In an age of social media celebrity and showy spirituality, we are invited into a holy unawareness.
If a good deed done is not posted on social media, did it really happen? If an act of generosity is not caught on camera and never goes viral, was it a worthwhile gesture? These questions, facetious as they seem, point out something I’ve observed in my own life: a deep desire to display my goodness to others. There’s even a modern term for it: virtue signaling.
According to Jesus, this is an ancient struggle, a primal temptation. We long to be known and seen, but if we aren’t careful, this longing can lead to a kind of performativity that corrodes the soul.
In Matthew 6—the center of the Sermon on the Mount—Jesus flips showy spirituality on its head: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen. … But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing” (vv. 1, 3). Jesus reveals a key characteristic of his narrow path: hiddenness.
That is an important word for those who, like me, intuitively strive to be noticed. Can you relate? Social media has created (or perhaps revealed) the hunger within us to be seen. As some have aptly said, the current generation of young adults—and emerging ones—can be described as “Generation Notification.”
Each time we get notifications—those coveted red or blue circles with a number in them—dopamine releases in our brains. The cycle is hard to break. Even if a comment is negative, receiving one is still addicting because being seen is better than remaining invisible.
To be known and seen is one of our deepest longings. But left to our own devices (pun intended), we get stuck in a never-ending cycle of performative spirituality, where we seek to get …
