We are swimming in a lot of outrage and noise every day on our social media feeds. My Facebook feed is full of anger from every direction. It’s no better on my X, Threads, or Bluesky feeds. There is no conversation, or people’s minds being converted, changed, or challenged. There’s noise.
This week, I have been remarking that it is getting harder to tell the difference between righteous heartbreak and raw political outrage that fill so many friends’ posts. The prophetic is confused with propaganda. Care for the poor is often hijacked to score points, fuel outrage, or curate a platform. With AI, algorithms, and constant noise, I struggle to tell what is authentic and what is engineered. Much of what passes for piety sounds a lot like anger. Everywhere I look, noise is drowning out conversation, and outreach is drowning out love.
As someone pursuing what it means to lead a quiet life, it would be easy for me to just pull back and delete my social media accounts. Ironically, over the years, I have moved increasingly from the extroverted, needing to be connected individual I was, to someone who is learning to step into what it means to lead a quieter life at a slower pace, discovering a simple life and faith that embraces downward mobility in a chaotic world and a church often obsessed with excess.
At the core of this season for me is a quiet but subversive invitation from 1 Thessalonians 4:11–12:
“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” (NIV)
I believe that the quiet life is a resistant, faithful way of being present to God and others. So, for those of us who are looking for a vision of renewal, for those who are disillusioned yet still hopeful about what Christianity could look like in this chaotic world.
And though someday it may come to deleting my social media networks, right now, rather than join the noise, I want to present a humble, faithful, and Jesus-centered way forward in this world where the noisy outrage drowns out the love.
A Different Path Than Outrage
For about two weeks, I have been wondering how to respond to the outrage, noise, and real-life situations that are unfolding in the Midwest and elsewhere. I started writing many posts, then erased them all. I don’t want to add to the noise. The value of learning to make it my ambition to lead a quiet life is more than a mere value; it is a filter for everything I do. To lead a quiet life, I cannot add to the noise; the two ways are radically opposed.
A few days ago, a way forward for me came from a proverb Michael Frost recently shared on a Facebook list of bible verses. Though he listed many verses, there was one that stood out to me.
“The one who oppresses the poor has insulted his Creator, but whoever honors him shows favor to the needy.” (Proverbs 14:31, NET)
The scriptures tell us God’s heart. This verse does more than call us to know how God’s heart beats; it challenges us to live in a way transformed by what we know of God’s heart. To live in any way that oppresses the poor is an insult to God. The idea of what it means to be poor in the scriptures is not just about being desperate and homeless. It often involves three dimensions: those with the least resources, those in last place in society, and those spiritually lost. This scripture passage reminds us that if we are living in any way that makes it harder, that is oppressing, someone else in one of these three realities, we are insulting God, whose image we carry and bear in our being.
This Proverb calls us to analyze everything we say, do, buy, and believe.
How might what I say oppose the poor? How might what I do be oppressing the poor? What am I buying that is oppressing the poor? What do I believe about life, church, or whatever, that might be oppressing the poor?
Making It Personal
I know that I need to make this verse my prayer. And making this a prayer will be challenging. It forces me to be aware of how I live and shop, and of what truth I speak. Even more, it forces my heart to love in a certain way.
It starts, as the old saying goes, with a realization that I really need my heart broken for the things that break the heart of God. The prayer looks something like this: “God, help me care about the poor and the oppressed. Not as political leverage.Not as content for posts.Not as a way to challenge others just to prove I’m right.” I need to make sure I am living what I want to say to the world, and modeling first what I would preach to others on my social media feeds.
This verse illuminates what it means to lead a quiet life and to pray faithfully about this challenge in our lives.
There is God’s Part & My Part
Too often, we are driven by information or emotion. God calls us to be driven by love, and to live in a way that liberates, not oppresses. We are saying to God, we can’t do this on our own. Our hearts are cold, cynical, and confused.
I need God’s help to help me love them first. God needs to help me see how I participate in systems that burden the poor (lost, with least, or last). I need God to empower me to live in a way that announces, demonstrates, and embodies freedom to those suffering.
However, this is not all “God do this for me” reality. God asks me to take my thoughts captive, my beliefs to heart, and to raise my hands to embrace those he would embrace, not accuse. It is my responsibility to recognize the smell of God’s kingdom in the streets, and not just pursue the echo of my own voice.
This is what I know I need to know: that before I speak prophetically, God must teach me to love deeply. I cannot warrior anything on social media or from a pulpit that I have not modeled myself.
This verse, when lived, does not add to the noise. It is not a verse that is meant to serve my arguments or anyone else’s. This verse, a scripture often does, cuts to the deepest part of who I am, and it made me stop in my tracks. I realized this: my heart, not my mouth, is what matters.
There are too many people on both sides of every argument, letting their inner voices come out, but doing nothing for the cause they advocate. There are plenty of people, like me at times, who are working toward the goal in one of these arguments but are unaware of how cynical and closed our hearts can become. Both are equally bad to me.
This Proverb makes me wrestle with the noise and dissonance in me.
A Way of Transformation Not Outrage
As I reflected on this proverb, I saw it as a practical path to transformation, not to outrage. This Proverb inherently implies to me some really practical ways in which I need to respond to the poor, to make sure that I am loving those with the least, those in last, and those lost. I am reminded that I need:
- eyes to see the poor as God sees them.
- ears to hear the real stories of those who are lost, the least, and in last place.
- to break my hardened heart and to give me a heart that is moved by the needs of others, not just reactive.
- restraint on my mouth until love comes before proclamation.
- to take my thoughts captive and my beliefs to heart.
- to raise my hands to embrace those he would embrace, not accuse.
It, like all of the gospel, takes all of who I am. It takes me as I am at work, on the computer, in the grocery store, and so on.
Beyond the Screen
Some may suspect that I am saying we never prophetically name what is right and wrong. I am not implying that. I am only giving away a way to model something more than noise, formative behavior, and patterns. Even when there’s a clear right and wrong, right words need right actions. Too many of the people talking are doing just that, talking. We’ve become good at being Facebook warriors, willing to post and protest online while our real-life conversations and convictions remain shallow and self-centered. This is not one side more than any other. I have seen it on all sides in debates—convictions rooted more in political allegiance (or opposition) than genuine love or whatever cause. To be truthful, no matter how much you dress that up with scripture, I don’t think God is impressed or honored.
How does this verse inform the conversations going on right now? For me, this verse reminds me of the kingdom cause: not to oppress the poor, or I will put myself at odds with God. I am not against border safety or immigration processes, but I am against overreaching authoritarian states that oppress the poor and do so as a hired elite of my country and with tax money.
But I know this, even in my full-time work among those experiencing homelessness, the poor, I can lose the plot too easily and grow cynical. It’s the same stories and problems over and over again. Each day, I need my heart broken for what breaks God’s heart. I need to walk out whatever I’m willing to signal on a screen.
Let the love drown out the outrage.
Let the love drown out the violence.
Let the love drown out the noise.
Let the love drown out the hate and judgment.
Let love drown out my opinions.
Let love, love.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In