Anyone who knows me well (or at least knows my social media habits) knows that I very much have a love-hate relationship with social media. This causes me to have quite the erratic online persona. I’ve signed off Facebook numerous times (going full nuclear a couple times by deleting all my friends), I’m currently on my third Twitter incarnation, and I often delete posts if they don’t get enough attention. Sometimes I’m reckless and don’t really care what I put online, and other times I’m so timid that I spend more time erasing than I do posting.

For me it’s not usually question of the ethics of what I put up, (like asking ridiculous questions such as “What would Jesus tweet?”), but a question of the spirit behind the whole medium of social media and online persona. Why am I posting what I’m posting?

As someone who loves being the centre of attention (as long as I can control it), that why question is a really important one. Am I posting to bring more attention to myself? Am I posting to control people’s opinions of me? Am I deleting that post so that I seem more media savvy than I actually am? Am I adding that friend or following that person because I want to connect or because I’m just boosting my stats?

It’s all about image, creating an image of myself that I display to the world. I oscillate between being very idolatrous and very iconoclastic with my image. I’m often either worshipping or destroying my own projection of myself.

At my core, my own frustrations with my online persona are really just frustrations with myself. When my profile isn’t enough, what I’m really meaning is that I am not enough.

I’m not clever enough.

I’m not wise enough.

I’m not aloof enough.

I’m not funny enough.

I am not enough.

Lies. All lies.

I am enough as I am. You are enough as you are. You don’t need to try to be more. You are all that you were made to be.

Why? Because God dwells within you. You are made to be God’s own image. When you or I think that we’re not enough, when we fall into despair or nothingness or lies, we’re delivered again and again by Jesus’s love for us as the image, the living example of the God we cannot see. We are called to live in that love, a love that is lived with others, and that is how God lives within us. That is how we know we are enough, because when we live in love, for others and ourselves, than God lives in us. Jesus calls us to love our neighbours, but he also calls us to love our neighbours as our self; we do need to be able to grow in love for ourselves as we are created in order to grow in love for others.

Any narrative that says that we are not enough comes not from the God of love who created us, but from evil forces (spiritual and physical) that seek to kill and destroy. Jesus delivers us from those narratives, as we are called to deliver others from those narratives as well­.

I am enough, but the images of myself I often try to portray is not. It’s not reality. Instagram filters might make me look more aesthetically appealing, but they don’t capture God inside me.