Opting Out of The Noise

Dear Social Media, I want to break up. It’s not you, its me.

“People are inundated, blinded, deafened, and mentally paralysed by a flood of vulgar and tasteless externals, leaving them no time for leisure, thought, or creation from within themselves. A dead thing goes with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.” – G.K. Chesterton

I have left most of social media. Again. Like I have done several times before. This time, I am driven more by what I want to pursue than by what I’m wanting to give up. In the past, I often left social media because, quite simply, people can be cruel. Yet, after some time, I would always return, restarting my complicated love-hate relationship with it all over again.

For someone to say that they are leaving social media is rather unremarkable at this moment in time. A lot of people are doing this. My primary reason is that it is a distraction that I run dangerously close to becoming addicted to.

This has been a tricky thing to come to terms with. I wasn’t necessarily using social media in a bad way. Mostly I was consuming objectively good content, and I haven’t even ‘doom-scrolled’ in a long time. This is due to the fact that I have come to believe that much of what I doom-scrolled was propaganda. (both left wing media and right wing media) and not truths to be indignantly clutching onto. However, I have been prone to, ‘envy scrolling’ and ‘comparison scrolling’ and such.

With’ envy scrolling’, I would watch content of catholic women going to mass with their families. These images showed themselves praying alongside their husbands and children. These images were beautiful and idyllic and so not my own experience. It would draw my mind to coming to the Faith late in life. I was reminded of how I go to Mass all alone surrounded by families like the ones I mention above. I envied these types of people and blamed myself for my pridefulness in pushing God away for so many years and by extension, my children. In these moments I would be drawn back into guilt about how many years I had wasted.

“O my God! Source of all mercy! I acknowledge Your sovereign power. While recalling the wasted years that are past, I believe that You, Lord, can in an instant turn this loss to gain. Miserable as I am, yet I firmly believe that You can do all things. Please restore to me the time lost, giving me Your grace, both now and in the future, that I may appear before You in ‘wedding garments.’ Amen.” -A Prayer to Redeem Lost Time, by St. Teresa of Avila

With ‘comparison scrolling’, I would start out simply delighting in seeing how other people practiced their faith. That would invariably segue into wondering if I should be doing things their way. There are so many beautiful ways people can show their devotion to God. Yet somewhere in my perusing of this content I was not just delighting in their expression of Faith anymore. I began to wonder if I wasn’t just doing things differently but if I was doing them altogether wrong.

These are just two examples of how I misused social media. Both made me wonder if I was becoming the wrong type of Catholic. This turned out to be another distracting and ultimately pointless adventure into self loathing. The problem is that even being away from my smartphone didn’t help me disconnect. The sounds, images, and emotions social media stirred within me lingered whether I was staring at a screen or not. Noise, it seems, is not limited to just our hearing. There is a kind of noise that invades all of our senses and renders us non receptive to Gods voice. As baptized Christians, we have the authority in Jesus name to renounce this ‘noise’ in whatever form it takes. We have authority in Jesus name to command it to leave us.

“Jesus said, “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power ‘to tread upon serpents’ and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” – Luke 10 : 18-20

Practically speaking, and as an example of how *I* personally can do this based on the experiences I have shared here, I can say,

“In the name of Jesus, I renounce the lie that I am the wrong type of catholic. In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I converted too late and that my children are doomed because of that. In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I must be a copy of someone I envy to be useful to God. In the name of Jesus I renounce the lie that I am ever alone when I go to Mass for nothing is further from the truth! In the name of Jesus I command all I have just renounced to leave me now and go to the foot of the Holy Cross for Jesus to do with as he wills.”

That is part of the spiritual work I can do, along with keeping the precepts of the Church. However I can not forget to do the other part of this particular work and that is to delete my social media accounts!

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that perhaps the biggest triumph of this ‘noise’ is that because of it, people now deem as metaphor, the majesty, splendor and all consuming love of our Lord Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist. Likewise, they also deem as symbolic, the reality of where such noise originates: The devil. Don’t worry too much about him though. As I said above, we have power in Jesus Holy Name and more importantly, “Our Lady has already crushed his head.” (of Sister Lucia of Fatima)