By Hannah Lape, Op-ed contributor
“New Christian Right” Pastor Joel Webbon tweeted last year: “Women should log off of social media and devote their attention to baking pies—apple, preferably.” I was not particularly compelled to log off and bake a pie by that. The post was annoying; Webbon accomplished nothing but farming for engagement, and I kept scrolling.
Just as Christians are to be in the world but not of it, so too we need to be on social media, but not of it. For better or for worse, much of the world today happens on screens, and our fallen nature certainly follows us onto the internet. Here are six practical questions to ask before publishing a post, comment, or video online that may offer a framework for Christian distinctiveness online.
1. Am I speaking the truth in love?
There is much to consider in the inseparable relationship between truth and love. The first is that “love” without truth is not love; it is disobedient apathy.
Because God is love, love cannot be exercised outside of His truth: the truth about the Gospel and His created order (the sanctity of human life, marriage, and the sexes). If the truth is rejected, love is not possible. Affirmation of sin, though comfortable, is not love, and neither is ignoring it. Both are disobedience to God and apathy towards an eternal soul enslaved to sin.
Second, truth without love is nothing. In 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, the Apostle Paul is clear that all things are wasted without love:
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Prophecies, knowledge, facts, tongues, miracles, charity, op-eds, reels, podcasts, status updates, and comments are null and void without love. If we speak the truth without love, sin prevails to the sound of noisy gongs.
Here’s an example. Last month, YouTuber Jesse Ridgeway announced on X that he and his wife had aborted their unborn baby at around 20 weeks’ gestation solely because he was diagnosed with Down syndrome. I replied to the post because it was abjectly evil — Ridgeway made his sin very public (to over 25 million views), and I expressed that while I was praying for him, what he did was unacceptable. Other commenters sent Ridgeway death threats. That is unacceptable, too.
Truth and love are tethered. If you lose one, you lose both. Losing truth is where progressive (or heretical) Christians go wrong, like Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, who calls Jesus “pro-choice” and claims there are six sexes. That is easy to identify. But losing love is where other Christians have a serious social media problem. We serve a God who commands us to both “love our enemies” and “expose the unfruitful works of darkness,” so we must speak (or tweet) with both love and truth.
2. Am I aiming to persuade?
Closely related to the first consideration of truth and love is discerning how our words may be received. I am not saying that we should alter the content and baseline truths of our message for the sake of hearers, but we absolutely should communicate with strategy. A Christian’s goal should always be for the words they speak to produce the fruit of repentance — this is what Paul mastered at the Areopagus. We prioritize persuasion over volume. We do not seek to provoke, but to improve. We do not defeat; we redeem. Only then will the truth advance.
Take Pastor Dale Partridge’s X platform as a bad example. Partridge frequently calls for the repeal of the 19thAmendment online and tweets things like “Women cannot lead, because most women cannot think.”
Partridge may have a valid underlying concern. Women’s present voting patterns are concerning, and too many women support abortion. But his hostile and unpersuasive manner of communication undermines him. Repealing the 19th Amendment is not possible, and calling to do so is nothing but intentionally provocative. The message, though rooted in a real concern, falls on deaf ears. The truth does not advance to those who need to hear it, and sinners’ heels dig deeper into sin.
It takes prudence, prayer, and discernment to determine what speaking the truth in love to persuade looks like — if you think it is easy, you are likely wrong. We must carefully assess our tone, timing, volume, setting, and vocabulary. Even Jesus rarely ever spoke the truth in love to produce repentance the same way twice — some days He flipped tables; other days, He simply said, “Friend, your sins are forgiven” (Luke 5:20).
3. Am I whining?
Teddy Roosevelt once said: “Complaining about a problem without proposing a solution is called whining.” Whiners sell on social media. The algorithm prefers rage-bait, dissension, and conflict. So, if all you have is a complaint with no solution, do not whine.
4. Am I exercising virtue?
Crass and loveless discourse online among conservatives and Christians is often justified because it is a stark contrast to leftism and atheism. But mere contrast is not the goal; virtue is.
We do not often discuss virtue, so we have forgotten that virtue is not just an improvement from one vice but the careful balance between two vices: a deficiency and an excess. For example, the virtue of courage has a deficient vice (cowardice) and an excess (recklessness).
Just because a social commentator is not espousing far-Left talking points like abortion extremism or feminism, he is not necessarily virtuous — Nick Fuentes is just as vicious as that far-Left or feminist commentator. He is reckless. For example, he has said: “A lot of women want to be raped … there’s lot of women that really want a guy to beat the sh*t out of them, but they have to pretend that they don’t,” and, “there is an occult element at the highest levels of society, and specifically among the Jews … When we take power, they need to be given the death penalty.”
Though it may be easy, enticing, and rewarding, extremity itself is not a virtue, and overcorrection (trading one vice for another) is not a correction. Virtue is a hard balance to strike, but one worth tempering, because speaking the truth in love demands taking up the challenge of remaining virtuous.
5. Am I playing the blame game?
Beginning with Second Wave feminists and continuing to today, the Left blames men for the problems of the world — real or perceived.
The right, including Christians, has begun to do the same, but instead crediting women with the problems of the world. Both fall into the same age-old blame game. Pointing fingers at the other half of the human population is the first mistake mankind made after the Fall (“The woman whom you gave to me, she gave me the fruit to eat,” Genesis 3:12).
As I have mentioned, Dale Partridge is a bad example. He frequently claims that abortion would not be an issue if women were never enfranchised, but he forgets that Roe v. Wade was decided by an entirely male Supreme Court bench (largely outside of the democratic process), and conservative women led the charge to overturn that decision over many decades.
The human condition is sinful. It is not men alone or women alone that sin, but every one of us.
The same blame game principle applies to antisemitism. Jews are not responsible for the ills of society, sinful people are — Jew and non-Jew. If we are all pointing fingers, sin wins while we are distracted. Sanctification starts with personal responsibility and proceeds with the truth in love.
6. If I am addressing a Christian, is it possible to make this address private first?
Public squalor is not good for the Church. I am not talking about orthodox Christians criticizing the likes of James Talarico; he is a heretic and a professing Universalist, and I happily push back on him publicly. I am talking about conflict between believers. We have a higher calling and a biblical command among ourselves to address one another privately first amid conflict (Matthew 18), and “if at all possible, live peaceably with all” in the church (Romans 12:18).
All in all, we need not be clanging cymbals online, but a people of faith, hope, and love. The greatest of those is love, and if we have not love, we have nothing; we will be nothing, and we will redeem nothing. Waterless springs and noisy gongs will accomplish nothing for the Kingdom; only the truth in love can do that.
Christians: be on social media, but not of it.
Hannah Lape is Legislative Strategist for Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. On X: @CWforA