I struggle with words like “expert,” “guru,” and any other word that makes me seem more intelligent than others on a specific topic. But I do think that it is possible. Yet, I feel many people online, especially Christians, are trying to be experts in areas they are not. Roll with me on this.
The world of social media is where everybody has a platform and we start to assume that we can just call ourselves experts. Ask someone who will win the Superbowl this year, get an Apple or Android device, or how to interact with the new law that passed on legalizing gay weddings, and you will get a whole host of opinions which is presented as facts. We self-adopt the title of expert on so many different things and feel the need to express ourselves.
Let’s take the Supreme Court ruling recently on gay weddings. Some Christians will instantly tell you that America is going down hill. In fact, I’ve heard more prayer requests for our country due to this ruin than when we had the racial shootings, financial crisis, or militarization of local police. Yet, how many of those Christians have EVER talked with someone who was gay? They are an expert, but they don’t have the whole story. Something sounds wrong here.
Let me take this a step further. If Jesus spent 30 years of his life doing ministry in a very personal and local setting and it wasn’t until He had had a foundation and had His calling from God that He spent three years going out and witnessing to the entire world around Him, developing disciples, and moving forward.
So do we have the ability to just jump right in with a topic on social media and keep moving forward. Yes, we have the Holy Spirit’s for religious conversations, but what does that allow us to do? Speak naively to a conversation which we don’t understand a full context of?
This is a conversation starter, not me throwing this in your face, so I’d love to start the dialogue on this.
What are your thoughts? Am I just unreasonably upset?
[Lightbulb image via alexliivet via Compfight cc]
David says
Few people claim to be experts.
Social media opens us up to having and expressing opinions. We should have opinions. We should speak/type them.
We also misinterpret or misconstrue the range of our expression. The target audience in our minds may be different than the audience that receives that message.
Passion is also misinterpreted as a desire to be an expert.
We don’t have to be experts to speak and to be heard.
Joanna says
i agree.
A related phenomenon is how many people, christians included seem to move from the beginnings of having something meaningful to say to trying to be seen as an expert on how to be an expert (eg getting lots of people reading their blogs, buying their books, getting people to interview them.) With most oftheir focus on gaming the path to fame, whatever unique ideas and knowledge they had in the first place get underdeveloped