Social Media & the Soul

The serpent's strategy was not loud or violent. It was a question, placed in front of curious eyes: "Did God really say?" And then an image: the fruit that was good for food, and pleasing to the eye, and desirable to make one wise. Look at it long enough, and the looking changes you.

Eve "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise." The seeing preceded the taking. The attention shift preceded the action.

What we look at long enough reshapes our desires. The serpent knew this. Advertisers know this. The designers of the apps know this. And Proverbs knew it long before any of them: guard the heart, because the heart is formed by what it attends to.

The issue was never just fruit. It was what happened when the wrong thing captured the attention and held it there long enough to feel like truth.

The people of Jericho had a problem: "The water is bad, and the land is unfruitful." At the source, something was wrong — and everything downstream bore the consequence.

Elisha asked for a new bowl and salt. He went to the spring of water and threw the salt in it. "Thus says the Lord, I have healed this water; from now on neither death nor miscarriage shall come from it."

The spring was healed. And from that point, what flowed out was life-giving rather than death-dealing.

The soul that has been formed by a poisoned diet of comparison, outrage, and curated unreality needs a healing at the source — not just a change in behavior on the surface. Only God can heal the spring.

But the healing starts with recognizing: something in the source has been affected. And bringing it to the one who heals water.

Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and brought part of the proceeds to the apostles. Nothing unusual about that — many were giving. But they told everyone they had given the full amount.

The lie wasn't necessary. No one was required to give everything. Peter told them: "While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?" The gift itself was fine. The false presentation of the gift was the problem.

They wanted the full reputation without the full reality. They wanted to appear more generous than they were — to manage how they were seen in the community.

Ananias fell dead. Sapphira, not knowing, repeated the lie and fell dead beside him. The account is sobering: God takes the integrity of our communication — especially in the community of faith — seriously enough to make a devastating example.

We live in a culture of curated presentation. The pressure to perform a better version of our life is enormous. But God is still the same God who saw through Ananias's presentation — and he still values the alignment between what is true and what we say.