Sacrificing Social Media

Considering how prominent the motif of sacrifice has been throughout the Bible, it is interesting that it is not really a part of how we worship today. In our last publication we asked why this is, and our readers seemed to reach the conclusion that it is simply not relevant anymore. Some of our readers could not decide what and how to sacrifice, others said they never felt the call to sacrifice anything, others too found the idea quite archaic. Why would you waste a valuable resource as an offering? Wouldn't God be more pleased if you gave that sacrificial lamb to someone poor or starving instead?

At any rate, our writers were unsure if they understood the idea of sacrifice themselves, and they agreed that they found the act somewhat pointless. We figured that the stories of sacrifice might be religious and allegorical truths instead of literal ones, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Needless to say, this is a concept that clearly needs explanation; so we did some digging, some thinking, and some praying, and here's what we ended up with. We hope that you enjoy our perspective on this, and share your own.

While conducting our research on this topic, we fell upon some philosophies of Jordan B. Peterson, a U of T professor of psychology with quite an avid online following. Peterson is a Christian, and he believes strongly in the principles it teaches and forwards that knowledge to his students. Peterson believes that the recurring motif of sacrifice stems from the human perception of the future, and how acting morally and delaying gratification improves your future. In the Bible, sacrifices are made to appease God and gain his blessing. Peterson addresses the future almost as something that people have almost bargained with, in the way that sacrificing something in the present can end up working in your favor.

Alright, that makes sense, but how and why is it applicable to our lives? Peterson uses the analogy of maturation to explain his next point in this philosophy of sacrifice: that you will sacrifice something whether you choose to or not. For example, one might say that they won’t sacrifice their childhood, and they will remain immature and irresponsible. In your twenties this might be okay, people can understand if you don’t have your act together yet. But when you’re thirty and still living out of your mom’s basement, without a car, a degree, or any job experience, that’s not at all okay. This hypothetical person might have believed they would have to sacrifice nothing by choosing to stay an overgrown infant, but after a time they realize that they have sacrificed their chance at anything else. The later this epiphany occurs, the more has been sacrificed.

Peterson tells the monstrous implications of this epiphany with they story of Cain and Abel. We all know the background of this story -- Abel makes good sacrifices and is rewarded, Cain makes bad sacrifices and isn’t rewarded. Peterson interprets that Able represents those who make sacrifices and decisions that help them advance in life, whereas Cain makes offerings while his heart is in the wrong place, and he expects that his offerings will make him deserving of the blessings Able possesses. Cain is constantly comparing himself to Able, his ideal. He is so focused on how much better Able is doing than he is that he does not care to compare himself to who he was yesterday. God tells Cain that he must do good to receive blessing, otherwise sin will rule over him. Cain is so furious that he kills his brother, his ideal, in vengeance upon him and on God. When Cain kills and rejects his ideal, he is forever cursed by God (this is important because it means he will never be able to receive his blessing), and banished from his land.

After this revelation, our writing team decided that we should make some sacrifice of our own; and this is where social media comes into play. If you tap on your Instagram profile tab, swipe left, and tap on "your activity", you will be shown a graph of how much time you spend on Instagram every day for the past seven days. When our writers found out about this function they were shocked at how much time they really spent on social media each day. The daily average for each of us was above three hours for the most part. We decided as a group that we would quit social media for a week; only logging on to make scheduled posts and respond to questions from readers. Our goal was to keep the daily average under ten minutes. These three extra hours in the day were dedicated to writing, reading, studying, and other productive endeavours. After seeing this incredible boost in productivity, we encourage all of our readers to watch their amount of time spent on social media. Write in to us and tell us about how sacrificing social media affected you. Do you have a better idea of what could be sacrificed?