Brotherly Love in the Time of Social Media

I sometimes wonder what my paternal grandmother would have thought about social media. She was a highly sociable woman with many friends. She and my grandfather were “joiners”. They liked being an active part of their community, especially their faith community. Every fall they joined together with other local businesses in Salem, IL, and bought coats for all the school children who didn’t have one.

They both also had excellent manners and understood that the point of etiquette is to assist us in not embarrassing ourselves or other people. They knew how to treat people well. They were a pleasure to be around and would never allow themselves to become angry over silly things. At least that’s my memory of them. Admittedly I held both in high esteem, and they both loved me.

I wonder sometimes what they would make of the irritability of people online. What would they think about the political divide we currently see everywhere? I read breathtakingly cruel remarks from Christians as well as our secular brethren. Perhaps the only way to justify such comments is if one believes that the targets of those speeches are not as fully human as oneself. It is human nature to believe that we are right. It’s human nature to see ourselves as members of a tribe and defend that tribe against outsiders.

But Jesus asked us not to subscribe to the tribal world view. He asked us for more.  

One of the seven capital virtues is charity, a part of which is brotherly love. It is a virtue we must cultivate if we are to fully realize our relationship with Christ. If I am not living the first great commandment, I cannot live the second. I cannot live the second unless I see all other human beings as equal to myself in dignity. That includes people who are only in front of me virtually and those I can’t see at all.

I encountered man’s inhumanity to man on a grand level when I started driving. I had walked and biked for transportation, and while I had been a passenger in cars, I was usually busy with my world-class daydreaming and rarely paid attention to how drivers interacted with one another. Once I was behind the wheel, I was regularly horrified by the aggressive behavior of drivers. I understand in some respects. After all, driving is a difficult, stressful, and sometimes irritating activity. It’s easy to become overwhelmed and act that out.  

It’s also true that rarely when I let another driver over or otherwise behaved graciously did, I receive a wave or acknowledgement as I did when biking. I’ve run 5Ks with my children that were crowded enough that people jostled into one another. It was always filled with good humor and pleasantries. Traffic jams, on the other hand, were often filled with angry gestures and peeling out. My conclusion from these differences was that when people were directly next to one another, we behave better. When we have a few thousand pounds of metal protecting us, we feel free to behave worse.

Tom used to work as an attorney for Legal Services, a foundation dedicated to poverty law. He described how many of his colleagues passionately worked to solve the legal problems, great and small, afflicting those poor people who regularly visited their office, but had no interest in uncovering even the greatest problems afflicting those in distant counties whom they had never seen.

Brotherly love is, “the desire for the true good of one’s neighbor, which leads one to act rightly toward him.” To my mind this means that I should want eternal salvation for all the people of the world ahead of anything else. That means I’m required to tell them the truth. They need to know that The Truth is a man with a face, a name, and all the power of the universe. It is prudent for us to get to know Him.  

Mans inhumanity to man is on full display online. In addition to my on-and-off personal use of social media, I have been the social media coordinator for The Apostolate of Divine Mercy in Service of Life, Marriage, and the Family, and Southwell Media, and I’ve noticed that often people on social media feel free to say truly reprehensible things to one another. I’ve had loved ones call my children and me the worst imaginable names online. They have never acknowledged this in person. Sometimes I leave social media because of this.  

My Grandparents were involved with their local community, not with people all around the world. This gave them friends and a way to assist their neighbors in need. It provided them the means to evangelize with both words and actions to the vulnerable nearest them. Every time that someone in public asks me how I am, I say, “blessed far beyond what I deserve.” Often this leads to a conversation about how blessed we all are and how much God loves us. In a small way, I hope to honor God and my grandparents with these small acts of evangelization. I may never be a missionary like the great saints who brought thousands to God, but I can witness to the miracle of my life to those around me. Perhaps, someday, I will figure out how to improve my corner of social media in a similar way.