It’s My Goal to Know Less About Other People’s Business. Here’s Why.
The internet trains people to stay emotionally entangled in everybody else’s lives. Scripture teaches something different.
Written By Tanya Pearson // EEW Magazine Online
There is something about internet culture that slowly pulls people into emotional involvement with things that have very little to do with their actual lives.
Have you noticed it?
A stranger shares an opinion, and suddenly thousands feel responsible to correct it. Someone posts about a relationship, a parenting choice, a political position, or a personal belief, and complete outsiders begin dissecting every detail as though they were personally appointed to oversee it. Day after day, people absorb arguments, controversies, outrage, foolishness, and conflict until agitation begins to feel normal.
Somewhere along the way, many people began treating constant engagement like a sign of wisdom, maturity, awareness, or moral responsibility. The older I get, the more I realize that mindset quietly robs people of peace.
People feel pressure to react quickly and publicly, as though every opinion requires commentary and every disagreement deserves emotional involvement. Silence is sometimes even viewed with suspicion. Some have become so accustomed to online conflict that they no longer know how to witness disagreement without emotionally climbing inside of it.
Believers would do well to remember this: just because society changes does not mean the principles of Scripture change with it. The Word of God still calls for humility, self-examination, wisdom, restraint, and peace. Those qualities cannot grow in environments built around perpetual outrage and nonstop commentary.
Consider the Messiah.
When Jesus encountered the woman caught in adultery, the religious leaders already had their stones ready and their public judgment prepared (John 8:1-11). They wanted condemnation and spectacle. Jesus turned the moment inward and forced the accusers to confront themselves before continuing to accuse someone else.
If it was acceptable for Jesus to disengage sometimes, it is acceptable for us too.
Besides, a great deal of what people call discernment online is emotional impulsiveness wearing religious language. The more I watch internet culture, the more convinced I become that many of us would benefit from knowing less about strangers and paying more attention to the condition of our own hearts.
People monitor strangers constantly. They know every controversy happening online, yet remain disconnected from their own bitterness, pride, lack of peace, prayerlessness, anger, envy, or spiritual fatigue.
And to what end?
The mind becomes overcrowded with conflict. The spirit remains unsettled. People carry irritation they cannot explain because they are consuming tension all day long. They absorb everybody else’s arguments, offenses, lifestyles, and opinions until their inner world no longer feels calm or clear.
Scripture Warns Us.
Jesus directly warned about this tendency when He spoke about pointing out the speck in another person’s eye while ignoring the beam in our own (Matthew 7:3-5). His words confronted the habit of focusing outward while remaining spiritually unexamined inwardly.
There are people who incessantly search comment sections, react to strangers, and argue over matters they cannot change. They scroll while neglecting prayer, neglecting Scripture, neglecting rest, and neglecting their own spiritual health. Their emotional energy is constantly flowing outward. Eventually, that kind of living drains people and keeps them in a continual state of outrage and emotional chaos.
Paul instructed believers to receive one another “without passing judgment on disputable matters” (Romans 14:1 NIV). Every disagreement was never meant to become a public trial. Every difference of opinion does not require emotional warfare.
Some matters are clear in Scripture, and believers should never compromise truth to keep peace with culture. Wisdom is still necessary, but wisdom also requires knowing when, how, and where to share it.
Being mentally entangled in arguments, controversies, and strangers’ lives while our own souls quietly go unattended is folly, not wisdom.
Outrage Is The Norm.
Spend enough time online and it quickly becomes clear how outrage is normalized. Anger spreads quickly. Entire platforms are built around reaction, comparison, judgment, and emotional escalation. God never intended for people to carry the emotional noise of thousands of strangers every day.
Some believers don’t realize they are exhausted because their minds are crowded with everybody else’s business. They know too much about too many people. Their attention is constantly pulled outward, and quietness has become unfamiliar to them.
They need to mind their soul’s business. Doing so, however, requires knowing less about other people’s business.
Sometimes the healthiest spiritual decision a person can make is to close the app, stop arguing, stop monitoring strangers, and become quiet enough to hear what God reveals about their own heart.
In an age where people are constantly pulled into everybody else’s business, many have forgotten the condition of their own soul deserves attention too. Perhaps learning to know less about everybody else is part of learning how to hear God more clearly again.
It is time to return to the command to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12 KJV).
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