The blue light burns your retinas as you wake to your digital sunrise. Notifications flutter across the screen—texts, Snaps, comments—chirping like a morning birdsong. You tell yourself you’ll check just one thing. Five minutes turns into ten, then fifteen.
Finally, you trudge into the sunlight like a vampire: blinded, drained, and awake, but your soul is still dead asleep.
Your phone stays nearby throughout the day. It hums in your pocket. It vibrates on the desk. You swipe when you work, when you eat, when you’re bored, when you’re tired, when you’re stressed, when there’s nothing to do, and even when there is something to do. It’s muscle memory now. You don’t just use social media. You exist in it.
And what have you profited? A low-grade anxiety. A mind dulled by overconsumption. An aching soul.
You want to quit. You long to quit. But you just keep swiping, drifting down the algorithm’s lazy river, too apathetic to grab hold and ask: What am I swiping for?
You swipe for guidance, affirmation, and meaning. You swipe to figure out who you are, where you’re going, and why it matters. You swipe for a story to belong to, a thrill to chase, a moment of relief. You swipe to feel something. Anything. You swipe for peace, for attention, for hope. You swipe for love. You swipe… for more.
And every swipe you take, whether you know it or not, whether you’d admit it or not, is a swipe for God.
Yes, that nameless urge to swipe, that longing for more, that ache in your soul, is there for a reason. Why? Because God created you as a sheep—a sheep in need of a shepherd.
Social Media is a Bad Shepherd
Sheep don’t navigate well. When they wander alone, they stray into danger, vulnerable to whatever predator comes first. Sheep have a deep need for guidance and protection.
So do you. That’s why you had parents at home, teachers in school, coaches on your team, and mentors at work. You look to friends for advice, check reviews before deciding, and pay attention to what others are doing.
You weren’t designed to figure out life alone—we all follow a shepherd. A shepherd is anyone, or anything, that feeds you hope, forms your habits, and fortifies your identity.
David gives us a picture of the shepherd we were designed to follow:
“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
He leads me beside quiet waters,
He restores my soul.” (Psalm 23:1-3)
This is life when the Lord is our shepherd: peace, contentment, restoration. He feeds us the gospel, forms us in love, and fortifies us from evil.
But oftentimes, we follow different shepherds. Some follow influencers, tarot cards, or Amazon. Others follow therapists, investors, or yoga gurus. But today, the loudest, most relentless shepherd we follow, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, is social media.
And it writes a different psalm:
Social media is my shepherd; I lack peace.
It keeps my mind racing.
It leads me beside floods of outrage.
It fractures my soul.
Social media is my shepherd; I lack contentment.
It makes me question if the pasture is greener on the other side.
It leads me beside beachfront vacations.
It corrupts my soul.
Social media is my shepherd; I lack joy.
It makes me chase validation that never lasts.
It leads me beside streams of empty love.
It destroys my soul.
Social media, like any shepherd, has a voice. It speaks in trends and outrage, in endless comparison and curated perfection. It tells you what to want, how to think, and who to be. It feeds you lies, forms you in brain-rot, and fortifies nothing. It doesn’t love you. It doesn’t care for your soul.
Social media is a lousy shepherd for modern sheep like us. Why? Because when social media inevitably becomes an idol in our lives, it’s no longer a shepherd at all—it’s a thief.
It doesn’t guide; it manipulates. It doesn’t lead; it traps. It “steals, kills, and destroys” (John 10:10).
But you don’t have to keep following a shepherd that leaves you restless. You don’t have to keep searching for meaning in places that can’t give it. You don’t have to keep swiping, knowing it won’t work, yet still hoping the next post, the next like, the next rush of dopamine, will ease the ache in your soul. You don’t have to follow a thief.
Because there’s a Good Shepherd, one who came so that you “may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).
Listen for the Good Shepherd
Jesus isn’t another voice in the digital chaos, vying for your attention like a click-bait influencer. He is the Good Shepherd who calls his sheep by name.
But his voice isn’t the loudest. It won’t fight to stay at the top of your algorithm. It won’t autoplay when you’re distracted. It won’t flood your notifications. So, if you want to hear him, you have to stop swiping long enough to listen:
“The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” (John 10:3)
And that’s the invitation: to step out. To walk away from the scroll. To stop consuming noise and start listening for the Shepherd.
It might mean putting your phone in another room when you read your Bible, setting app limits, or starting your day with scripture before social media.
It might mean fasting from social media for a day, a week, or a month, not to prove a point but to reset your heart.
It might mean turning notifications off so that you choose when to be on your phone.
And it might mean sitting in silence—the silence that social media tells you to fear, the silence that makes you uneasy, the silence that amplifies the ache in your soul. Because in that silence, your aching soul might find what it’s been swiping for all along: the voice of the Shepherd who restores it.
You’ve swiped for direction. He is the way. You’ve swiped for knowledge. He is the truth. You’ve swiped for meaning. He is the life.
He is the one who can satisfy the ache that social media keeps exploiting. The one who can restore what the thief has stolen. The one your soul swipes for.
Will you stop swiping to listen?
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