A reprise of the central project of this newsletter

Introduction: Social Media and Personal Habits

Social Media is not the first platform to come to mind when asked, “Where might you find respectful dialogue concerned with free exchange of ideas and learning from others?”

I typed that with a smirk! Talk about an understatement!

Many of us hold the intuitive notion that social media has created toxic spaces, negative rhetoric, and the spread of misinformation. Overall, social media has a negative impact on mental health, or at least that’s a commonly held assessment. Is there evidence to back this up?

This article from earlier this year (2023), appearing in the journal, Applied Research in Quality of Life, is one that quantifies the mental health impact of “doomscrolling,” defined by the article as:

Constant exposure to negative news on social media and news feeds … commonly defined as a habit of scrolling through social media and news feeds where users obsessively seek for depressing and negative information.

The article reports in the study conclusion:

Furthermore, cross-sectional analyses suggested that dooomscrolling may lead to higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of mental well-being indicators (mental well-being, life satisfaction and harmony in life).

You may ask, “If so harmful to mental health, why do we continue to doomscroll the internet?” At least one appraisal, appearing in the prestigious Proceedings of that National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (or simply PNAS), looks to personal habits as a proximal cause for social media misinformation spread, competing with the idea that misinformation spread is owing primarily to individual user bias or partisan political beliefs. Rather, reports the article in PNAS, personal habits are reinforced by social media reward-centered algorithms:

Due to the reward-based learning systems on social media, users form habits of sharing information that attracts others’ attention. Once habits form, information sharing is automatically activated by cues on the platform without users considering response outcomes such as spreading misinformation. As a result of user habits, 30 to 40% of the false news shared in our research was due to the 15% most habitual news sharers. Suggesting that sharing of false news is part of a broader response pattern established by social media platforms, habitual users also shared information that challenged their own political beliefs.

Again, while my conclusions are fallible and limited in sample size, I’ve produced two reputable, peer-reviewed articles that tie social media toxicity and misinformation to personal habits and social media algorithms. Let’s consider our habits and behaviors with respect to the topic of this newsletter.

Why Read the Greek Scriptures through a Jewish Lens?

I open today’s Sunday Post with this brief reflection on social media behaviors because in the past few days I’ve received three especially negative comments from social media users who have spewed anti-Jewish remarks to challenge posts that I’ve made about restoring a more authentically Jewish voice to the New Testament books.

If it is the case that personal habits developed through reinforcing social media algorithms has a role to play in people’s online behavior, then these same forces are at least partially involved in the unashamedly anti-Jewish rhetoric that I’ve received this week.

Namely: Personal habits and social media platforms that reinforce them.

Sadly, each of these remarks have been offered by people who identify as Christian. While discouraging to read, I am emboldened that my very project—restoring a Jewish voice to first and second century Jewish/emerging Christian writing—is badly needed.

A Christian theology that would deny the priority of the tradition of Israel (though anachronistic to apply to a pre-modern context, we can gloss this as the Jewish tradition) is a theology that may comport with some third and fourth century Church leaders and many in the modern Conservative Christian church, this doctrinal alignment comes at the expense of a Christian theology that does not connect with its Jewish roots. This theology is impoverished.

Truly, the motivation to restore a Jewish voice to Christian writing is to enrich the confessional tradition of Christians. Without the Jewish context, we read the Gospel authors reporting that Jesus is the Son of God, the Son of Man, alerting us to the coming eschaton, foreseeing the destruction of the Temple, and sharing about his own death and resurrection. But these concepts are empty without the Scriptures of Israel.

Why Son of God? Why Son of Man? Why baptism? Why would Temple destruction be so significant? What would a coming eschaton mean? How would resurrection be understood? Most plainly, what even is a messiah? These questions cannot be answered within the New Testament books alone. To adequately respond to these inquiries—indeed, to adequately characterize the ministry of Jesus who they called the Christ, one must turn to the Jewish tradition. And from here we may see more clearly that to use the tradition of Israel to characterize Jesus, only then to proclaim that Jews must turn away from that very tradition and instruct Jews to “accept Christ” is absurd.

The point here is that without the Jewish tradition, if Jesus were to exist, no one would call him Jesus the Christ (anointed one) because the category of anointed one (mashiac; christos; Christ) would not exist. The Jewish tradition delivered the very framework by which Christianity exists. And so to say that Jewish people must accept Jesus as messiah is to say that Jewish people are wrong about the very concept that Jewish people brought to the world. Do you see how misguided anti-Jewish rhetoric is, especially from the mouths of Christians?

In fact, in the first three centuries of the common era there was a plurality of beliefs about Judaism and Jesus, with some Jews following Jesus as the anointed one, some Jews rejecting Jesus as the anointed one, and some non-Jews (gentiles) accepting Jesus as the anointed one—a concept that non-Jews would learn about primarily through Jewish writing. It is not until the fourth century that things change.

In the words of Daniel Boyarin, Professor of Talmudic Culture and Rhetoric at University of California Berkeley, in his terrific and accessible book, The Jewish Gospels:

Until early in the fourth century, all these different groups and diverse individuals called themselves Christians, and quite a few called themselves both Jews and Christians as well (11).

Boyarin continues:

Judaism and Christianity became completely separate religions in the fourth century. Before that, no one (except God, of course), had the authority to tell folks that they were or were not Jewish or Christian, and many had chosen to be both. At the time of Jesus, all who followed Jesus—and even those who believed that he was God—were Jews (14)!

So, for a Christian to assume an anti-Jewish posture, it is not only conceptually confused, it is historically inaccurate as well.

Back to personal habits. See it is the case that if Jesus is the one you choose to follow, then it follows naturally that a full and accurate characterizing of Jesus and his ministry is central to your following him. And for this characterizing—ritually, practically, and historically—you don’t merely nod to the Jewish tradition, you must learn it and respect it. Only then will your personal behaviors and confessional commitments adequately mirror Jesus who they called the Christ—a first century, Torah observant Jewish man who was written about by other first century Jewish people.

This is not to say that all Christians must become Jewish (though, this was a live debate in the first century). My assertion is that your Christianity only stands to benefit when it is deeply informed by Jewish tradition, and to do so will bring you closer into alignment with the earliest Christians.

Should you say that, “Jews who do not accept Christ seal their ultimate fate,” as one commenter said to me on social media yesterday, you ought to be embarrassed at your ignorance and ashamed at the misinformation you are pedaling. Still, rooted in Jewish teshuvah, you are invited to do what Jesus taught and repent. We understand that personal habits and social media algorithms may have rewarded your behavior, but if truly following Jesus, there is a surely greater reward in matching your personal behavior to his, not the social media platform where you left this comment.

This is why we must read the Greek Scriptures through a Jewish-informed lens.