Social Media: When You Can’t Stop Comparing: Jay Y. Kim

Paul lays it out really clearly that the fruit of the Spirit, it's stuff like love, joy, peace, and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. So then we have to ask ourselves the question, am I patient? Do I have self-control? Am I a person that is kind and good? Not just face-to-face, but on Facebook. And if we're not, then we have to ask a deeper question.

Okay, what is really in me? Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott. Your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson. You can find us at familylifetoday.com.

This is Family Life Today. So I got a new idea. I just thought of this on my own. What if we put our phones to bed before we go to bed at night, and then we wake up?

Somewhere else besides the bedroom, you mean? Yeah, I think I just came up with that. What do you think? I think it's great. I might even write a book with something like that in it. But honestly, what if everybody did that? I mean, we're laughing because J. Kim, the author of that idea, is sitting across the studio from us, and you're being quiet.

You're not even interrupting and saying, that's my idea. Well, it wasn't original to me. I got it from Andy Crouch, so credit where credit is due. Look at that. We go, I take it, then he doesn't even own it. He gives it to the actual source, Andy Crouch.

It's kind of a double steal. Well, Jay, welcome back to Family Life Today. You've traveled all the way from California where you're a pastor. We're talking about a book you wrote, how many years ago? Five years ago?

Analog Christian came out, no, just a year ago, but book writing's a long process. I wrote the words probably three years ago, something like that. Well, if you missed yesterday, I'm talking to our listeners now, go back and listen, because I'm not kidding. That idea that you shared yesterday, I'm embarrassed to say, I don't do that. I've never done that. Actually, when you said it yesterday, I'm like, there's no way you can function in this world without your phone sitting right beside you in a nightstand, and your Apple Watch or your digital watch on your wrist at all times.

I mean, yesterday, I was preaching at a church, and before the service, I walked into the lobby to say hi to people, and I didn't have my phone in my pocket, and I felt naked. I was like, where in the world is my phone? I can't function without it. That's the digital world we live in.

You don't have that anymore? I still do. I still do. It's a long journey.

It's a long process. I can relate, Dave. If I don't know where my phone is, and I'm out and about, there's a sort of frantic thing that happens in my soul. Where's my phone?

Where's my phone? But it's definitely gotten better, so that's the hopeful possibility. It can get better.

You know what's interesting? We were talking yesterday about my wife and how she's off social media, and she's probably the one that should write the book. She's far more disciplined than me. This has happened multiple times where we are going out for the day. We've got the kids with us.

We're taking them to a birthday party and then a lunch with friends, and then we're going somewhere else to do some shopping. We're not going to be back for six, seven hours. This has happened multiple times where we're 10 minutes into the drive, and she looks around. She says, oh, I don't have my phone, and then she'll say, ah, I don't need it. Well, I am making a commitment right now.

I would love our listeners to join me because I think you hit something that's so true. I need to put my phone to bed before I go to bed, and it doesn't need to be on the nightstand three inches from my ear where I can just reach over. And the first thing I do when I wake up is I grab it, look at the calendar or whatever.

You said yesterday your ritual, getting up in the morning and taking some time, reading a psalm. I mean, that is just wisdom. I guess I better go buy some alarm clocks.

That's right. Yeah, I need to. That's a great idea. I'm not sure I can go all the way to get rid of my watch. My watch can wake me up.

As long as I set it on my phone, my watch will buzz on my wrist and we'll wake up. Jay, you shared a little bit why you wrote this book, Analog Christian. Remind the listeners why this book.

My own digital addictions. It's a funny thing writing a book. You're offering something that you hope is helpful for people. And that's true of this book, but really the book is part confession, part prayer. And I do think it'll be helpful because I know I'm not alone, but it really is confession and prayer. I wrote the book because I knew I had a problem and I got to the place where I didn't want to become the sort of person I saw myself becoming, a person that was just shaped by my device. And it's a long journey, but writing the book was really helpful for me. It gave me a sort of framework for understanding in part why I was feeling the way I was feeling, just about all of life and how my digital addiction was playing a significant part in that. And then a lot of hope in the words of scripture and Paul's words specifically in Galatians 5 about the fruit of the Spirit.

That just really became the key to unlocking so much for me. Yeah, let's talk about the fruit of the Spirit. In fact, I highlighted right in the beginning, you make this comment about Paul's words in Galatians 5. He says, you write, in other words, the Spirit's fruit is not about doing particular things in order to be a particular people. Conversely, it's about being a particular people, which inevitably leads to a particular sort of living and doing in the world. More specifically, it's about the fact that our identification as a people of God is marked by living the Spirit of God working in us and through us. I mean, that is a simple thought, but the fruit is a result of our identity in Christ.

Explain that. Yeah, every Christian, every follower of Jesus, the Bible tells us in no uncertain terms that God lives in us. Not that we are God, but the Spirit of God resides, makes his home in us. You know, that idea of the people of God being the temple of God, it's really profound.

Because throughout the Bible, the temple was the place where heaven and earth would meet, where God's space and human space would intersect. So that's us now, that's me. And what Paul is saying is, if you are a follower of Jesus, God is not just some divine being floating out in the ether somewhere. His Spirit is literally in you. So what that means is that your life is an expression of the thing that is in you. So then we have to ask the question, is my life an expression of the things of God?

And Paul lays it out really clearly that the fruit of the Spirit, it's stuff like love, joy, peace, and patience, and kindness, and goodness, and faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. So then we have to ask ourselves the question, am I patient? Do I have self-control? Am I a person that is kind and good?

Not just face-to-face, but on Facebook. You know, we have to ask ourselves those questions. And if we're not, then we have to ask a deeper question, okay, what is really in me? Because this is all coming out, it's all spewing out of me, it's reflective of what's in me.

And then we have this, at least for me, I had this sobering reality. I think there's a lot of stuff in here that isn't the Spirit of God. And a lot of that's shaped by the digital world.

A ton of it. Your subtitle, Cultivating Contentment, how does the digital world make us discontent? Well, social media in particular, and media in general online, it runs on the fuel of comparison. That's not conjecture, I'm not making that up or whipping that up out of thin air.

The research shows us that. When comparison is the driving force of your life, it is impossible to be content. So peace is out the window. It's out the window, yeah. I would say love really is out the window.

Joy is certainly out the window. Because love, at its essence, is not about, you know, culture tells us it's butterflies in the stomach and feeling good. But really, biblically, you know, the Bible tells, 1 John 4, this is love. Not that we love God, but that He loved us.

Love is a selfless act of will to give ourselves to another for their good. And that is not what social media asks us to do. What social media asks us to do is catch up to the glossy highlights of all of our friends and family who are posting not their real lives. They're just posting that vacation they took to the Maldives. But you know that their real life is, well, on Monday, they're going to be back in the cubicle. But we're not thinking about that.

We're just thinking about the fact that I'm in my cubicle and they're enjoying this white sand beach in the Maldives. And that creates something in us that isn't of God, you know. It's comparison. It's not joy. It's not love. It's not peace. It's not contentment.

But I think God has a life of contentment for us, you know. I think about young parents. I hear this from young moms and in our church all the time. Every young mom I know thinks that they are the worst parent on the planet. Well, by definition, that can't be possible. There can only be one worst parent on the planet.

That's what makes them the worst. And the chances are you are not that parent. It's just that you are comparing to the glossy highlights of all of your other mom friends who are posting the beautiful picture of their child taken by a professional photographer filtered perfectly about how much you love them so much. While you are trying to get your kid to eat their carrots and they're throwing a tantrum.

When in reality, intellectually, you know that perfect child on Instagram, he also throws tantrums because he doesn't want to eat his carrots. But you're not looking at that. And then it just undoes all the stuff in us. And that's not the life God has for us.

I really love as you go through each one of the fruit, you go through love and then you give the other side instead of. Yeah. Self-centric despair. Yeah. Why that? How do you end up with that one?

That's pretty heavy. Yeah. We think that our smartphones are windows into the world, but they're not. They're mirrors.

So self-centric despair, what I mean by that phrase is the inability to see life through any perspective or paradigm other than the perspective and paradigm of self. So we think social media is a window because we see photos and posts from people. But really the way it's designed is those posts are just mirrors screaming back at you. Why aren't you more like this? Why can't you think like this? Why don't you understand this?

They're just mirrors. And what it does is it doesn't, you know, a lot of people will say, well, Jay, how can I get off Facebook? I won't know what my friends are up to.

Right. Well, first of all, let's just be honest, you don't know what your friends are up to. You know little snippets of what they want you to know of what they're up to. But in any meaningful relationship, like the two of you, if your relationship was mediated by just snippets of your life that you wanted the other person to know, that would not be a meaningful relationship.

That would be a curated exchange of information and sort of like, I'm going to put on my best so that I reflect myself as a particular type of person. But that's not genuine. That's why we have self-centric despair, because we're actually so utterly disconnected from each other, even though social media sort of tells us we're so connected.

This global village, it's just not true. I'm thinking of the listener with their high school, middle school kids on TikTok, they're on everything. And the parent can see there's a self-centric despair in their child. And they might have it too, but especially you can see it in your kids as they're listening and they feel like I don't have control of them with my high schooler.

How do you encourage them with that whole point? Yeah, I mean, my kids are young, so I speak with no expertise here. I don't really know directly firsthand what it's like to parent a teenager.

I do know it is uniquely challenging to be a teenager these days, in large part due to the digital revolution. I think one of the things, big picture, I would say is it doesn't seem that effective. I could be wrong here, but it doesn't seem that effective to try to force someone to break an addiction.

It seems like it's more effective to help someone become addicted to something else. So for us in our home, even though my kids are eight and five and they don't have smartphones, they still have screen time. We limit the screen time significantly, but we have a digital Sabbath day every week. So Saturday is our digital Sabbath. What that means is we will mediate almost nothing with a screen. So we're not watching TV or watching a movie. We put our phones away quite a bit, and we don't just say that. We don't just say, okay, kids, no screens today.

And then just leave it be. What we do is we try to replace the time. So I'm in California, so we have great weather nine, ten months out of the year. So most Saturdays will be spent outdoors. We'll go on a small hike. We'll eat our meals in our backyard. We'll cook or I'll barbecue, and we'll eat in the backyard and the kids can play. We've got a couple friends.

Kids have a couple friends in the neighborhood. We'll invite them over to play in the front yard and have snacks out there. We'll go out for a dessert somewhere.

I mean, we try to create moments that help our kids feel like the space is not empty, and now they're just clamoring for, can we just watch a movie? And instead, we're saying, man, you know, it's the invitation of the Scriptures. Taste and see. You know, the Lord is good. We'll taste and see that physical, embodied experiences as a family and as friends is so good. You know, and we're seeing the fruit of it.

Our kids look forward to those moments. If you really want to taste and see that the Lord is good, Psalm 34.8, you have to stop and rest. Turn off the phone, put the phone away and just almost like Sabbath rest and say, Lord, I am going to put away all distractions, and I want to experience you. I really want to taste and see you. It's almost like you could say, taste and see that the Lord is better than digital. Taste and see that the Lord is better than anything we'll have on any screen, because He is good and He has more for us. We can expect more as we taste and see His goodness. And I don't think we really taste until we put that other way.

It has to be put aside and your eyes turn toward Him. Let's do that this week, this year, for our lives. Let's put it away and see how good God is. I heard you tell a story on YouTube when you ran away from home. Tell that story, because that was such a great story of your life.

But what's really true? Yeah. Yeah, I grew up with a single mom. I was a pretty rebellious teenager, middle school and high school. And I would get into fights with my mom all the time.

And there was one day in particular, a really, really big fight. I yelled at her. I cursed at her.

I mean, all sorts of things. And she's yelling back at me. And I knew at that point I am in so much trouble. So I got on my bike and I rode up this expressway, probably five or six miles, to a friend's house, my friend Brent.

I knew he was home. I'm only 12 at this point. And I knock on his door. I'm like, hey, I got in this huge fight with my mom.

I'm saying all sorts of mean things about her. And I just ask him, can I just stay with you? He's like, sure, come in.

So I'm just hanging out with Brent at home. And eventually later that evening, his mother comes home and she's like, oh, does your mom know you're here? When is she picking you up? And I just say, no, I'm living with you now.

I'm your new son. And she's like, no. So she calls my mom.

My mom and her were friends as well. And my mom comes to pick me up. And at this point, I'm just like, okay, it's over.

My life is about to end sort of thing. And so I get in her car, her little Honda Civic, and she drives me home and it's just silence. You know that experience where the silence is way more frightening than the yelling? I'd much rather have her scream than be silent. So I'm just shaking in my boots.

I'm trying to figure out a plan. Okay, when we get home, if I could just run to my room, close the door, close my eyes, and just cover my ears, maybe it'll all go away. There will be no consequences.

I knew it wasn't true, but I'm just convincing myself. So we get home in silence. She hasn't spoken a word. I run to my room, close the door, and there's nothing.

She doesn't knock on my door, nothing. For a good long while. Are you surprised?

Totally surprised. I mean, I was bracing myself for the worst of it. And then all of a sudden, I could smell food cooking in the kitchen. And so eventually, about an hour into this, I open my door, and then my mom speaks the first word she's spoken to me that entire time. She says, come to the kitchen. We have a small little dining table, you know, and single mom, it was just her and me. Then I go to the dining table, and she's cooked all of this food. I mean, this elaborate meal. And she sits me down, and I'm still shaking in my boots. Now I'm really worried, like, what is, did she poison the food? Is this how it ends? You know, it's been a good 12 year run.

I guess this is it. I sit down, and I can see on her face, there's real emotion. And it wasn't just in that moment. I could tell that she's been cooking this meal and crying at the same time. I can see it on her face. And she sits down, I'm still bracing myself, like, okay, here it comes, you know. But she looks at me, and the first words out of her mouth is, she says to me, in Korean, she says, Jay, you are my son, and you will always have a seat at my table.

And then we eat. And I still, I mean, this is 30 years ago, and I will never forget that moment. Because it was this incredible picture of not just a picture, but it was literally a visceral experience of hearing and literally tasting grace, the grace of God expressed in this little Asian woman who was my mother. And so I go, and I embrace her. And at that point already, my mom is five foot nothing. At that point, I was already bigger than her, even as a 12 year old. And I hug her, and she hugs me.

And I remember having this experience. I am physically wrapping my arms around her, but I felt so enveloped in her immense love and grace toward me. And it is still to this day the most beautiful, simple, beautiful picture of God's grace for us, which I think matters so much when we're having conversations like this, because there is a little bit of, I gotta get better, I gotta get better. But ultimately, it's nothing but grace.

God says we have a seat at his table. I'm Shelby Abbott. You've been listening to Dave and Ann Wilson with Jay Kim on Family Life Today. We're gonna hear some intentional reflection from the Wilsons and Jay on the story you just heard Jay tell about his mom here in just a second. But first, Jay Kim has written a book called Analog Church, why we need real people, places, and things in the digital age. You could go online to familylifetoday.com to pick up a copy, or give us a call at 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

You know, earlier this week, we had on the tremendous Elizabeth Woodson. She talked to us about really finding joy when life is really not what you had hoped for. And she's written a book called Embrace Your Life. It's a book for anyone grappling with kind of the unmet longings and searching that they have for deep joy amidst the gap between their desired and actual life. It really helps with good biblical insight and wisdom, practical guidance, and help on your journey to connect with God in the midst of disappointment. This book is gonna be our gift to you when you give today. You can get your copy now of Elizabeth's book with any donation by going online to familylifetoday.com on the donate now button at the top of the page. Or you could give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329. Again, that number is 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today.

Okay, here's some intentional reflection from the Wilsons and J. Kim. I mean, I'm sure you know the chorus in my father's house. There's a place for me. I remember the first time I heard that lyric, I teared up because I was raised by a single mom as well. Dad left. And even hearing your story, I'm like, my mom continually did that. She did. I did not deserve it, and she just kept giving grace to me.

I did not deserve it, and she just kept giving grace, and that's the heart of the father. That's it. It's a beautiful thing, and that's analog. That's right.

I mean, you can see it, experience it digitally, but that's incarnation. That's flesh. That's the heart of the father. And he's always offering us that seed, that grace. Always.

It's the gospel message of, you're always welcome at my table, always. Yeah. I like the food part, too.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, when I tell the story, it's the way our brains work, the nostalgia. I can still smell the smells and taste the taste. Yeah, I still remember, it was a Korean meal. My mom only knew how to cook Korean food, which is in vogue now.

It wasn't back then. I'd have friends come over, and they were like, what's that smell, man? It's like, oh, you know? So embarrassing.

My kids will never know the pain of ethnic food being an embarrassing thing. Now it's like so awesome. It's like, oh, here's some sushi.

Like, oh, you're so cool. It was not the case when I was a kid. But I can still smell the smells, yeah, and taste the taste. I can still see the table.

I remember exactly what she cooked. And yeah, for everybody, it's that picture. God has a seat for you.

You know, the young mom was like, I'm not cutting it. God has a seat for you. He's cooked this beautiful, elaborate meal for you.

It's so good. If you know anyone who needs to hear conversations like today's, would you share it from wherever you get your podcasts? And while you're there, you can really help others learn more about family life today by leaving us a review.

Now tomorrow, what is the need for real community, corporate worship, and the balance between digital and analog experiences in the church? Well, J. Kim is back tomorrow to help us sort that out. That's tomorrow, we hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.