2
" Social media has exploded our narcissism. “Facebragging” has become a new slang term for the way that social media has enabled us to shamelessly self-promote, self-congratulate, and generally make public fools of ourselves. As Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, authors of The Narcissism Epidemic, have pointed out, there’s a kind of democratization on the web, where everyone’s opinion has been elevated (or deflated) to a common level. Journalists who fight to present information with clarity and objectivity find themselves contradicted and shouted down by raging bloggers and commenters with no actual knowledge of whatever circumstance they may be reporting. Self-expression on the web has led to a sense of entitlement, a belief that “everybody’s opinion is just as valid as everyone else’s.”2 Andrew Keen refers to the phenomenon as “ignorance meets egoism, meets bad taste, meets mob rule.”3 It’s a world where the way up is to be louder, more flashy, more harsh and outspoken. "
― , Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey
3
" Today, just as in Jesus’s day, greatness means power, position. It means people serving me, and Jesus says a resounding, “No!” As an old Puritan prayer says so eloquently, we need to learn to pray: Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown.9 "
― , Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey
5
" Becoming like Jesus means taking on his character, his way of looking at the world, his way of loving and interacting with others. It means cultivating a relationship with God like Jesus’s own—one of intimacy, depth, and care. It means living a life that’s at war with evil’s grip on the world around us, and that certainly includes the sin in our lives, but to make sin management primary in the Christian life misses the point of the gospel. Our sins are paid for, past, present, and future, and in that freedom we can be transformed. "
― , Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey
