is your resource, your power, your actual influence. If people trust you and think that you know what you were talking about, and that you say useful things, then they will believe you about things that they know little about. Your reputation, which is basically the same thing as your brand, mediates how much money you will make as an influencer, how many vendors will be interested in sending you their products or having you use their services, will manage how many followers you have, how many likes your posts get, and all kinds of other things. Your reputation is, on social media, pretty much everything.
So, you will want to think carefully about your reputation. You will want to plan how much of your actual self you present as your brand, and therefore your reputation. You will want to curate those parts of your life that you want to present, and those parts of your life which, well, you don't exactly hide, but you don't display, either.
Your reputation is everything.
So, what do you choose your reputation to be? Which parts of your life do you present, and which do you not.
And, most particularly, for the purposes of this series of sermons, are you presenting yourself as a Christian?
As I pointed out in the sermon on authenticity there are issues of openness and honesty here. You may think that there are certain aspects of yourself which do not have any relevance to your brand as an influencer. And your belief, or lack of believe, in God maybe one of those.
Let me pose a hypothetical question to you, as I once presented to my then twelve-year-old grandson. He had been making all kinds of anti-religious statements, knowing that it would upset both me and his grandmother. So I asked him, given that God is the most powerful entity in the universe, as a matter of fact not even in the universe, since God created the universe, and therefore must exist outside and beyond the universe, and created any other universes that there may be, and given that this God, maintaining everything that does exist by thinking about it all, all the time, wants to be your best friend. Given all of that, is there anything, anything at all, that is more important? He thought for a couple of seconds and immediately spat out the answer "money!" "God invented money," I immediately replied. You could see, on his face, that he was coming up with all kinds of alternate ideas, but immediately realized that all of them would get basically the same response. Finally he said to me, "you're messing with my head, aren't you?" "Yes," I replied.
But the point remains. If you believe in God, truly do believe in God, is there anything more important in the entire universe? CS Lewis once said that Christianity was such that, if true, it was of infinite importance. If untrue, it was of absolutely no significance whatsoever. This is true. If God exists, the fact that God exists, and the fact that God loves us and wants to be in a relationship with us, is more important than absolutely anything else that there is. It is more important than our troubles, is more important than our concerns, it is more important than our efforts and dreams. But if God does not exist, then the universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time. The universe is either mechanistic, or random, and either option means that nothing is of any importance or consequence whatsoever.
So, then, you run a channel, and have a brand and reputation as an influencer on social media. You have a certain number of people who follow you and trust your advice. You have a field of interest or expertise where you proffer opinions and information. Whatever your topic may be, it probably does not have an awful lot to do with religion. So, why bring God into the discussion?
Well, do you believe in God? If you believe in God, is God it all important to you? Given God's importance in the grand scheme of things, one would think that the answer was obvious, but it may not be. Possibly you believe in God, but you believe that God really isn't terribly interested in what you do on a day-to-day basis. If that is the case, that I would say that you really don't believe in God. Or, rather, that the god that you believe in is too small. Certainly the God that I believe in has his eye on the sparrow, and clothes the wildflowers in the field. This is not to say that God is distracted, but rather that God is able to pay attention to absolutely everything in the universe, and therefore can pay attention to everything that happens to me. And if this is true, then it has to affect my life. The belief that there is someone who loves me, even in the darkest moments of my life, who is counting both my tears and my successes, in preparation for me to have a relationship with him, eventually in eternity, well, that has to be important.
As I have mentioned in another sermon, I was married at one time. My wife has now died. I am a grieving widower. But anybody that I meet, and have a conversation with, fairly quickly learns that my wife's name was Gloria, and that she was an amazing woman. They very often learn this before they find out that she is dead. Gloria was important in my life. Gloria changed my life. And my life changed, rather drastically, once again after she died. And if I have to mention my wife, my wife who is now dead and no longer with me, in pretty much any conversation even with a stranger, then why should not God, be mentioned in pretty much any conversation that I have with anybody?
There are two additional factors to consider when you are deciding whether or not to present yourself as a Christian in terms of your reputation as an influence on social media.
The first one is that if God actually is a part of your life, and therefore, in a sense, a part of you, that will definitely have an impact on your opinions, your presentation, your choice of topics or products to consider, and a number of other factors. Don't you think that that is important for your public, your followers, to know about you? It's something that can be a factor in whether or not they trust you, or realize the types of opinions that you are going to be providing. There is a possibility that some of you will consider that being a cryptic Christian, your belief in God hidden, and seeps through in your opinions while bypassing any negative ideas that your public followers may have about Christians or Christianity. That is a factor to consider. But also consider that if that is the case, your God is the God of truth. Do you want to be using hidden tricks in order to spread the message of the God of Truth?
The second point to consider is that you may believe that talking about God will harm your own reputation. Yes, since you intend to be an influencer on social media, and your reputation is a major consideration in that choice of a career, then yes, you must be realistic in considering how admitting that you are a Christian might impact your reputation itself. There will be those who will believe that, as a Christian, your opinions are skewed and therefore may not be valid. I myself work in a field where a number of the leading members are vociferously and even militantly atheist. These are colleagues that I have to work with on a regular basis. Some of them have flatly stated that they consider that a believe in God is evidence of damaged cognitive skills: that somebody with a working brain simply cannot believe that God exists. And I have to make sure that I work very diligently to demonstrate that my work, and decisions, and opinions in the field are supported by solid evidence and consideration. So, yes, I do understand how the admission of being a Christian can have an impact, and sometimes a negative one, on your reputation.
But remember that there will also be those who will, even though they may or may not be public and vocal about their Christian beliefs, side with you. And then there is, of course, the fact that if you do your work properly, do your work diligently, back up your opinions with evidence and solid consideration, then it will become clear that your work, and opinions, and presentations, are in fact useful and valid.
And one more thing. Is protecting your reputation worth it if this means denying God?
CoSMI is a series of sermons and devotionals directed at those who work as influencers in the field of social media.
Sermon - CoSMI - 1.0.1 - Authenticity
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