Lent day 41 - clickbait

Clickbait - one of those silly new made up words we have had to invent to describe something which didn't exist five years ago.  Clickbait is what they call those adverts and quizzes and surveys which come up on the side of Facebook homepages and say things like ' 9 out of 10 people can't answer this'  or  Only the top 1% of the population get these right'.   Sometimes they look like a news article and have an attention grabbing headline.  But when you click on these things they are never quite what they seem.  They are usually just a tool to get you to look at yet more adverts or to download something or give your details. Marketing.  That's what its all about.


Knowing this, I still find myself clicking through some of these things.  Yesterday it was a Bible quiz.  9 out of 10 people cant answer these questions about books of the Bible.  Oh yeah?  I'll show em.  So I start taking the test and of course it is so very basic and the alternative answers they give are so ridiculous that it would be almost impossible NOT to get them all right.   And then we post on Facebook the fact that we have beaten the ' odds' and have proved ourselves to be the top 1% in the world at Bible knowledge even though we all really know that its a load of nonsense.

So why do we do that?  Why do we go for the bait?  The marketing companies know that we will do it - that's how they make their money and they are very good at it.  What is it that they tap into in us which they know will work and increase their chances of selling stuff to us?


Firstly they lie.  They just tell us what they think we want to hear to reel us in.   They look credible and sound credible and we all know that you can fool some of the people some of the time....

Secondly they tap into our pride.  They tell us that you have to be really bright and smart and clever to beat the odds on this test/quiz/survey.  And of course we all want to be bright and smart and clever.  Answering all the questions correctly makes us feel good - even when we know the whole thing is a load of nonsense.

Then they tap into our sense of competition.  We can do better than most.  We want to win. It is a powerful urge in many of us.

As I was thinking about this yesterday I started wondering what the Church's clickbait is.  Both literally and metaphorically.  In a social media obsessed, technology driven society the church needs to have an online presence every bit as powerful and attractive as everything else that's out there - if not more so. Let's face it, we are 'selling' community, family, life changing encounter, help hope and healing.  What we have is true.  It doesn't promise what it can't deliver.  And it is not a competition. If we can't get people to click on that then we need to change the marketing department!

Except that we are not out to compete with what the world has to offer - not really.  Because what we have doesn't compare.  It is so far above and beyond any offer anyone else could make.  However there are still huge swathes of the world who don't know anything about the life and love and hope we have found and which is free to all.  How do you and I become God's clickbait to the world round us?  How do we get people to want to spend time with us, talk to us, touch our lives in a way that moves them past our presenting headline page and gets them to our hearts?


I think the principle is the same - we need to appeal to something in people which makes them want to know more.  Jesus was the master of this.  He appealed to everyone He met. He appealed to the poor and the rich, the ruling class and servants.  He appealed to women and men,  Jews and Samaritans.  Everywhere He went people wanted to touch Him and know Him and follow Him.  He was filled full to the brim with God and with the fruits of the spirit.  Jesus was the most attractive man who has ever walked the earth .  Even though the Bible makes it clear that there was nothing in particular about His physical appearance which made Him stand out from the crowd.  He was just irresistible.   And we are too.  The more filled with godliness we are the more people will want to click on us to find out more.  (Being constantly clicked on might not always be fun but it will always be productive)

I have met a few really Christlike people in my life.  They were people who had an almost magnetic quality about them.  They were fascinating to talk to , extremely good fun, wise, kind and life changing in their ability to show me Jesus.  I want to be like that.  Im sure you do too.