The Modern Paradox of Digital Prophets

There exists in our time a curious contradiction that seems to have escaped the notice of most observers, though it stands before us as plainly as a palace or a poor man's hut. We have created a world where everyone is speaking and no one is being heard; where millions cry out for attention while attention itself has become the scarcest of commodities. I speak, of course, of what we have come to call "social media" and its peculiar priests, the "influencers" – a word that would have struck our ancestors as either blasphemous or mad, depending on their disposition toward religion.

The first thing that must be said about social media is that it is neither particularly social nor particularly concerned with media. It is, in fact, quite the opposite of both things. The truly social man, meeting his fellows at the pub or the parish church, speaks to perhaps a dozen people in an evening and remembers every word. The "social" media star speaks to millions and remembers none of them. It is the difference between a man warming his hands at a hearth and a man setting fire to a forest to keep warm. Both may achieve a kind of heat, but only one achieves anything like human warmth.

The modern world, which prides itself on its logicality, has managed to create the most illogical of all human conditions: the lonely crowd. We have made it possible for a man to have ten thousand friends and not a single friendship. This is not progress but a kind of magnificent regression, as if we had invented a telescope that could see to the ends of the universe but rendered the viewer blind to everything within arm's reach.

But the greatest paradox of all lies in what we call "influencers" – those curious celebrities of the digital age who have achieved fame primarily by pursuing it. Here we find ourselves in a realm of such topsy-turvy logic that even Lewis Carroll might have hesitated to include it in Wonderland. For what is an influencer if not a person who has convinced others that they are worth following precisely because so many others follow them? It is as if we had created a currency whose only value lay in the number of people who believed it had value, or a king whose only claim to the throne was that many people believed him to be king.

The Christian view of influence was quite different, and therefore quite sane. Christ influenced twelve men primarily, and through them, the world. He never once checked His follower count, nor did He engage in what we might today call "content creation." He simply spoke the truth, and the truth, being true, spread of its own accord. The modern influencer, by contrast, often speaks without saying anything at all, accumulating followers through a kind of digital hypnosis that mistakes novelty for wisdom and popularity for truth.

This brings us to another startling contradiction: the more "authentic" our digital prophets claim to be, the more artificial their presentations become. They carefully curate their spontaneity, meticulously plan their casualness, and strategically deploy their sincerity. It is as if someone had set out to create artificial flowers that looked more real than real flowers, forgetting that the very attempt negates the reality they seek to capture.

Yet we must not fall into the trap of mere criticism, for there is something deeply human in this digital pageantry. The desire to influence others is not wrong; indeed, it is part of our divine mandate to be salt and light in the world. The error lies not in the desire to influence but in the modern confusion between influence and attention. True influence, like true faith, works often in secret and shows itself primarily in its fruits. The saints did not seek to be influential; they sought to be holy, and their influence was the natural consequence of their holiness.

This brings us to what might be called the great opportunity hidden within the great catastrophe. For while social media has created new forms of loneliness, it has also revealed the depth of our hunger for community. While influencers often traffic in superficiality, their very success demonstrates our desperate desire for guidance and wisdom. The medium may be new, but the human needs it attempts to satisfy are as old as Eden.

What then should be the Christian response to this digital babel? First, we must recognize that social media, like all human tools, is neither inherently good nor inherently evil – it is the use to which we put it that matters. The same platform that can spread gossip can spread the Gospel; the same technology that can isolate can also connect. The question is not whether to use these tools but how to use them in accordance with divine wisdom rather than worldly metrics.

The true Christian influencer (though they would likely reject the title) would be one who remembers that all genuine influence flows from above, not from within. They would understand that their role is not to accumulate followers but to point them toward Christ. They would know that the only content worth creating is that which reflects, however dimly, the creative Word through whom all things were made.

But perhaps the most important thing to understand about social media and its influencers is that they represent not so much a technological revolution as a spiritual crisis. We have created vast networks of connection precisely because we feel ourselves to be fundamentally disconnected – from each other, from nature, from God. The influencer phenomenon is less about influence than it is about our desperate search for authority in an age that has rejected traditional sources of wisdom.

The great irony is that in seeking to become influential, many have forgotten what true influence looks like. It looks like a carpenter from Nazareth who never wrote a book, never had a platform, and never sought followers. It looks like countless saints and martyrs whose names we have forgotten but whose influence continues to shape the world. It looks, in short, like everything that modern influence does not.

In conclusion, we might say that the solution to the problems of social media will not be found in better algorithms or stricter regulations, but in remembering what it means to be truly social and truly influential. It means returning to the understanding that real influence is not measured in followers but in fruits, not in likes but in lives changed, not in content created but in truth conveyed.

For in the end, there are only two kinds of influence in the world: that which draws attention to itself, and that which draws attention to God. The first kind, however many followers it may accumulate, leads ultimately to emptiness. The second kind, though it may appear small and insignificant, contains within it the power to transform the world. It is this second kind of influence that Christians are called to exercise, whether they have ten followers or ten million.

The choice before us is not whether to engage with social media but how to engage with it in a way that serves rather than subverts our humanity. For as in all things, the question is not whether we will influence or be influenced, but whether that influence will lead us closer to or further from the divine Image in which we were created.


-The Seeker's Quill


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