Soul Selfie
We’ve all seen it and perhaps posted a few ourselves; the smiling face of the camera owner, and perhaps a friend, taking their own picture and posting it for feedback. The ‘selfie,’ a 21st century phenomena.
Selfies really went viral in 2010 with the introduction of the front facing camera on the iphone 4. There are now over 375 million photos on Instagram with the hashtag #me.
A recent survey of 800 teens by Pew Research revealed that 91 percent of teenagers post photos of themselves online; up from 79 percent in 2006.
Rebecca Brown, a 23 year old grad student at Birmingham University, says she believes selfies are like visual diaries. “I can look back and see what I looked like at a particular time.” She adds, “If people start liking your selfie then obviously you’re going to get a nice boost and you can walk out the door with a little more confidence.”
Surprisingly the Bible talks about ‘selfies’ too, although not the photographic kind but rather a ‘soul selfie’. “It is your own face that you see reflected in the water and it is your own self that you see in your heart.” Proverbs 27:19 GNB
The thing about selfies is they allow you to manipulate your image until it is beautiful, desirable and enviable to those around you, but it never actually shows the true image of your soul. Most of us would rather not put a visual of our soul on display, but that is actually the only thing God sees when he looks at us. Jesus warns us to, “Stop judging by external standards and judge by true standards,” in John 7:24.
Paul tells us to, “Put yourselves to the test and judge yourselves to find out whether you are living in faith …” 2 Corinthians 13:5 GNB.
1 Samuel 16:7 pounds the message home, “Pay no attention to how tall and handsome he is … I do not judge as people judge. They look at the outward appearance but I look at the heart.”
It is easy to forget whose approval is most important, our online followers or our heavenly Father.
If we agree with Rebecca Brown that selfies can be a visual diary to look back on and see what you looked like at a certain time, we can apply this spiritually to gauge our growth:
- Does my heart look the same as it did last month, last year?
- Have I grown at all?
- Learned anything?
- Am I in the same place I was last time I snapped the picture?
Maybe it’s time to add a snapshot to your spiritual diary – a new Soul Selfie.
By Colleen Biermann
