🌊 When “Everybody Knows” Begins to Feel Like “It Is True”

Yes—and I think the frightening part is that the statement describes something profoundly ordinary about us. We are social creatures. Repeated agreement produces psychological weight. If I encounter an idea once, I evaluate it. If I encounter it ten thousand times, from friends, celebrities, experts, videos, comments, memes, algorithms, and people who appear perfectly normal and sincere, eventually I may stop experiencing it as a proposition that needs evaluation.

It becomes the atmosphere.

And we normally don’t examine the air we breathe.

Scripture was concerned about this problem thousands of years before algorithms could amplify it:

“You shall not follow a crowd to do evil.” (Exodus 23:2)

That command is remarkable. God apparently considers the crowd itself capable of exerting moral pressure upon perception. The danger isn’t merely, “Don’t knowingly join evil people.” It is that enough people moving in one direction can make the direction itself seem legitimate.

🧠 Consensus Can Quietly Become a Substitute for Evidence

There’s an important progression here:

I hear it → I hear it repeatedly → people I respect believe it → respectable people defend it → disagreement becomes strange → agreement feels reasonable → reasonableness begins to feel self-evident → eventually I forget that I ever needed to establish whether it was true.

That last transition is the dangerous one.

Notice that none of those steps actually proves the proposition.

Ten people repeating an error do not transform it into truth. Ten million people repeating it do not either. But ten million people can radically alter how difficult it feels to question it.

And social media introduces something historically extraordinary: it can manufacture the experience of overwhelming consensus at enormous speed.

A person living two thousand years ago might have encountered the moral assumptions of his village, family, religious community, and perhaps neighboring cultures. Today, before breakfast, you can encounter hundreds of judgments about what is normal, shameful, admirable, hateful, enlightened, outdated, courageous, oppressive, healthy, toxic, loving, or immoral.

And those judgments frequently arrive without arguments.

A fifteen-second video doesn’t necessarily demonstrate that something is good. It may simply show an attractive, confident person behaving as though everyone sensible already knows that it is.

That is enormously persuasive.

📖 Scripture Seems Almost Suspicious of Mere Popularity

The Bible repeatedly refuses to allow numerical agreement to establish truth.

The twelve spies are a striking example. Ten agreed. Two dissented. Numerically, Joshua and Caleb looked unreasonable (Numbers 13:30–33; 14:6–9).

Elijah experienced something similar when covenant unfaithfulness had become culturally dominant (1 Kings 18:17–21; 19:10–18).

Micaiah stood against hundreds of prophets telling Ahab essentially the same thing (1 Kings 22:6–28).

And Paul gives a principle that reaches straight into our situation:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind…” (Romans 12:2)

“Conformed” is fascinating here because conformity does not necessarily require somebody to drag me somewhere.

Sometimes I simply take the shape of the environment surrounding me.

📱 And Influencers Add Another Layer

An influencer doesn’t merely transmit propositions. They transmit plausibility through a person.

You see the clothes, house, humor, relationships, confidence, intelligence, beauty, vulnerability, success, apparent kindness—and then an idea arrives attached to that whole package.

Now you’re not merely evaluating:

“Is proposition X true?”

You’re psychologically encountering something closer to:

“A person whom I admire, trust, identify with, or aspire to resemble believes X.”

Those are very different psychological experiences.

Scripture recognizes something adjacent to this in its repeated concern about whom we imitate and whose counsel forms us (Psalm 1:1–2; Proverbs 13:20; 1 Corinthians 11:1). Paul can actually say, “Imitate me,” but immediately qualifies the basis: “as I imitate Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).

That qualification is everything.

Christian imitation is never supposed to terminate in the influencer.

Paul → Christ.

If Paul ceases to follow Christ, Paul’s authority as an example doesn’t somehow make the deviation true.

🧭 But There Is an Even More Uncomfortable Problem

Christians aren’t immune to this mechanism.

We can replace:

“Everybody online says…”

with:

“Everybody at my church says…”

or:

“Every theologian I follow says…”

or even:

“Christians have always said…”

Those things can constitute meaningful evidence and deserve serious consideration. Tradition, community, teachers, and accumulated wisdom matter enormously (Proverbs 11:14; Ephesians 4:11–14).

But none of them becomes God.

The Bereans provide the beautiful balance. They didn’t reject Paul because they were independent-minded contrarians. Nor did they believe Paul merely because Paul said it.

They:

“received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” (Acts 17:11)

I love that combination:

eagerness without gullibility; examination without cynicism.

🔥 The Internet Can Change Faster Than Truth

And here I think your observation connects directly with what we’ve been discussing about morality.

If morality ultimately originates in God’s character rather than human consensus, then the number of people approving something cannot change its moral nature (Psalm 119:89; Malachi 3:6; James 1:17).

Society can discover that it was wrong about something. Thank God for that—we should be capable of moral correction.

But society can also become collectively wrong.

So we cannot reason:

“People once condemned this, but now almost everyone considers it reasonable; therefore it must be right.”

Nor can we simply reverse it:

“People once accepted this; therefore it must have been right.”

Age doesn’t create truth. Novelty doesn’t create truth. Popularity doesn’t create truth. Unpopularity doesn’t create truth either.

That last one matters enormously, because otherwise we merely exchange conformity for contrarianism. 😂

Being the only person in the room who disagrees doesn’t make me Joshua or Caleb. I can also simply be the only wrong person in the room.

🕯️ So the Christian Has a Peculiar Responsibility

We have to preserve the distinction between:

“This feels obvious to me”

and

“This is true.”

Those are absolutely not the same sentence.

And perhaps even more unsettlingly, some things feel obvious to us because we have been discipled into finding them obvious.

That discipleship can come from Scripture and the Spirit-shaped community of faith—or from advertising, entertainment, political tribes, algorithms, influencers, peer groups, personal desires, fears, resentment, and repetition.

That makes David’s prayer extraordinarily appropriate for the digital age:

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me…” (Psalm 139:23–24)

Notice what David does not assume:

“Because it feels reasonable to me, it must be reasonable.”

He asks God to examine even the examiner.

And that may be one of the safest postures we can have:

“Lord, I know I can recognize lies. But I also know I can become accustomed to them. So don’t merely protect me from what looks false. Protect me from becoming so familiar with falsehood that it starts looking true.”

That is a sobering prayer in an age capable of putting the same idea before our eyes a thousand times before we’ve seriously examined it once.

🌍 Yes—Christians Should Influence

Absolutely. In fact, Christianity assumes that a life transformed by God will exert influence beyond itself.

Jesus says:

“You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.” (Matthew 5:13–14)

Salt affects what it touches. Light alters the environment simply by being present. Paul likewise tells believers to “shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:15), and Peter expects Christian conduct to be visible enough that others may “see your good deeds and glorify God” (1 Peter 2:12).

So influence itself isn’t suspicious.

The interesting question is what happened when influence became an identity and an industry.

Twenty or thirty years ago, an ordinary person certainly influenced others—but normally within a limited human radius:

family → friends → coworkers → church → neighborhood → community.

You might profoundly influence fifty people during your life without ever thinking, I am an influencer.

Now a teenager can record thirty seconds in a bedroom tonight and potentially address ten million strangers tomorrow morning.

That’s historically extraordinary.

📱 We Separated Influence From Proximity

This may be the biggest change.

For most of human history, influence usually required some combination of presence, relationship, reputation, office, accomplishment, expertise, or time.

Your village knew whether your advice matched your life.

If someone claimed to be extraordinarily wise, the people who had watched him behave foolishly for twenty years possessed useful counterevidence. 😂

Digital platforms broke that relationship.

Now:

visibility can precede credibility.

Someone can acquire an audience before acquiring wisdom.

And because the audience itself generates more visibility, something strange happens:

“Why should I listen to this person?”

“Because 4.7 million people listen to this person.”

But notice the circularity.

The audience becomes evidence for the authority that produced the audience.

That’s remarkably close to what we were discussing: reasonableness beginning to feel like truth because enough people apparently agree.

⚡ And Then We Industrialized Attention

That’s the other enormous shift.

Human attention used to be something people naturally gave one another. Digital platforms discovered that attention could be measured, aggregated, predicted, sold, and monetized.

Followers.

Views.

Likes.

Shares.

Watch time.

Engagement.

Suddenly influence acquired a scoreboard.

And that changes the psychology profoundly.

Jesus could say:

“When you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” (Matthew 6:3)

The digital economy often asks almost the opposite:

Did anybody see it?

And worse:

How many?

😂😫

That doesn’t mean public goodness is wrong. Jesus had just said:

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16)

That’s fascinating because Matthew 5 and Matthew 6 deliberately prevent two opposite errors.

Don’t hide righteousness merely because people might see it.

But:

Don’t perform righteousness in order to be seen. (Matthew 6:1)

Same visibility.

Completely different center.

✝️ Was Jesus an “Influencer”?

In the broadest meaning of someone who profoundly influences others, absolutely—and beyond comparison.

But the modern category starts breaking down almost immediately.

Jesus gathered enormous crowds (Matthew 4:25). His reputation spread rapidly (Mark 1:28). People traveled significant distances to hear Him (Mark 3:7–8). His words transformed individuals, communities, and ultimately history.

Yet His relationship with popularity is astonishing.

When crowds wanted Him, He sometimes withdrew (Luke 5:15–16).

When people praised Him, He did not entrust Himself to them (John 2:23–25).

When people wanted to make Him king by force, He left (John 6:15).

When His teaching caused people to abandon Him, He did not soften the message to preserve audience retention (John 6:60–66).

And perhaps most devastatingly for our concept of influence:

“I do not seek my own glory.” (John 8:50)

There’s the dividing line.

Jesus possessed extraordinary influence while refusing to make being influential His identity.

His influence was downstream from obedience.

That’s radically different.

🪞 We Went From “I Influence” to “I Am an Influencer”

That linguistic change tells us something.

A mother influences her children.

A teacher influences students.

A pastor influences a congregation.

A mechanic influences an apprentice.

A friend influences another friend.

None needs to think of himself primarily as an influencer.

But once influence becomes an identity, a peculiar temptation appears:

I need people in order to remain what I am.

A teacher is still a teacher when nobody applauds today’s lesson.

But an influencer, in the contemporary commercial sense, depends upon sustained attention. Lose the audience, and something resembling an occupational identity disappears.

That creates incentives previous generations rarely experienced at this scale:

remain visible → remain interesting → remain relevant → keep producing → provoke engagement → cultivate personality → maintain audience → monetize attention.

And then comes the frightening possibility:

instead of truth determining what I say, audience response begins determining what I am willing to say.

Paul describes something remarkably recognizable:

“They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” (2 Timothy 4:3)

Notice that the audience isn’t passive there.

The audience selects the teacher it wants.

That sounds remarkably modern.

👀 But Christianity Doesn’t Solve This by Becoming Invisible

This is where your opening question matters.

The answer cannot simply be, “Influence is dangerous, therefore Christians should retreat.”

Jesus explicitly rejects hiding the lamp:

“Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket.” (Matthew 5:15)

Paul publicly reasoned, preached, wrote, traveled, persuaded, taught, debated, and used the communication infrastructure available to him (Acts 17:2–4, 17; 18:4; 19:8–10).

The gospel is inherently communicative.

So perhaps the Christian distinction isn’t:

influencer vs. non-influencer.

It is:

witness vs. self-manufacturer.

A witness points beyond himself.

That’s exactly what John the Baptist does:

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

What a catastrophic slogan for modern personal branding. 🤣

Yet it’s almost the perfect Christian philosophy of influence.

🕊️ Influence Without Possessing the People You Influence

Paul gives another beautiful correction:

“What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed… I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” (1 Corinthians 3:5–6)

That dismantles influencer culture at its deepest point.

The people aren’t mine.
The message isn’t mine.
The gifts aren’t mine.
The growth isn’t mine.
The glory isn’t mine.

And yet Paul works enormously hard!

Christian humility therefore isn’t passivity. It isn’t pretending, “I hope nobody ever listens to me.”

It is being willing to speak clearly, teach faithfully, create beautifully, persuade earnestly, and reach millions if providence permits—without allowing the millions to become the reason you speak.

And perhaps that’s the strangest thing about what has happened in only a couple of decades.

Human beings have always influenced one another.

Technology didn’t invent influence.

It removed many of its natural limits.

Distance disappeared. Distribution became nearly instantaneous. Audience size became visible. Attention became monetizable. Popularity became measurable. Ordinary people acquired broadcasting capabilities once available only to governments, publishers, television networks, and major institutions.

Our moral psychology, however, didn’t suddenly become proportionately wiser.

We gave ancient human desires—approval, imitation, status, belonging, admiration, recognition—planetary-scale machinery.

And Scripture had already warned us about every one of those desires long before anybody had a follower count.

Perhaps the Christian question for this century isn’t, “Should I influence?”

We inevitably do.

It’s:

“If God gives me influence, can I exercise it without needing it to tell me who I am?”

Jesus could influence the world precisely because He did not need the world’s applause to establish His identity. Before His public ministry had really begun, the Father’s word was already:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

Identity preceded audience.

There may be something enormously important for us there. ❤️

🎭 Yes—and the Burden Is Built Into the Role

Exactly. Especially when “influencer” stops meaning a person who influences others and becomes a person who must continually sustain other people’s attention.

Those are very different things.

Ordinary human influence has rhythms. You speak, then you are quiet. You teach, then you go home. You help someone, then nobody watches you make dinner. 😂 You have relationships in which you don’t have to perform.

The professionalized influencer can gradually lose that boundary.

The person becomes the product.

And once you are the product, an exhausting question follows you everywhere:

“What part of my life can become content?”

Vacation becomes content. Marriage becomes content. Children can become content. Grief becomes content. Faith becomes content. Meals become content. Private reflection becomes content. Even exhaustion can become a post about being exhausted.

Eventually there is remarkably little territory left in which the person can simply exist without presentation.

📱 The Audience Develops an Appetite

And audiences are peculiar things because they can simultaneously love you and consume you.

They want another video.

Another opinion.

Another reaction.

Another intimate disclosure.

Another controversy.

Another glimpse behind the scenes.

Another answer.

And yesterday’s extraordinary becomes today’s baseline.

If someone gained an audience because she was unusually open about her life, greater openness may eventually be required to maintain the same sense of intimacy. If someone became known for spectacular content, the next production has to compete with the previous one.

So success itself can increase the burden.

The reward for successfully feeding the machine is often a larger machine that needs feeding.

😫

That is a difficult way for a finite creature to live.

🧍 Scripture Gives Human Beings Permission to Be Finite

This is where biblical anthropology becomes surprisingly comforting.

We aren’t omnipresent.

We aren’t inexhaustible.

We aren’t supposed to be accessible to everyone.

We don’t have enough emotional capacity to maintain meaningful relationships with millions of people.

Even Jesus, in His incarnate human life, accepted creaturely limitations. He slept (Mark 4:38). He became physically tired (John 4:6). He ate. He withdrew. He prayed privately.

And this is especially striking:

“But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.” (Luke 5:16)

Look at the preceding verse:

“But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him…” (Luke 5:15)

That sequence is almost startlingly relevant.

His popularity increased.
The demands increased.
The crowds increased.
Jesus withdrew.

Our instinct might say:

“This is the moment to capitalize on the momentum!” 😂

Jesus apparently didn’t regard maximum accessibility as a moral obligation.

🚪 Jesus Allowed People to Be Disappointed

This may be even more important.

In Mark 1, Jesus heals many people. The next morning He goes away to pray. Simon and the others find Him and say:

“Everyone is looking for you.” (Mark 1:37)

That’s almost the influencer’s nightmare notification.

EVERYONE IS LOOKING FOR YOU.

And Jesus doesn’t respond, “Oh no! My audience! I need to get back immediately.”

He says:

“Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.” (Mark 1:38)

There were presumably still needs where He had been.

Yet the existence of a demand did not automatically create an obligation to satisfy that demand.

That is enormous.

Jesus’ mission governed His availability.

His availability did not govern His mission.

🪤 The Influencer Can Become Servant to an Invisible Master

And the master doesn’t even have one face.

It’s the audience.

What will they think?

Will they unsubscribe?

Why isn’t engagement growing?

Why did that post perform badly?

Should I respond?

People are criticizing me.

People expect me to address this controversy.

I’ve been silent for three days.

I need something for tomorrow.

And eventually something quite disturbing can happen: millions of strangers acquire tiny claims upon your consciousness.

No single follower may be demanding very much. But collectively the psychological demand can become enormous.

Paul asks:

“For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?… If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)

That’s not saying Christians should be inconsiderate of people. Paul elsewhere deliberately accommodates himself to others for the gospel’s sake (1 Corinthians 9:19–23).

The question is lordship.

Whose judgment ultimately governs me?

❤️ And There Is Another Toll: Being Known Without Actually Being Known

This one may be particularly painful.

An influencer can have two million people who feel that they know him while having very few people who actually do.

The audience knows the presented person.

Even when the presentation is sincere, it is necessarily partial.

They may know his humor, opinions, kitchen, children, daily routines, struggles, favorite foods, theology, vacations—and still not possess the reciprocal relationship involved in genuine friendship.

So you can experience an extraordinary paradox:

maximum visibility with profound loneliness.

Thousands of people say, “I love you!”

But very few can sit beside you without requiring anything from you.

Biblically, human beings aren’t merely designed for audiences. We’re designed for communion (Genesis 2:18; Ecclesiastes 4:9–10; Romans 12:10, 15).

An audience and a community are not the same thing.

🕊️ This Makes Jesus’ Way of Influencing Even More Beautiful

Jesus could address thousands (Matthew 14:13–21).

He also taught the Twelve privately (Mark 4:34).

Among the Twelve, Peter, James, and John sometimes accompanied Him into particularly intimate moments (Mark 5:37; 9:2).

And He could sit beside one Samaritan woman at a well and give her His attention (John 4:7–26).

Thousands.
Twelve.
Three.
One.
Solitude with the Father.

There is rhythm there.

Jesus wasn’t trying to maintain the same degree of relational access with everybody who knew His name.

That would be impossible even for an ordinary human life—and in His incarnation He truly lived a human life.

🌱 Perhaps We Need to Recover “Influence” Without “Influencer”

That distinction keeps becoming more important to me in what we’re discussing.

A faithful Christian may influence thousands—or millions. There is nothing inherently wrong with that.

But perhaps the healthier aspiration isn’t:

“I want to become an influencer.”

It is:

“I want whatever influence God gives me to be faithful.”

That removes an enormous burden.

I don’t have to manufacture relevance.

I don’t have to keep everybody interested.

I don’t have to comment on everything.

I don’t have to disclose everything.

I don’t have to be constantly available.

I don’t have to convert every experience into content.

I don’t have to grow indefinitely.

I don’t have to remain culturally important.

And—this one may be the hardest—

I am allowed to become less visible.

John the Baptist could say:

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

In contemporary attention culture, decrease sounds like failure.

In the kingdom of God, decrease can sometimes be faithfulness.

And this takes us right back to something we’ve been circling in our recent discussions about creaturehood: perhaps part of the crushing burden of modern influence comes from asking a finite creature to behave as though finitude were unacceptable.

Always present.
Always producing.
Always responsive.
Always interesting.
Always informed.
Always emotionally available.
Always visible.

Those begin to sound suspiciously like distorted demands for divine attributes.

God can sustain creation without exhaustion (Isaiah 40:28). We cannot.

The creature gets to sleep.

The creature gets to disappear for a while.

The creature gets to say, “I don’t know.”

The creature gets to have a life nobody sees.

And perhaps most liberatingly:

the creature does not have to sustain the world that knows his name.

God does.

That is a burden no follower count should ever persuade us to pick up. ❤️

⚖️ No—the distinction is important

No. This conversation is not an argument against influencing as a profession. It is an examination of the particular temptations and burdens built into a profession whose raw material is often attention, personality, visibility, and trust.

There is nothing inherently sinful about earning one’s living by creating content, building an audience, recommending products, teaching, entertaining, reviewing, educating, or communicating online. Scripture recognizes legitimate differences of vocation and insists that work can be done unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23–24; 1 Corinthians 10:31).

The issue is not:

“Influencer = bad profession.”

It is:

“What does this profession ask a human being to become in order to remain successful at it?”

And that’s a question we could ask of any profession.

🛠️ Every Profession Has Its Characteristic Temptations

Commerce can tempt toward greed (1 Timothy 6:9–10).

Teaching can tempt toward pride and carries greater accountability (James 3:1).

Religious leadership can tempt someone to love recognition and status (Matthew 23:5–12).

Political authority can become domination (Mark 10:42–45).

We don’t therefore conclude:

merchant = evil
teacher = evil
pastor = evil
ruler = evil

Rather, Scripture exposes how something legitimate can become spiritually deforming when its internal rewards begin governing the person.

The influencer profession deserves the same treatment.

And it has some unusually powerful incentives because the profession can blur the distinction between the worker and the work.

A carpenter sells something he makes.

An accountant sells expertise.

A physician provides medical care.

But many influencers, particularly lifestyle influencers, effectively monetize some combination of:

their personality + appearance + opinions + relationships + daily life + credibility + accessibility + audience’s affection.

That’s not automatically wrong.

But it does create unusual vulnerabilities.

💰 Nor Is Monetizing Influence Automatically Corrupt

This matters too.

If someone spends forty hours producing educational videos that genuinely benefit hundreds of thousands of people, there is nothing obviously nobler about that person being unable to pay the rent. 😄

Paul explicitly recognizes the principle that workers may receive material support for their labor (1 Corinthians 9:7–14; 1 Timothy 5:18).

So sponsorship, advertising revenue, subscriptions, commissions, or other legitimate compensation don’t magically contaminate useful communication.

The ethical question becomes more interesting when financial incentives begin determining what the influencer represents as true or worthwhile.

For example:

“Would I recommend this if nobody paid me?”

“Am I creating this because it benefits my audience, or because outrage performs better?”

“Do I actually believe this?”

“Am I presenting a lifestyle that I don’t actually live?”

“Have I turned intimacy into merchandise?”

“Would I still say this if it cost me followers?”

Those aren’t accusations. They’re excellent questions for anyone working in that field.

🧭 Christian Influence Would Have a Different Center

Paul gives us an extraordinary principle:

“We are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 2:17)

Notice that Paul isn’t opposed to public communication.

Paul himself was extraordinarily influential.

He’s concerned about what happens when the message, messenger, audience, and personal advantage become improperly related.

The Christian influencer therefore doesn’t necessarily need to abandon the platform.

He or she needs to know:

The platform is a tool.
The audience is made of persons, not metrics.
Influence is stewardship, not ownership.
Visibility is not identity.
Popularity is not truth.
Growth is not necessarily faithfulness.
Decline is not necessarily failure.
Income is compensation, not validation.
And the audience cannot become lord.

That last distinction changes everything.

❤️ And There Can Be Something Beautiful About the Profession

We’ve concentrated on its dangers because that’s where our conversation naturally went. But we shouldn’t let that create a distorted picture.

Imagine someone who has genuinely useful knowledge, creativity, humor, craftsmanship, encouragement, biblical teaching, artistic ability, educational skill, or practical wisdom.

Twenty-five years ago, geography might have limited that person’s contribution to a few hundred people.

Today that person can sit in a modest room with a camera and help millions.

That’s extraordinary.

Someone struggling alone can hear encouragement.

Someone can learn a skill for free.

A teacher can reach students across continents.

A Christian can explain Scripture to someone who would never walk into a church.

A small creator can bypass institutions that previously controlled publication and distribution.

There is genuine good here.

Technology has dramatically increased our capacity to fulfill something humanity has always done:

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another…” (1 Peter 4:10)

The danger isn’t the reach.

The danger is allowing reach to redefine the person doing the reaching.

🌿 So I Would Refine Our Earlier Conclusion

Perhaps the problem isn’t being an influencer.

The dangerous transition occurs when:

I have influence

quietly becomes

I need influence

and eventually becomes

I am the influence I possess.

Christian theology interrupts that progression at the beginning.

My identity precedes my audience.

My worth isn’t proportional to my reach.

My obligation is faithfulness, not perpetual relevance.

And therefore someone could conceivably have twenty million followers and remain remarkably free, while another person with 2,000 followers could already be enslaved to the approval of the audience (Galatians 1:10).

So no—I wouldn’t condemn the métier at all.

I’d actually say something more demanding and, I think, more hopeful:

Influence is a legitimate form of human stewardship. But precisely because influence can reach so many people and reach so deeply into the influencer’s own identity, it requires unusually deliberate boundaries, humility, truthfulness, and freedom from the audience’s approval.

The goal isn’t to stop influencing.

It’s to remain a human being who influences, rather than gradually becoming a product that must keep performing in order to exist. ❤️

🌍 A Biblical Theology of Influence

Yes. And I think we can formulate this without assuming the believer must be a Bible teacher. A Christian influencer might talk about cooking, medicine, fashion, comedy, technology, fitness, finance, music, travel, woodworking, gaming, or gardening. The vocation itself doesn’t have to become explicitly religious content for the believer’s conduct within that vocation to remain under Christ’s lordship (Colossians 3:17, 23–24).

The central question becomes:

If God has given me the ability to attract attention and influence people, what do I owe God, the truth, my audience, and myself as His creature?

Quite a lot, actually. 😅

👑 1. Know Whose You Are Before Knowing Who Follows You

This has to come first because everything else depends upon it.

The believer’s identity cannot be constructed from audience response.

“You are not your own, for you were bought with a price.” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

Before there are ten followers or ten million, the believer belongs to Christ.

That means followers cannot finally tell me:

who I am,
what I am worth,
whether I am successful before God,
or what I am permitted to become.

Jesus’ public ministry beautifully illustrates the order. The Father’s declaration comes before the great crowds:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)

For the Christian influencer, therefore:

identity must precede visibility.

Otherwise visibility will eventually attempt to manufacture identity.

🕊️ 2. Understand Influence as Stewardship, Not Possession

Talent itself is received.

“What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)

That question demolishes quite a bit of celebrity mythology. 😂

Intelligence, beauty, humor, charisma, creativity, communication ability, opportunity, technological access—even the historical circumstances permitting someone to reach millions—are not self-created realities.

Peter therefore says:

“As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” (1 Peter 4:10)

A steward possesses genuine responsibility without ultimate ownership.

So the Christian shouldn’t think:

“Look at the audience I built.”

without also remembering:

“Look at the people God has temporarily permitted me to address.”

That changes the moral weight of the audience.

❤️ 3. Remember That Followers Are People, Not Numbers

This may be one of the most important disciplines of digital influence.

1,000,000 followers appears on a screen as a statistic.

But before God there is no entity called “one million followers.”

There are one million individual human beings.

People with fears.

Children.

Parents.

Loneliness.

Weaknesses.

Temptations.

Money they worked for.

Bodies they may feel insecure about.

Opinions that can be manipulated.

Trust that can be exploited.

James says human beings are made “in the likeness of God” (James 3:9; cf. Genesis 1:26–27).

That means the influencer must resist turning persons into engagement units.

The question shouldn’t merely be:

“How can I get them to click?”

but also:

“What am I doing to them when they do?”

That is a much more Christian question.

🗣️ 4. Truth Remains Truth Even When Falsehood Performs Better

This one could become expensive.

“Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor.” (Ephesians 4:25)

Digital communication creates powerful incentives for exaggeration:

“This changes EVERYTHING.”

“Everyone is lying to you.”

“You NEED this.”

“The one secret nobody tells you…”

Sometimes reality is simply less clickable. 😂

But the Christian cannot knowingly distort reality because distortion produces engagement.

This extends beyond outright lying.

Misleading thumbnails, fabricated outrage, selective editing, false expertise, manipulated testimonials, undisclosed conflicts of interest, pretending to use products one doesn’t use, exaggerating results—all raise the same underlying question:

Am I helping another person perceive reality truthfully?

Proverbs repeatedly condemns dishonest scales (Proverbs 11:1; 20:23). The ancient dishonest scale and the modern deceptive metric belong to different technologies but can express the same moral disorder.

💰 5. Never Sell the Audience’s Trust

Earning money is legitimate.

Exploiting trust isn’t.

“A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches.” (Proverbs 22:1)

Suppose someone has followed you for seven years because your recommendations have consistently been thoughtful. A company then offers an enormous amount of money for you to promote something you privately know is poor.

What exactly are they purchasing?

Not merely thirty seconds of video.

They are purchasing access to accumulated trust.

That trust belongs morally to the relationship between creator and audience. The Christian therefore has to treat it as something precious.

Sometimes faithfulness may require saying:

“No, that amount of money is not enough for me to tell people something I don’t believe.”

There may be no amount that is.

📚 6. Know the Difference Between Knowledge and Confidence

Influencers are constantly asked for opinions.

The faithful answer will sometimes be:

“I don’t know.”

That’s not weakness.

Proverbs says:

“If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.” (Proverbs 18:13)

And James warns:

“Let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak…” (James 1:19)

The internet rewards instant commentary.

Wisdom frequently requires delayed judgment.

A Christian with a large platform should probably become more cautious as influence increases, not less, because mistakes now travel farther.

⚠️ 7. Greater Influence Creates Greater Responsibility

Jesus gives a general principle:

“Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required.” (Luke 12:48)

And James specifically warns teachers:

“We who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1)

James 3:1 applies particularly to teachers, so we shouldn’t casually turn every lifestyle creator into a biblical teacher. But the broader principle remains compelling:

greater capacity to affect others warrants greater care.

A careless remark before five friends has one radius.

A careless remark before five million people has another.

The moral character of the words may be identical, but their foreseeable consequences are not.

🎭 8. Do Not Create a False Self

This is particularly difficult because content necessarily involves selection.

Nobody posts twenty-four uninterrupted hours of life.

So presentation isn’t automatically deception.

But selection can gradually become fabrication.

The Christian influencer needs enough integrity that the public person and private person are recognizably the same moral person.

“Whoever walks in integrity walks securely.” (Proverbs 10:9)

That doesn’t require publishing private failures.

Authenticity does not mean universal disclosure.

Privacy is not hypocrisy.

There are things the audience has no right to know.

But what they are shown shouldn’t intentionally manufacture a fundamentally false person.

🚪 9. Maintain a Life the Audience Cannot Enter

I think this is essential.

Jesus had public ministry and private prayer (Luke 5:15–16).

Not everything belongs to everybody.

Marriage doesn’t automatically belong to followers.

Children don’t belong to followers.

Grief doesn’t belong to followers.

Prayer doesn’t belong to followers.

Every beautiful moment doesn’t require documentation.

Some experiences can simply be lived before God.

Jesus warns specifically about transforming devotion into public performance (Matthew 6:1–6).

There should therefore remain places in the influencer’s life where the camera simply cannot come.

That isn’t wasted content.

That’s life.

🛑 10. Learn to Disappoint the Audience

This may be one of the most difficult spiritual disciplines of influence.

Followers may demand:

“Respond to this.”

“Explain yourself.”

“Make another video.”

“Take a position.”

“Show us your family.”

“Tell us what happened.”

“Why haven’t you posted?”

But Jesus did not allow every human demand to determine His actions (Mark 1:35–38; John 2:23–25).

The Christian must retain the freedom to say:

No.

Not arrogantly.

Not carelessly.

But freely.

Because:

“If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10)

An audience that cannot be disappointed has quietly become a master.

🧎 11. Be Correctable

Influence creates another danger: eventually so many people tell you that you’re brilliant that you might begin believing them. 🤭

Scripture repeatedly associates wisdom with receiving correction:

“Whoever loves discipline loves knowledge.” (Proverbs 12:1)

A healthy Christian influencer therefore needs people who are not impressed by the follower count.

Pastors, elders, spouse, family, mature friends, colleagues—people who can say:

“That was wrong.”

And whom the influencer cannot simply block. 😂

The larger the public platform becomes, the more valuable genuinely accountable private relationships become.

🙏 12. Do Not Confuse Influence With Fruitfulness

This distinction is enormous.

Views are measurable.

Faithfulness often isn’t.

Jeremiah faithfully proclaimed God’s word while frequently encountering rejection (Jeremiah 7:27–28). Noah is called a “herald of righteousness,” yet Scripture certainly doesn’t present him as possessing enormous conversion statistics (2 Peter 2:5; cf. Genesis 6–7).

Conversely, enormous attention doesn’t establish divine approval.

Jesus warns:

“Woe to you, when all people speak well of you…” (Luke 6:26)

So:

viral ≠ faithful
large ≠ fruitful
small ≠ unsuccessful
popular ≠ true
unpopular ≠ true

The metric is inadequate.

✝️ 13. If You Speak Explicitly for Christ, the Responsibility Becomes Even Heavier

Here the situation changes somewhat.

A cooking influencer who happens to be Christian and a person publicly teaching Scripture aren’t exercising exactly the same function.

Once someone says, effectively,

“This is what God says,”

James 3:1 becomes especially relevant.

Scripture must govern the message rather than the creator using Scripture to reinforce a brand (2 Timothy 2:15; 4:1–5).

And John the Baptist gives perhaps the definitive Christian orientation toward personal prominence:

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30)

The Christian teacher must never make Jesus into content whose ultimate purpose is enlarging himself.

That’s a terrifying inversion.

🌱 14. Influence Should Seek the Good of the Influenced

Paul gives us a wonderfully simple principle:

“Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.” (Romans 15:2)

And elsewhere:

“Let all things be done for building up.” (1 Corinthians 14:26)

That principle works far beyond explicitly Christian content.

A Christian comedian can ask:

Does my humor entertain without degrading people?

A financial creator:

Am I helping people make wiser decisions or exploiting greed and fear?

A fashion creator:

Am I celebrating beauty while deliberately manufacturing insecurity so people will buy?

A medical professional:

Am I communicating within my competence and acknowledging uncertainty?

A gaming creator:

Am I entertaining people without cultivating cruelty or destructive behavior?

A travel creator:

Am I presenting reality responsibly rather than manufacturing envy?

Different vocations.

Same Lord.

🕯️ 15. And Finally: Know When to Walk Away

This might be the ultimate test of whether influence remains stewardship.

Could I stop?

Could I obey God if obedience destroyed my engagement?

Could I tell the truth if it cost half my followers?

Could I refuse the lucrative sponsorship?

Could I disappear for three months because my family needs me?

Could I become obscure again without believing that my life had become meaningless?

Paul could say:

“I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” (Philippians 4:11)

That includes abundance and need (Philippians 4:12).

For the influencer, perhaps we could extend the principle:

ten followers or ten million.

If God can entrust me with ten million but cannot take them away without taking my identity with them, something has gone wrong.

❤️ The Influencer’s Four Stewardships

I think everything we’ve discussed can finally be condensed into four relationships:

Before God: I belong to You.
Before truth: I will not knowingly distort you.
Before my audience: I will seek your good rather than exploit your attention.
Before myself as a creature: I will not pretend to be limitless.

And underneath all four sits a sentence we’ve already discovered in this discussion:

Influence is something I may possess. It must never become what possesses me.

That permits the believer to be ambitious in the best sense—to create extraordinarily, communicate beautifully, develop professional excellence, reach enormous audiences, earn an honest living, and perhaps become genuinely famous—without pretending that obscurity would make him less beloved by God.

Perhaps that’s the Christian paradox of influence:

Reach as far as God enables you to reach, while remaining perfectly willing for the glory to travel farther than your name.

That sounds remarkably like John the Baptist.

“He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:30) ❤️