The Madness of Twitter

or The Tyranny of the Watching World.

"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one..."

-Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

In August of 2017, a category 4 Hurricane named “Hurricane Harvey” made landfall in Texas and Louisiana. Over a four-day period many areas recorded over 40 inches of rain, making it the wettest tropical storm on record in the United States. During the storm, 200,00 homes were damaged, and more than 1 million people were displaced. In total, “Harvey” caused an estimated 125 Billion dollars’ worth of damages.

During the 4-day storm, Lakewood Church in Houston came under fire for refusing to open its doors to Hurricane Harvey victims. The 50-million-dollar facility, which seats 16 thousand, initially had its doors locked due to its own flood damage.

But this did not stop waves of Twitter users from berating Pastor Joel Osteen and Lakewood Church for allegedly “closing their doors on people in need.” But even after Osteen posted pictures of standing water in the building, the attacks did not stop. Even after Lakewood church opened their facilities, offering food, shelter, and medical care, the online criticisms did not stop. The madness of crowds had set in.

At that time, I was a youth pastor in south Arkansas. I had just attended the Arkansas Baptist State Convention in Little Rock where I heard of the many ways Arkansas Baptists were giving assistance in Texas and Louisiana. Hundreds of churches sent crews down south and gave thousands of dollars to the relief effort. Encouraged by this news, I decided to tweet something along these lines:

I’m proud of evangelical churches leading the way in providing aid to Texas and Louisiana. #Harvey

I was not prepared for the onslaught which soon took place. In a span of 8 hours, my tweet received thousands of comments and retweets. I was harassed, bullied, and targeted by thousands of agitators for the next 24 hours. My wife and children, visible in my profile picture, were targeted for obscene comments and threats. My account was placed on “watch-lists”, and I was forced to delete my account. I remember my phone literally running hot in my hand due to all the traffic my account was receiving. I remember arguing with people I did not know about Lakewood church and Joel Osteen (who I am not a fan of), but to no avail. There is no appeasing the madness of crowds.

God’s word offers this paradoxical wisdom when dealing with the madness of crowds:

Answer not a fool according to his folly,
    lest you be like him yourself.

Answer a fool according to his folly,
    lest he be wise in his own eyes.

-Proverbs 26:4-5

Facts are stubborn things. Our minds have an uncanny ability to filter out inconvenient truths and overvalue beliefs that confirm our own biases. When stubborn and sinful people make up their minds about something, there’s little we can do to change their mind. That is why Proverbs tells us to now entertain discussions with fools.

How much greater is this command for ministers responding to slander by anons?

In his book, The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity, Douglas Murray says “if one party finds their whole purpose in life to reside in some aspect of…disagreement”, then there is nothing we can do to change their opinion. Sensible people disagree amicably, but a fool binds his identity to some aspect of that disagreement. Hence, refuting their position is to deny their personhood.

It’s quite scary, and I believe social media has exacerbated the problem exponentially. Millions of Twitter users root their identity in disagreement, claiming to be activists, masquerading half-truths as whole truths, slandering anyone in opposition, and leading low information, anon mobs against their rivals.

Murray goes on to say:

“Public life is now dense with people desperate to man the barricades long after the revolution is over. Either because they mistake the barricades for home, or because they have no other home to go to. In each case a demonstration of virtue demands an overstating of the problem, which then causes an amplification of the problem.”

Why do I bring this up?

Since the 50^th General Assembly of the PCA concluded a few weeks ago, I have noticed a concerted effort by Twitter mobs against our denomination, its courts, and its ministers. Twitter activists, feminists, former ministers, watch-bloggers, disgruntled ex-members, progressive evangelicals, and liberal mainliners have all joined together to accuse the PCA as being abusive and patriarchal.

They claim that the PCA is abusive because it failed to pass certain overtures at this year’s assembly, completely disregarding the nuance of debate and demonstrating (respectfully) an ignorance of our polity. They claim we are patriarchal because eldership within the PCA is reserved for men, which has been the case for 50 years.

So we must ask ourselves,

·         Are there abuse cases in the PCA? Yes.

·         Is the PCA a denomination characterized by abuse? No.

·         Is the PCA moving towards providing better care for abuse victims? Yes.

(Note: The above statements can be true at the same time.)

·         Is there a tendency within social media to misconstrue and possibly overstate the issue? Yes, the internet is not real life.

·         Are the PCA’s courts slow to accomplish anything? Yes, and purposely so. Our polity is not given to the whims and hysteria of social media. (Revoice, anyone?)

·         Has our denomination ‘dropped the ball’ on abuse in the past? Well, that depends on who you talk to. I’m sure our courts have erred. No system is perfect because we are all sinners. But I would caution against using social media as the primary mode of information regarding cases.

How should PCA ministers respond to the madness of mobs?

Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own eyes. I believe ministers should respond to the madness of crowds by not responding at all. “Mobbing” on social media is fueled by replies and view counts. Titus 3:10 is the prescription for dealing with slanderous mobs on Twitter and Facebook. Warn them once, then possibly a second time, then having nothing to do with them. Mute accounts, mute keywords and hashtags, and block. Give no attention to the divisive and slanderous people who live for the attention they receive. Perhaps God will deliver them from their sin when they realize how their outbursts have little effect on Christ’s church.

Author Chris Jameson, at Furnishing Faith, argues that:

Western society once viewed emotional outbursts, shouting, unreasonableness, and other dramatic flairs as indicative of immaturity, or the inability to effectively communicate due to a lack of experience, character, or competence with respect to ideas, evidence, and conversation.

Today however, we have somehow been conned into viewing this same immature behavior instead as indicative of deep sincerity, grave urgency, or even an effort in "speaking truth to power."

The inclination to let the outrage of immature persons to dominate our conversations, our policies, our organizations, our faith practices, our parenting, our relationships, our values, and our convictions will inevitably lead to a society which of course looks like it was shaped by children.

If you have been to General Assembly within the past decade, you have probably heard pragmatic arguments concerning what the “watching world” will think of our decisions.  Putting aside fallacious reasoning aside, brothers, let’s not kid ourselves. Social media is not the watching world. Twitter is not real life. And frankly, not everything news outlets publish are factual.

We must remember Christ’s promise that the world hates the church (Jn 15:19). The gospel is a stench to unbelievers (2 Cor 1:15-17). Regardless how we dress up our monotheism, biblicism, and complementarianism, the world will always view us as narrow, exclusive, stupid, patriarchal, and anglo-centric.

Do you think the “watching world” cares about the PCA’s “AIC Report on human sexuality”?

Do you think the “watching world” cares about the PCA’s “Report on Racial and Ethnic Reconciliation”?

Do you think the “watching world” cares about the PCA’s “Report on Women serving in the ministry of the church?”

No, of course they do not. The world will only think favorably of our churches when we become so emasculated even they won’t attend them. Think about this: the world is not able to differentiate the PCA from Joel Osteen. We are a common enemy.

So long as the PCA proclaims Jesus Christ and Him crucified, we will experience apathy and outright antagonism from the world. Or, to put it in the words of Douglas Murray, the world lives in disagreement against Christ and His church. This does not give us license to be rude or “fight fire with fire”. But it certainly does not require that we entertain every libelous claim made on the internet, or base our decisions upon what the “Watching world” tweets or publishes.