Don’t Retweet that Compliment

“RT: @________ I love @______’s new book. You must read it.// Thanks. Humbled by your kind words.”

I see this type of tweet several times a day.  Someone takes to Twitter and compliments someone on their good book/blogpost/sermon etc.  The person receiving the accolade is not satisfied to do a simple reply to the person and tell them thanks.  Instead, he hits the retweet button, adds the word “thanks” at the end and broadcasts to the world the compliment that he received.

Can I offer a word to Christians who are tempted to retweet compliments? Don’t do it.  Resist the temptation to hit the retweet button and simply hit the reply button. Tell the person thank you without broadcasting their compliment to all of your followers. The retweeting of compliments comes across as an attempt to brag about your accomplishments and how much other astounded by your great work.

Now, I am not suggesting that men shouldn’t share links to their resources.  On the contrary, the reason I follow many Christian writers on Twitter is because I want to know what they are writing and hope that they will tweet links to it.  If you’ve written something, share the link, then let others read it and talk about how good it is.  One of the beauties of social media is that good content gets shared by a large number of people.  Men who are preaching, leading, and writing well don’t need to trumpet how helpful people are finding their content to be.  There will be hundreds if not thousands doing it already.  In fact, here is where Solomon’s wisdom would do us well.  “Let another praise you, and not your own mouth; a stranger, and not your own lips.”

The Bible calls us to humility brothers.  Whatever gifts we have come from the Lord and He is using them to glorify Himself, not to contribute to our own sense of “bigdealness.”  If people are blessed by your work and let you know, that ‘s great.  The glory belongs to Jesus and not to you.