A City on a Screen, or A City on a Hill?
Relearning trust, visibility, and presence in an era of anonymous discipleship
I remember the first time someone said to me, in 2014, that I was on social media quite a bit. His words were, “You’re a pretty heavy social media watcher.” This was before screen time measurements, automations, and AI summaries of current events. Everything you wanted to know, you had to go find it.
My stated reason? I managed our ministry’s social media presence; after all, I was visiting this friend in view of coming on staff at his church, but still had to do my job. The real reason? I was bored, since all we were doing was sitting around and watching ESPN during spring training baseball, where nothing else was really going on in the sports world.
This was really the first instance I can recall of being accused of being “chronically online,” always connected to my phone and doom-scrolling before doom-scrolling was a thing. I rationalized my screen time by saying I had to grow our online presence, knowing that outlets like Facebook and Instagram were still in their relative infancy and needed more organic attention than they do now. I told myself that success lived or died by how fast I responded to comments, questions, and DMs. I made it my mission to try and set the college ministry trend of the emerging digital discipleship we see here and now. When I accepted the call to his church, I even took this approach to our social media strategy and grew our online presence immensely beyond just the website.
Was I an early adopter? Maybe. Was I the driving force behind what we see in modern times of ministries reaching people on their phones before they set foot in a building? Not in the slightest.
But I learned something incredibly valuable, even if in retrospect: people want to know more than they want to trust.
I’ve been online since 2005 at the earliest. Confession time: I lied about my age to join MySpace when I was in 6th grade, and did the same to join Facebook when I was in 8th grade. I learned how to edit HTML code, beat Jetman (which was Flappy Bird before Flappy Bird was a thing), and build a farming empire on FarmTown AND FarmVille all before I learned how to drive. I was steeped in the evolution of what social media was when it was truly social, designed to be a “third place” in a pre-third wave coffee shop world.1 These two main social media sites were where we discovered new music, played games with each other, and talked about things in public that we didn’t discuss in private on AIM.
Then, in 2008 when I joined Twitter, it felt like the mentality shifted slightly: less connection, more influence. You weren’t posting with any other purpose in mind than that get what was in your head out into a digital journal of sorts. It didn’t matter if anyone responded. You wanted to be funny, witty, and clever enough to get people to click the “follow” button.
Ah, the “follow” button. No longer was there a reciprocity that existed where you requested to be someone’s friend; you led while they followed along. The connections were divided into two realms: who you followed, and who followed you. The once-held value of accepting someone’s virtual friendship (as a representation of your embodied connection) moved from a shared value proposition to an individual, one-sided onus. While it may have implicitly mattered if you followed back those who followed you, the social contract had changed to no longer required the same tit-for-tat that accepting a “friend request” did on other social platforms.
Arguably, this one-sided interaction trickled down into Instagram, Vine, TikTok, Threads, Bluesky, and LinkedIn. In effect, it said to others, “I can observe without committing. I can be present without being complicit.” It removed the inherent accountability that existed in social media’s earliest days of identifying a first-level connection with someone and transferring it to a second-level association that could be terminated as easily as it was initiated.
While this may feel like a departure from my typical look, tone, and feel of more theological, academic, and formal writing, I assure you that my aim remains intact to educate, teach, and call you to something deeper and better than the status quo. Using the most current data available for the largest subset of the population (Gen Z), we live in a world where our young people are arguably never offline, as “more than half of Gen Z (53%) admit they often feel bad about the amount of time they spend,” according to Barna.2 It is in this vein that a pastoral, theological moment needs to exist, as what social media once was is not how social media is anymore. The anonymity that current algorithmic layouts affords infiltrates the way we approach spirituality more than we would’ve hoped it would.
Scripture does not forbid anonymity categorically. However, it consistently binds God’s people into covenantal visibility: identity, speech, community, and presence are all meant to be known, accountable, and oriented toward truth. In this sense, digital anonymity is not simply a technological feature but a spiritual formation mechanism that can subtly deform Christian habits of speaking and belonging. The biblical alternative is not hyper-exposure but faithful presence: being known, truthful, and responsible in all spheres of communication.
This instinct—preferring information over vulnerability—now shapes much of our digital formation. We have been discipled to believe that access is safer than trust and that visibility should be demanded but never offered. Scripture cuts against this impulse with remarkable clarity. Three passages, in particular, reveal how deeply this desire to ‘know without trusting’ disrupts the very shape of Christian life.
Christian Speech Is Covenantally Accountable
Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. (Ephesians 4:25 ESV)
Paul’s exhortation to “put away falsehood” and “speak the truth… for we are members one of another” establishes a profoundly countercultural understanding of communication. Speech, for Paul, is not an autonomous act but a covenantal one. The truth-teller is never a detached observer but a participant in a shared life. This means Christian communication cannot be separated from Christian identity; words must arise from a life that is visible, accountable, and knit to others in Christ. Digital anonymity, however, encourages a fundamentally different posture. It allows individuals to speak without being known, to influence without being implicated, and to access others’ lives without offering their own in return. In this way, anonymity directly challenges the covenantal structure Paul assumes, where speech is an extension of belonging rather than a performance disconnected from the self.
The implication is clear: our impulse to know more than we want to trust manifests first in our speech. We desire the freedom to comment, critique, observe, and opine without the vulnerability of recognition. Yet Paul insists that truthful speech is only possible when identity is not shielded but shared. To be “members one of another” is to accept that Christian speech always carries relational weight; what we say cannot be detached from who we are. This is where the theological arc begins—trust precedes knowledge, belonging precedes communication, and visibility precedes truthfulness. By locating speech within covenantal identity, Paul dismantles the idea that we can know or speak rightly while avoiding the risk of being known. The desire for informational distance is not merely a digital phenomenon but a spiritual distortion that Scripture aims to heal.
Christian Witness Is Meant to Be Public
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, 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 5:14–16)
When Jesus declares that His disciples are “a city set on a hill,” He is not appealing to a desire for public influence but naming the unavoidable visibility of faithful life. The image is architectural: cities are built to be seen. Their presence is irreducibly public, not because they seek attention but because their existence cannot be hidden. Christian witness, therefore, is rooted not in performance but in integrity. It invites others to see the coherence between belief and practice. Anonymity, by contrast, invites the opposite. It allows one to observe without participating, to consume without contributing, and to know without trusting. It cultivates a mode of presence that is fundamentally invisible, excused from the demands of integrity. Jesus’s metaphor disrupts this instinct by insisting that discipleship is lived in ways that can be recognized, tested, and, when necessary, held to account.
If Paul shows that truthful speech requires belonging, Jesus shows that authentic witness requires visibility. The desire to know more than we want to trust becomes, at this stage, a desire to see without being seen. Digital platforms encourage this asymmetry; they reward spectatorship and cultivate distance between identity and presence. Yet Jesus’s teaching insists that Christian witness is inherently recognizable, a light that cannot be concealed without denying its purpose. If discipleship is visible, then trust is not optional. Presence, not observation, is the substance of the Christian life. Thus the move from Paul to Jesus deepens the critique: it is not only that hidden identities distort speech but that hidden lives distort witness. The call is not to hyper-exposure but to integrity. It’s a call to a life that can bear the weight of being known.
Christian Fellowship Requires Walking in the Light
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5–7)
John’s vision of “walking in the light” reveals the relational atmosphere in which Christian fellowship is meant to flourish. Light, in Johannine theology, is not merely moral purity but relational transparency. It exposes what is hidden, not to shame but to enable communion. To walk in the light is to refuse the safety of concealment and to enter the vulnerability of mutual recognition. Digital anonymity encourages a form of shadowed living—present but obscured, connected but unaccountable. It allows individuals to participate in community without ever risking genuine fellowship. This is the culminating expression of the impulse you described: the desire to know without trusting, to access without offering, to gather information without granting intimacy. John will not allow this posture to coexist with Christian fellowship. Darkness, for him, is any refusal to be known.
If Paul grounded Christian speech in belonging, and Jesus grounded Christian witness in visibility, John grounds Christian fellowship in relational honesty. Fellowship, he argues, emerges not from shared interests or mere proximity but from a shared willingness to be exposed to one another in the light of God’s truth. The anonymity that shapes contemporary digital life forms us toward the opposite reality. It trains us to remain guarded, curated, and insulated, fostering an illusion of connection without the substance of communion. Walking in the light requires the surrender of that illusion. It requires trust. It requires a willingness to be known, corrected, encouraged, and loved. John’s text completes the argument: Christian community is sustained not by the accumulation of knowledge but by the presence of trust, and without trust, even the most connected people remain relationally unseen.
The Call to Trust Again
The path forward begins with honesty about our formation.
We have been shaped by systems that reward observation over participation, commentary over communion, and curated personas over embodied presence. The question before us is whether we will continue along that trajectory or submit ourselves to the deeper, slower work of trust.
Every digital environment disciples us; none of them are neutral. Yet the Christian life is never built on mere access to information. It is nurtured in visibility, honesty, accountability, and sacrificial presence. The way forward is to resist the habit of anonymous consumption and to enter relationships where our lives can be seen and our words can be tested. The alternative is to inhabit the shadows—connected but unknown, informed but untransformed.
This is the part of the conversation where Scripture refuses to let us settle for half-measures. Paul invites us into covenantal speech, Jesus calls us into visible witness, and John ushers us into relational honesty. Together they confront the cultural liturgy of “knowing without trusting” and invite us into the counter-liturgy of being known as an act of discipleship.
The first small step is intentional presence: choosing spaces where we are not anonymous, choosing conversations where accountability exists, and choosing community where our lives are not curated but shared. These choices shape our hearts far more than our algorithms ever will.
Becoming a People Who Walk in the Light
To step back from the arc of this reflection is to see a simple but searching truth: the Christian life cannot be sustained by the posture that social media normalizes. We were not made to hover at the edge of relationships, absorbing information without offering ourselves. We were not created to be spectators. We were made for covenantal belonging, visible witness, and relational honesty—three realities that only emerge where trust is stronger than curiosity. The invitation of the New Testament is not to become experts in information, but participants in communion. It is not to gather perspectives, but to become a people whose lives reflect the character of God to one another.
The hope is not that we abandon the digital world altogether, but that we inhabit it differently. Faithful presence in a digital age requires something profoundly countercultural: a willingness to be known. If people want to know more than they want to trust, we’re called to trust as the pathway to true knowledge. In Christ, the God who knows us fully also welcomes us fully, and this becomes the pattern we extend to one another. The church is meant to be a community where anonymity gives way to authenticity, where hiddenness gives way to light, and where information gives way to communion. In a world discipled toward distance, we are called to walk together in the light.
Thus, I close with this story, which I hope illustrates the point which I’m trying to make. Years later, in my current context almost 10 years after and states away from where this post began, I found myself sitting in a coffee shop not far from my apartment. The place had become something of a weekday refuge—half office, half sanctuary. That afternoon, I watched a college student slip into the booth across from me. Headphones in, hood up, laptop open, his whole world narrowed to a glowing screen. A few minutes later, a friend of his walked in. He waved, smiled, and asked if he could sit. He nodded without looking up.
For the next hour, I watched them occupy the same space without ever meeting each other’s eyes. They exchanged links, memes, and short bursts of commentary about people they followed online. They knew astonishing amounts about strangers—where they vacationed, what they believed, who they dated—but almost nothing about the person sitting twenty-four inches away. When his friend stood to leave, be finally paused her scrolling long enough to tell him goodbye. It came out hesitant, almost apologetic, as if speech required a vulnerability she wasn’t sure she wanted to give.
I remember thinking: this is exactly what the digital age has taught us to do—inhabit proximity without presence, gather information without extending trust, live beside each other without ever truly knowing or being known. The tragedy wasn’t that they were on their phones. It was that they had learned to settle for adjacency when what they both longed for was connection. It was a living picture of this formation that’s preceded, the subtle drift from fellowship toward observation, from community toward commentary.
As I packed up my things to leave, I wondered how much of my own life mirrored theirs. How often had I chosen the safety of the screen over the risk of conversation? How often had I let the desire to know replace the call to trust?
In that moment, the Scriptures I had been studying came back with clarity. Paul’s summons to speak truth as members of one another. Jesus’s insistence that a city on a hill cannot be hidden. John’s call to walk in the light as He is in the light. All three converged into a gentle but unignorable reminder: we were made for more than adjacency. We were made for communion.
So, I implore you: where can you influence, lead, and counteract towards the example we see in Paul, John, and Jesus? Where can you pull others out of simple, quiet anonymity into embodied, collective living?
Let’s be real: the Christian “bar” has become the coffee shop. For a more colloquial explanation, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place.
Barna Group. Gen Z, Volume 2: The Connected Generation and the Future of Faith (Ventura, CA: Barna Group, 2020), 35.