Audio Transcript
You pull out your phone. You find the right angle and spin to get the right lighting and just the right backdrop. You snap a picture of yourself and post it. Many do this. Selfies are a language of communication today. But underneath all the selfies and the hearts and comments and the feeling of being seen by others, is there something darker going on? Are we feeding a bottomless hunger, seeing our own reflections like Narcissus staring down at his own reflection in a pool? Today on Ask Pastor John: selfies in the end times.
Smartphones are the topic again. We looked at doomscrolling two weeks ago. That was episode 2276, “Doomscrolling Done Right.” Today, we look at selfies. The attention economy appears in Luke 17:26–33, our reading tomorrow. There, Jesus describes people being so caught up in the daily things of food and buying and selling, the kinds of things we snap on social media. And then we read in 2 Timothy 3:1–5 of Paul’s warning that in the last days people will be “lovers of self,” which means to us in this modern digital culture discussions about platform building.
This question just came in from a young man: “Pastor John, it feels like we are living in the very final moments of the last days. When I look at 2 Timothy 3, it says people will be ‘lovers of self,’ and I can’t help but see that emerging right now in a way that’s never happened before in history. I’m talking about digital media and selfies and the self-obsession of my generation on social media. It feels like these are final experiences of sin that signal the end. As someone who uses these platforms, I’m worried. Is my phone just a tool for self-exaltation? What would you say to my generation?” Here’s how Pastor John answered this very question in 2018.
Let me answer with a double “yes and no” (two yeses and two nos).
First, yes, vlogs and selfies and self-focused social media are often (not always) an expression of the self-exaltation and self-preoccupation and self-fascination of the last days. But no, these new technologies are not the emerging of such final experiences of sin, because they’ve always been there. New technologies are giving new ways to express old sins. So, that’s my first “yes and no.” Yes, these are the manifestations of the end-times self-love; and no, they’re not just now emerging.
“New technologies are giving new ways to express old sins.”
Here’s the second “yes and no.” Yes, these are the last days, and we should be looking keenly and expectantly and hopefully and joyfully for the coming of our precious, longed-for, all-satisfying Lord Jesus. But no, these are not yet the very last days, but are very much like the last days that began two thousand years ago in the first century.
Last Days
Now, let me try to explain. When Jesus came into the world as the long-expected Messiah, he declared the arrival of the kingdom of God, which the Old Testament anticipated as part of the last days. So, when Peter stood up on the day of Pentecost and tried to explain the extraordinary events of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, he said, “This is what was uttered through the prophet Joel: ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh’” (Acts 2:16–17). In other words, these events that you’re looking at right now, in AD 33, are the fulfillment of promises made for the last days.
So, the last days were there in the first century, right after Jesus had come. Or Hebrews 1:1–2: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son.” The coming of Jesus is the beginning of the last days. Or 1 Peter 1:20: “[Christ] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you.” Ever since the time of Jesus, two thousand years ago, we have been living in the last days, looking expectantly to Jesus, who stands at the door.
We know this is the way that Paul was thinking, even in the very text that Ed quoted about self-love, because Paul says, “Understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money” (2 Timothy 3:1–2). And then he says to Timothy, “Avoid such people” (2 Timothy 3:5). I guess they’re here. They’re not just coming two thousand years later. In other words, Paul is talking about Timothy’s own situation.
“God gave us a self, not so that we would have something to exult in, but so we would have something to exult with.”
So, this kind of person comes in the last days, and now Timothy’s to avoid them because these are the last days, and there they are, and you shouldn’t be surprised or swayed by them. Well, besides saying that the Judge is at the door, we should always be alert and ready to give an account to the Lord Jesus when he comes (James 5:9). Ed asked me what I would say to people on vlogs. That’s what I want to say: The Judge is standing at the door. Be ready. Be alert. You’re going to be called to account. That’s the first thing I’d say.
Fullness of Joy
And then, here’s the last thing I’d say. God gave us a self, not so that we would have something to exult in, but something to exult with. He gave us a self, not to be the object of our joy, but the subject of joy. That is, not to be the focus of happiness in front of the mirror or the selfie, but the furnace of happiness in front of Jesus. He gave us a self, not as an instrument of self-worth but as an instrument of worship.
The self is — and is meant to be — a desire factory. And the point of all those desires is that there is a joy outside ourselves that they point to: the endless manufacture of desires for something beyond the self.
This factory of desires is not the dream. This factory has a dream. It isn’t the dream. It is producing all these desires, because out there somewhere, there’s a dream. They’re all meant to lead us outside ourselves — indeed, outside the world — because nothing in this world finally satisfies.
The desires of the human self are meant to lead us to God, in whose presence is fullness of joy, at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11). That’s what I’d say to the self-absorbed user of social media. The self was never meant to satisfy us. The self was never meant to find satisfaction in the perception or promotion of self. The self was made for God.
