“Sprinkle Kindness Everywhere You Go.”
Yes, and we’d take it one step further. We teach our kids to “sow righteousness” everywhere they go. In Christ, we have the ability to make everything around us better, especially on social media. And that’s the heart of today’s message…
A reader named JKordick read 7 Satanic Trends Christians Need to Stop Following and summed up the whole thing in eight words: “The 7 Deadly Sins in social media format.”
Then she asked the question we should have asked ourselves…
We told her the truth in the comments, which is that she wrote a better headline than we did!
Then she came back and handed us a better follow-up, too: “The seven virtues to combat the 7 deadly sins in social media would be a great follow up article!!”
What a great idea!
So we wrote the article — and you’re reading it now. :)
If you read the original 7 Satanic Trends piece, you probably recognized yourself somewhere in it: the argument you keep rehearsing in the shower, the work you can’t put down at 10 pm, or the “just a little” you keep defending at the pantry door.
Naming the trends was the easy part.
The hard question is what comes next, and Jesus told a story about that exact moment.
“When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none. Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first.” — Matthew 12:43-45
Read that again slowly, because the man in this story got free. The spirit left and the house got swept, and that tidy, empty house is exactly what invited it back with seven more.
An empty house doesn’t stay empty.
That’s the trap of every “stop doing this” list, including ours.
You can unfollow the accounts and quit the habit cold, but if nothing moves into the space the trend used to occupy, something worse will.
Paul gives us the way out in two simple verbs, put off and put on:
“…to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” — Ephesians 4:22-24
So this is the put-on article.
Seven Satanic Trends came out, and Seven Social Media Virtues go in, one for one.
And yes, JKordick, we’re taking this straight to the feed. That’s where the seven trends spread fastest, and it’s exactly where these seven virtues should be spreading instead.
So here’s what goes in the house…
Need a quiet moment with God before you dive in? Start with this short prayer…
Yes, we read every comment and a huge thanks to JKordick for the suggestion, which became the inspiration for this piece…
A quick word on where the list comes from, because we follow Jesus, not trends: You won’t find “the seven deadly sins” anywhere in your Bible.
A fourth-century monk named Evagrius wrote about eight “evil thoughts,” Gregory the Great reshaped them into seven in the late 500s, and Christians later paired each sin with a virtue that opposes it.
We’ll borrow wisdom from that tradition, but Scripture gets the final word. :)
1. Obedience
Satanic Trend: “You decide what’s right for you.”
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” — James 1:22
The Virtue: Obedience. Truth only does its work in you when you do what it says.
Online, “your truth” rarely announces itself. It looks like saving the post that says exactly what you wanted to hear, following the voices that never challenge you, and letting the algorithm build you a custom gospel one recommendation at a time.
James saw the danger long before the algorithm did. You can hear the Word all day and still deceive yourself, because hearing without doing is a quieter, more religious version of “my truth.”
And it has never been easier to hear a sermon, or easier to scroll right past it.
Obedience closes the gap between what you know and what you do, and you don’t have to understand everything to obey the next thing. Abraham left home without knowing where he was going, and Hebrews 11 holds him up as a model of faith.
God rarely hands us the whole map, but He always hands us the next step.
On your feed:
Make obedience the filter.
Before you like, share, or argue with a post, ask whether it agrees with what God has already said.
And the next time a video convicts you, don’t save it for later.
Do the thing before you scroll to the next one.
The first trend is the soil the other six grow in, which is why we gave it a full teaching of its own…
2. Mercy
Satanic Trend: “Cancel them. Expose them.
Pay them back.”
“Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” — Ephesians 4:31-32
The Virtue: Mercy. You forgive because you’ve been forgiven, and the measuring stick is the Cross.
Cancel culture was born online, where one screenshot can travel farther than any apology, and a comment section full of strangers can decide they know the whole story by lunchtime.
Paul hands us a completely different measuring stick. He doesn’t say forgive people as much as they deserve.
He says forgive them the way God in Christ forgave you, which was first and freely, while you were still the one in the wrong.
Notice the first word on Paul’s list of things to put away: bitterness.
Bitterness is resentment that’s been allowed to age, and it changes the way you scroll. You start reading every post looking for something to be offended by, and you usually find it.
Mercy doesn’t require pretending. You can forgive someone and still tell the truth, keep a healthy boundary, and let the proper authorities do their job.
What mercy lays down is the hunger to see them ruined.
On your feed:
When someone in the Christian world falls, and sooner or later someone will, scroll past the pile-on.
Pray for them by name instead, and if you comment at all, write the kind of comment you’d want written about your worst day.
Smiles on the outside, bitterness within. That was us in 2016, and it almost cost us our marriage…
3. Generosity
Satanic Trend: “Only pour into people who pour into you.”
“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” — Acts 20:35
The Virtue: Generosity. Give where you’ll never be paid back, because that’s where the blessing lives.
Online, transactional love has its own vocabulary: follow for follow, like for like, and quietly unfollowing anyone who doesn’t engage back.
Most Christians never notice this about the verse: those words of Jesus aren’t recorded anywhere in Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. Paul quotes them to the elders at Ephesus, a saying the early Church held onto even though no Gospel writer recorded it.
And look at where Jesus puts the blessing. It lands on the giver, which flips the whole reciprocity math upside down.
“Pour into people who pour into you” turns every relationship into an account you have to keep checking. Generosity closes the account.
Paul ties it to helping “the weak,” the people least able to return the favor. That’s the test of whether your kindness is generosity or an investment strategy, and it holds online just as much as it does on a neighbor’s porch with a hot meal after surgery.
On your feed:
Send a private message of encouragement to someone who posted something hard, with no expectation of a reply.
Share a small account’s good work with nothing to gain from it.
Answer a stranger’s honest question with patience instead of a correction.
A generous family is a free family. Here’s why we bring our kids to the food pantry…
“I’m grateful to be here, receiving encouragement, recipes, and whole-body transformation. Even after trying times, I trust you and Mama Z. The spiritual aspect completes the system: body, soul, and spirit.”
— Ellen D.
4. Self-Control
Satanic Trend: “Life’s short, do whatever feels good.”
“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.” — Titus 2:11-12
The Virtue: Self-Control. Grace trains your appetites instead of excusing them.
Nowhere does “do whatever feels good” work harder than inside an app with no bottom. The scroll is designed to never end, and autoplay picks the next video before you’ve decided you want one.
The indulgence crowd treats grace like a permission slip, but Paul describes grace as a coach. It trains us to say no to worldly passions, and it does that work “in the present age,” the one with the pantry, the phone, and the Friday night.
The Greek word Paul uses for self-control in Galatians 5 is enkrateia, built on a root that means strength. And the hopeful part is where he puts it, on his list of the fruit of the Spirit, and fruit grows.
Nobody white-knuckles an apple into existence; the branch stays connected to the vine, and the fruit comes.
Self-control is also the virtue that makes you feel better the fastest, because the person who can say no to the 11 pm scroll is the one who wakes up rested and present with their kids.
On your feed:
Set a stopping point before you start.
Decide “two minutes, then I’m done,” and keep your word.
Turn off autoplay while you’re at it.
Nothing trains self-control faster than keeping a small promise.
Christian liberty or the “C.S. Lewis loophole”? We took on the most popular defense of a little indulgence here…
5. Rest
Satanic Trend: “Only the strong survive. Grind harder.”
“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” — Matthew 11:28-30
The Virtue: Rest. The posture you work from, instead of a reward you earn once the work is done.
Hustle culture has its own feed: the 5 am routine, the side-hustle video, and the quiet message under all of it that if you’re resting, you’re falling behind.
This one surprised us. When the early Church wrote about sloth, they weren’t mainly picturing a man asleep on the couch.
Evagrius, the same monk whose list started it all, called it acedia and nicknamed it “the noonday demon.” He described a monk who can’t settle, staring out the window, convinced the sun has stopped moving, and restless to be anywhere else doing anything else.
Sound familiar? Hustle culture might be the oldest form of sloth wearing a newer suit: endless motion that avoids the one thing Jesus asks, which is to come to Him.
Jesus doesn’t offer a lighter workload here. He offers a yoke, which is still work, but it’s His work, at His pace, pulling right beside a Master who is gentle and lowly in heart.
Rest takes faith, because every time you stop, you’re confessing out loud that God holds the world together and you don’t.
On your feed:
The scroll only looks like rest.
You’re sitting down, but your mind is sprinting the whole time.
Try one evening this week with the phone in another room, and see what your body does with the quiet.
Even Jesus took a nap in the middle of a storm. If you’re the one in your house who can’t sit down, this one’s for you…
6. Humility
Satanic Trend: “Be proud. Elevate yourself.
Promote you.”
“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” — Philippians 2:3-4
The Virtue: Humility. Count others more significant than yourself, the way Jesus did.
Social media puts a number under nearly everything you say, and those little numbers start keeping score of your worth if you let them.
C.S. Lewis put his finger on why that’s so dangerous in Mere Christianity: “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.” Pride is competitive by nature, and a feed built on comparison feeds it all day long.
In the very next verses, Paul points straight to Jesus, who was in the form of God and still emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. The most important Person in the universe set the example by stepping down.
Humility is how you get off the treadmill, because once you stop needing to be ahead, you’re free to look to the interests of others.
On your feed:
Before you post, ask who it’s for.
Then go find someone else’s good work and honor it publicly, without adding a word about your own.
Why do we keep following famous Christians instead of Jesus? We wrestled with it in Monday Manna…
7. Holiness
Satanic Trend: “Just a little bit of it is fine. Pick your poison.”
“But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’” — 1 Peter 1:15-16
The Virtue: Holiness. Set apart in all your conduct, not most of it.
Online, “everything in moderation” sounds like “I only follow a few of those accounts” or “it’s only one show.”
That sounds like the classic virtue of temperance, but it’s a counterfeit, because temperance in the Christian tradition was about mastery, never about sampling a little of everything.
Augustine, a man who knew his own appetites from the inside, saw through this sixteen centuries ago. In On the Good of Marriage, he wrote that for many people, complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation.
Peter’s “all your conduct” doesn’t leave a corner of the house, or a corner of your phone, for the poison you’ve decided to keep. And holiness is far from grim.
To be holy is to be set apart, and you’re set apart because you belong to Someone. A bride isn’t miserable about forsaking all others, and neither is a Christian who says no to what grieves the One who bought them.
On your feed:
Some accounts need the unfollow button, not more moderation.
If an account leaves you lustful, envious, bitter, or afraid every time you see it, you have your answer.
The enemy doesn’t need to destroy you. He just needs to distract you. Here’s how the feed trains your desires…
“Thank you so much for everything you all do, and especially today for the Scriptures. I really needed those today.”
— Mary G.
The Good Kind of Leaven
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience… And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” — Colossians 3:12, 14
Love is the belt that holds the whole outfit together, and every one of the seven virtues is love pointed in a particular direction.
Obedience is love toward God.
Mercy is love toward the person who hurt you.
Generosity is love toward the person who can’t pay you back.
Self-control is love toward the body God gave you.
Rest is love that trusts the Father while you sleep.
Humility is love that steps down so someone else can rise.
Holiness is love that belongs to God and is glad about it.
We closed the original article with a warning about leaven, and how a little bit spreads through the whole lump. But Jesus used that same picture the other way, too:
“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” — Matthew 13:33
That’s the kind of trend we’re after. One person who forgives in a comment section, one who rests instead of grinds, one who celebrates someone else’s win, and quietly it spreads through the whole lump.
And remember the empty house. The trends stay out because the house is occupied, which is why Paul’s last word on the subject points to a Person:
“But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” — Romans 13:14
You don’t beat seven trends with seven rules. You fill the house with the One who lived all seven.
Following Jesus shouldn’t be complicated. Amen? :)
Your 7 Day Put-On Challenge
Take all seven days, or start with the one that stung the most…
Day 1. Obedience. The next time a post convicts you, do the thing before you scroll on.
Day 2. Mercy. Write down the name of the person you’re most tempted to want exposed, and speak a blessing over them out loud.
Day 3. Generosity. Send a message of encouragement to someone who can’t do anything for you, and expect nothing back.
Day 4. Self-Control. Turn off autoplay, set a time limit on your most-used app, and keep it.
Day 5. Rest. Leave your phone in another room for the first hour of your morning and give that hour to God and your family.
Day 6. Humility. Celebrate someone else’s win, out loud or online, without mentioning your own.
Day 7. Holiness. Walk through the accounts you follow. Unfollow anything that leaves you lustful, envious, bitter, or afraid, and follow one that points you to Jesus.
A Prayer for You. 🙏
Heavenly Father, thank You that when the Son sets us free, we are free indeed.
Fill every room the enemy used to occupy with Your Spirit, so that nothing worse can move back in.
Clothe us with obedience that acts on Your Word, mercy that forgives as we’ve been forgiven, generosity that gives without keeping score, and self-control that grows like fruit on the vine.
Teach us to rest in Your strength instead of our own, to walk in humility that lifts others up, and to live holy lives that are glad to belong to You.
Bless the hands holding this phone. Let what we see, share, and say online bring honor to the name of Jesus, and let it spread like good leaven.
And above all these, clothe us in love.
Amen.
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Your Bible Health Swap This Week
#024: The Put-On Virtue Toolkit
This week’s Swap includes the printable 7-Day Put-On Challenge, the Empty House Filter, Virtue Swap Cards, Comments Worth Leaving, a Family Table Guide & a Prayer to Put On the Lord Jesus Christ!
One Swap this week. One faithful step. A transformed life.
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