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The Friday Pickle - should worship leaders be posting selfies?

Craig Borlase

10th June 2014

Obama does it. David Cameron does it. Ellen does it. The Pope does it. All those Kardashian people do it. So why on earth shouldn't worship leaders?

OK, perhaps not everyone on that list serves as a ringing endorsement of selfie-sensibility, but you get the idea, don't you? The selfie is just another tool in popular culture, another badge that shows we belong, a simple bit of code that has the potential to communicate powerfully in a simple frame. Why shouldn't worship leaders get in on it? Aren't we meant to be borrowing where we can and redeeming as God directs? 

Maybe you see things differently. Maybe you see the selfie as the latest in a long line of fads that demonstrates the narcism at the heart of so much of contemporary culture. You see them as fuel for so much of the vanity, the self-interest, the urge to compare and the lust for being envied that is toxic in this day and age. Yes, you say, God can redeem anything, but some things are just so lame and uninspiring that they're best left alone. The selfie, in your mind, belong on culture's scrap heap, along with barber shop quartets, gossip mags and historical re-enactment societies.  

Or maybe you just don't like them because of the one, simple truth of what they are: a bare-faced request for approval, a deep cry of "please like me, please envy me." Maybe you want to be the kind of worship leader who points the focus somewhere other than on yourself. We kind of hope you do.