Let Your Pixelated Light Shine
If the apostle Paul were writing today, he would still write letters. But he would also go where people gather. In his time, it was the marketplace and the Areopagus. In ours, it’s online—on social media.
In Acts 17, Paul has just arrived in Athens. The city is full of idols. And he is not particularly pleased about it. In fact, according to Luke, “He is greatly distressed.” And yet when he stands before the Athenians, he doesn’t lead with his distress. He leads with observation. “I see that in every way you are very religious,” he tells them. He notices their altar to an unknown god. He quotes their own poets back to them. He earns the right to be heard before he asks to be believed.
That sequence is a blueprint. And we get it backwards almost every time—especially on social media. We speak before we listen. We correct people we have never tried to understand. Then we wonder why our words don’t land.
Screen Presence
Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 3:2 carry a different weight now: “You yourselves are our letter … known and read by everyone.” Social media followers are reading you in the same way. They’ve seen how you show up online. What you share. What you affirm. How you respond when someone pushes back. Before they think about your theology, they’re noticing your character. And the people who leave a lasting impression are rarely the loudest. They’re the ones whose faith and behavior stay aligned over time, in steady and consistent ways.
That kind of steady witness stands in quiet contrast to the system surrounding it. Social media rewards attention. Its algorithms highlight what provokes reaction, not what reflects truth. But performing your faith for an audience is a different act from living it where people can see it. People can feel the difference, even when they can’t name it.
Just as Paul entered conversations already in progress and spoke in ways that people could understand, you can do the same through your social media accounts. Pay attention to what the people around you are going through this week. When you connect your faith to those moments, Scripture stops being something written and becomes something alive, something people recognize and can identify with.
A Bible verse posted on its own is true, but it can sit on a screen feeling like a greeting card: received, glanced at, forgotten. Now imagine if you tie that verse to something you lived through. Let’s say a friend had a horrible week, and you sat with him one afternoon just listening instead of offering advice. Later that evening, you could send him a direct message with Psalm 34:18: “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted.” That connection to what he just experienced would give new meaning to the verse. Or let’s say you’d been running on empty for a month, allowing yourself to become overinvolved and sleeping badly. Imagine opening your Bible and reading Isaiah 30:15: “In quietness and trust is your strength.” When you share on your feed why this verse was meaningful to you, people are not reading a verse. They are reading a life.
We see an example of this kind of sharing of experience in John 1. Andrew meets Jesus, and the first thing he does is find his brother, Simon Peter. “We have found the Messiah,” he says. This was a spontaneous outpouring of what he had just experienced. He was simply so changed by what he had encountered that he couldn’t keep it to himself. Two thousand years later, nothing has outperformed one person sharing with another what has changed their life.
None of this requires a large audience. Influence in Scripture almost always travels through relationships. Andrew brings Peter. Philip invites Nathanael. (See John 1:45–46.) A Samaritan woman goes back to her town. (See John 4:29.) The people who see your posts are your neighbors, your coworkers, the parents you met at school pickup. They know your name. That’s where credibility lives, and no algorithm can manufacture it.
Ephesians 5:8 reminds us to “Live as children of light.” That call extends to every space you occupy, including the ones measured in pixels.
Feed Friction
Social media gives us more opportunities to share our faith experience, but it also introduces new challenges.
The most common online temptation is to turn disagreement into combat. A comment thread starts as a conversation and ends as a contest, and the person who entered it hoping to represent Christ finishes sounding combative. James 1:19 names the corrective: “Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.” That verse is easy to affirm on Sabbath morning; it’s harder to remember during a late-night social media debate, but that is precisely when it matters.
Another online challenge is the temptation to perform. You’ve seen this in those posts that feel staged: the carefully framed photo with a Bible open just so, the caption that sounds more like a statement than a reflection, the post that centers on the person posting more than the God they’re pointing to. Jesus addressed this in Matthew 6:1: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them.” Turning your feed into a stage will quietly empty it of the very thing that made it worth reading.
Right now, someone in your feed is quietly watching. Not ready to ask questions. Not ready to visit your church. Not ready to believe. But they’re paying attention to their feed to see how you live your faith. What they see is shaping what they believe about the God you follow. They don’t need you to be flawless. They need you to be real.
Paul walked into Athens with his eyes open and something worth saying. He listened before he spoke. He met people on their own ground, and God used it. Your phone puts you in that same kind of space every day. The people in your feed aren’t just an audience. They’re people who know you. And one of them, right now, is hoping something honest will break through.
Let them see it—your faith, lived out loud. One post. One reply. One honest moment at a time.
By Gerson Pancorbo
Southwestern Union Communication Director
