“Known” or Not: The Lie of Digital Intimacy and the Truth of Christ-shaped Knowing

We scroll. We tap. We watch.
Again and again, until we begin to confuse familiarity with knowing. We say we “know” someone because we’ve seen their status updates, their highlight reels, their holiday breakfasts, their passing thoughts. But what if we are only knowing the projection, the polish, the profile? What if what we call “knowing” is just algorithmic intimacy—engineered familiarity shaped by repetition, not relationship?

Join me. The question I’m exploring is:

When I’ve spent hours watching someone’s social media stories and feel I “know” them, while an algorithm knows I’ll continue watching their content– such as Instagram predicting I’ll engage with every post from a specific person I’ve never actually met – how does this algorithmic prediction expose the difference between data-based familiarity and the mutual knowledge described in 1 Corinthians 13:12 of “knowing fully as I am fully known”?

The world tells us that data is depth. That predictive suggestions and tailored feeds mean we are understood. But Scripture tells a different story.

“Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I also have been fully known.”
—1 Corinthians 13:12, NASB95

This isn’t about passive awareness. This is about mutuality. To know—and be known—requires presence, love, and vulnerability.

So let us walk gently into the fracture between algorithmic familiarity and apostolic knowing. Let’s unmask the illusion, hold it up to the fire of Christ’s truth, and ask: What kind of knowing are we being formed by?

ZOOMING IN: The Distorted Mirror of Digital “Knowing”

We live in an age that trains us to conflate exposure with intimacy. The feed loops endlessly. The stories autoplay. The algorithm refines, predicts, learns.

And we begin to mistake its fluency for friendship.
We feel seen, but not truly beheld.
We are fed what keeps us engaged—not what makes us whole.

The ache underneath is ancient: the desire to be known fully. Not for what we display. Not for what we produce. But as we are—in all our beauty and need, our longing and sin, our messy hidden places. The human soul cannot live on predictive familiarity. It was made for relational epignōsis—the deep, mutual knowing of Christ.

“I am the good shepherd, and I know My own, and My own know Me.”
—John 10:14

WHEN THE FEED BECOMES THE MIRROR: A Personal Reflection

Rooting our identity is fundamental to who we are. We all seek—birds of a feather—those with whom we naturally belong. For me, as a newly born-again Christian, that search led me to the Church.

I wasn’t raised in church. Just surrounded by a generic Christian culture—morality as tradition, God as background noise. So when I truly encountered Christ (a story for another post), I asked the one Christian I knew—Jeán—where he went to church—and I went with him.

It was a Pentecostal Holiness church. Formal, reverent, and steeped in a rigorous “New Testament law”—a holiness ethic that had long since blurred into expectation. There, I was baptised. There, I took my first tottering steps into the gifts of the Spirit. I encountered love. I grew in truth. And it was, in many ways, good.

It was also there that I encountered human contradictions and hypocrisy — the leadership couple who taught me foundational apostolic principles about love later ended their marriage.

It was there that I witnessed the tension between institutional practice and apostolic principle — when the congregation voted for a new pastor based on popularity rather than the biblical standard of proven faithfulness and godly character.

This experience helped me later distinguish between human systems of leadership and the servant-leadership model Christ established.Later in life, I came to see what truly bound that community together. Yes, there were public affirmations—we’re born again, we operate in the gifts of the Spirit. That was the spoken identity.

But underneath, there were subtler threads—unspoken “scruples” as Paul might call them in Romans 14. Hair length. Worship style. The cadence and content of your prayers. What was sung, what was said, what was silent. Someone might say, “Can I introduce you to my barber?”—which didn’t mean a new hairstyle recommendation, but a quiet correction cloaked in familiarity. These weren’t just preferences. They were covenants—unspoken, yet binding.

And over time, I began to conform. Not always by conviction. Sometimes just to stay connected. Because to question the unwritten is to risk rupture. So I assented. Not always consciously. And soon, the community’s collective identity merged with my own—often without my mindful, conscious consent.

This is human. Natural, even. But get drawn into the wrong community—where the rules are shaped by fear, performance, or a curated holiness—and who you truly are begins to veer off course. Unless you confront it. Unless something—or someone—calls you back or out.

And in this age, that “community” may not be a church at all. It may be a feed. A stream of curated content, micro-identities, and mirror-echoes designed to keep you in [non-consensual] agreement.

The digital communities the engagement-optimised algorithms funnel us into are as real and as formative as any non-digital community—church, club or social circle.

We rarely choose them with intention. They choose us by design. And slowly, subtly, we begin to take on their shape.

So let me ask, in light of all this:

• Have I confused familiarity with fellowship?
• Have I let the style of a community shape me more than the substance of Christ?
• Where have I allowed algorithmic culture to disciple my identity—quietly, daily, without question?
• What unspoken agreements have I made with the communities I’m part of—on or offline? And are those agreements rooted in truth, or in fear, scruples, lies even?
• Have I been more loyal to the aesthetic of holiness than to the actual Presence of the Holy One?
• Who is doing the shaping in my life—the Spirit, or the system?

Let the questions pierce. Not to wound, but to reveal.
Ask the Spirit—not the feed—what’s true.

“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any hurtful way in me, and lead me in the everlasting way.”
—Psalm 139:23–24 (NASB95)

Stop reading here for a moment.

What is surfacing in your heart and thoughts right now? Linger on these impressions. They might be the gentle promptings of the Spirit, or perhaps truths you’ve long suppressed that need to finally emerge into the light. Don’t rush past this moment.

STRONGHOLDS + WORLDVIEWS: Formed by the Feed

The digital mind has been discipled into something shallow:

• We prefer the predictable to the personal.
• We fear being seen for who we are beneath our projections.
• We trust data more than discernment.
• We’ve grown more fluent in influencers than in intercession.

But the Kingdom confronts this.

“For the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword… able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
—Hebrews 4:12

What worldviews are shaping your sense of self and others?
Whose voice is forming your perception of what it means to know and be known?

Is it the WORD of GOD, or the convictions of another?

Pause. Breathe. Ask the Holy Spirit:

What strongholds have I welcomed as comfort?
Where have I replaced presence with prediction?
Have I allowed algorithms to shape my theology of relationship?

Let Him answer. Not in noise, but in stillness.

ACTION IN THE SPIRIT: Communion, Not Consumption

You cannot become fully known by Christ while seeking validation from the crowd. You cannot experience true intimacy by consuming simulations of it.

But there is hope. The Spirit is not disembodied.
He doesn’t recommend. He reveals.
He doesn’t predict. He pursues.
He doesn’t “follow.” He dwells within.

So—respond. Don’t just reflect.

PRACTICE:
This week, turn off your feed. Choose one person—just one. Not to text, but to see. Share a coffee, a meal. Ask nothing from them but their presence. Listen. Pray together. Let yourself be known in small, trembling ways.

PRAY: 

“Holy Spirit, show me where I’ve chosen simulation over incarnation.
Reveal the places I have traded mutual presence for predictive engagement.
Let me see and be seen as You see me—in love, in truth, in fullness.
Teach me to know, and be known. In Christ. Amen.”

THE TENSION: Belonging vs. Becoming

There’s a strange ache many of us carry—this dissonance between who we are becoming in Christ, and who we need to be to remain part of the group.

In every community, there are shared values that form a kind of grammar for belonging. This is necessary. Even sacred. The early Church had its patterns of prayer, its tables, its letters, its language of the Spirit. But here’s the difference:

In Christ, belonging was never meant to be a prerequisite for becoming.
It was the womb in which becoming could safely unfold.

The modern algorithm—and many religious subcultures—reverse this. They say, “Become like us to belong here.”
Fit the aesthetic. Adopt the dialect. Share the posts. Wear the theology.

And the cost?
Individual wholeness gets slowly traded for collective compatibility.

The danger here isn’t always visible. It often feels like unity. But Paul, in 1 Corinthians 12, writes of a body where difference is necessary, even ordained.

“If they were all one part, where would the body be? But now there are many parts, yet one body.”
—1 Corinthians 12:19–20 (NET)

When collective identity is threatened by personal transformation, it reveals something:
The group may not be built on Christ, but on cohesion.
Not on mutual knowing, but mutual mirroring.

THE FRACTURE: When Wholeness Costs Your Belonging

Some of you know this personally. I certainly do. You started growing, shifting, obeying the Spirit’s gentle lead. And suddenly the place where you once felt safe felt strained. Quietly, you were no longer one of “us.”

You didn’t break the rules. You just stopped pretending.

For me, it started when I broke the WhatsApp bond. For you, it could be when:

… you asked different questions.
… you started listening more than performing.
… you began moving toward wholeness, in opposition to conformity.

That pain? It’s real. Sometimes it feels like betrayal. And it mirrors Christ.

“He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him.”
—John 1:11

And yet—it is in the rejection of false belonging that we begin to taste the deeper belonging of the kingdom.

“So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and members of God’s household.”
—Ephesians 2:19

APOSTOLIC TRUTH: Becoming Is Not Betrayal

Here’s what the apostolic teachings remind us:

• The [real] body of Christ makes space for transformation.
• True unity is Spirit-made, not ‘personality’ or algorithm-shaped.
• Obedience to Christ may cost you lesser communities.
• You were never meant to lose yourself to keep others comfortable.

And so the question becomes not: How do I fit in?
But: What kind of body is forming me?

Let’s bring this question exploration home—not with a performance, but with an unveiling. A quiet laying down of the false self. A stepping out of the algorithm’s shadow. A re-anchoring into the only presence that knows us fully and still calls us beloved.

DIS-IDENTIFYING FROM THE ALGORITHM: Re-Awakening to Christ’s Gaze

We live in a world that is constantly offering us mirrors—distorted ones. Some are shiny with affirmation, others fogged by comparison. But nearly all are shaped by systems that don’t truly care who you are becoming—only what you conform to and keep consuming.

The algorithm doesn’t ask, Are you becoming whole?
It asks, Are you still engaging?

And so it feeds the mask.
The polished version. The agreeable self.
Until even we forget what we truly look like in the mirror of Christ.

“For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like someone who looks at his own face in a mirror, for he looks at himself and goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of person he was.”
—James 1:23–24 (NET)

Dis-identifying from the algorithm is not just about deleting apps or taking breaks from social media or addictive games (though sometimes that’s needed). It’s deeper. It’s about withdrawing your soul’s consent from being shaped by predictive systems, performative belonging, and identity-by-affiliation.

It’s a returning.

A returning to face-to-face knowing.
To presence that doesn’t perform.
To love that doesn’t demand conformity.

A CALL INTO WHOLENESS

So we say it aloud. Not with shame, but with sacred honesty:

“I have been shaped by other voices. I have been formed by my feed. I have believed lies about who I need to be to be seen. But now, Lord, I return.”

We turn off the curated noise.
We confess the unspoken covenants.
We let Christ re-narrate who we are—and who we are becoming.

This is not just a new rhythm. It is a new allegiance.

A re-alignment with the Shepherd who calls His sheep by name—not by their follower count, their aesthetic, or their doctrinal tribe—but by intimate, embodied, redemptive knowing.

“My sheep listen to My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.”
—John 10:27 (NASB95)

PRAYER OF RETURN

Holy Spirit,
Unmask the mirrors I’ve mistaken for meaning.
Unwind the covenants I made in fear, not faith.
Unfold my identity—not as the crowd sees me, but as You know me.
Lead me out of algorithmic patterns and into Christ-formed presence.
Make me brave enough to leave false belonging.
Make me whole enough to abide where You dwell.
I do not want to be seen. I want to be known.
And I want to know You—truly, deeply, face to face.
Amen.

MY INVITATION TO THE READER

This isn’t a one-time reset. It’s a lifelong journey of reformation—of becoming someone who is shaped more by the table of Christ than by the timeline of culture.

For me, searching out Apostolic truth has beed a long hard road. But one thing I've realised is that the body of Christ is GOD's will for us. It was a hard pill for me to swallow — "BUT, Lord do I really have to be committed to a local church? Can I just server you outside that skunk works?". I resisted, but the Word is crystal clear.

from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.
— Ephesians 4:16, NASB95

For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ... But now God has placed the members, each one of them, in the body, just as He desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; or again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you."
— 1 Corinthians 12:12-27, NASB95

and not holding fast to the head, from whom the entire body, being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments, grows with a growth which is from God.
— Colossians 2:19, NASB95

The local body is where we learn love. It's God's plan.

We've all been hurt by the "church" is different ways. But it's still His church, and He is still the head of it. His wisdom is not mine, His ways not mine either.

So, surrender I did. "Your will Lord - I believe, help me in my unbelief!".

And no, it's not been easy. I've had to face many dragons, mostly the one in my own head. But He remains eternally faithful — His grace is sufficient for me.

I seen many different kinds of wounds and responses to those wounds, so I've presumed a few different next steps you can take. Look for the one that you most identify with and step out in faith. Every journey begins with the first step. Mine did.

PRACTICE FOR THE ANXIOUS HEART:

This week, when the 3am anxiety hits and you reach for your phone to search "am I forgiven?"—pause.
Instead:

• Write down the fear in one sentence.
• Read Psalm 103:12 aloud and slowly:

”As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us"

• Choose ONE person who knows your story and text them first thing in the morning: "Pray for me today" - Don't explain. Don't justify. Just receive their "praying now" response.

Start with being known in your need, not your performance.

PRACTICE FOR THOSE WHO FEEL INVISIBLE:

This week, don't wait to be invited. You've waited long enough.

• Think of someone who serves quietly like you do
• Send this text: "I see how faithfully you [specific thing]. Can I buy you coffee and just listen to your story?"
• When you meet, ask: "What's it like for you to love people who don't always notice?"
• Share one thing about feeling unseen—not as complaint, but as communion

Begin practicing the ministry of recognition you long to receive.

PRACTICE FOR THE CURATOR:

This week, try the 24-hour truth test:

• Write a completely honest post about how you're actually doing
• Save it as a draft. Don't post yet.
• Sit with it for 24 hours. How does it feel to name the truth?
• Then choose: post it, share it with one trusted friend, or just journal about why honesty felt so foreign
• Notice: Does authenticity feel like failure, or like coming home?

Start with private truth before public vulnerability.

PRACTICE FOR THE WOUNDED:

This week, create one space that belongs only to you and God:

• A corner of a room, a walking path, a particular chair
• No phone, no agenda, no performance
• Just breathe and whisper: "I am safe in Your presence"
• If triggers arise, don't push through—just notice and be gentle

Your healing doesn't need witnesses. It needs space.

PRACTICE FOR THE HEALING:

When you're ready (no timeline pressure):

• Find one online community of other spiritual abuse survivors
• Read their stories without sharing yours yet
• Notice: "I'm not crazy. I'm not alone."
• If moved, comment once: "Thank you for your courage"

Connection can begin with witness, not vulnerability.

PRACTICE FOR THE RECOVERING:

Only when internal safety feels established:

• Consider one person who has never been part of a church system that hurt you
• Share one small true thing about your journey
• Pay attention to their response—does it feel safe or familiar in harmful ways?
• Trust your nervous system's wisdom

Healing gives you permission to be extremely selective about who gets access to your story.

PRACTICE FOR THE WARY:

This week, honour what your cynicism has taught you:

• Make a list: "What red flags can I now spot that I missed before?" (get them out of your head)
• Thank God for the painful wisdom that protects you now
• Ask: "Lord, what discernment gifts grew from my disappointment?"

Your cynicism isn't sin—it's survival wisdom that needs honouring, not healing.

PRACTICE FOR THE CAREFUL:

When you're ready to test the waters again:

• Look for one person who embodies Christ without needing credit
• Someone who serves quietly, speaks truth gently, has scars they don't hide
• Don't join anything—just observe and appreciate
• Notice: "Faith still exists in the margins"

Hope returns through evidence, not exhortation.

PRACTICE FOR THE RECOVERED CYNIC:

Only when you've seen enough authentic faith to believe it exists:

• Find the smallest, most anti-institutional expression of church you can
• Go once with zero expectations
• Leave if anything feels performative or pushy
• Your standards are high now—that's a gift, not a problem

You're not returning to naive trust. You're engaging with wise hope.

PRACTICE FOR THE HOPEFUL:

So here is your next step:

• Choose one place this week where you’ll dis-identify from algorithmic formation. A practice. A platform. A persona.
• Choose one place where you’ll re-anchor in Christ’s presence. A friend. A silence. A Scripture. A walk.
• Don’t do it alone. Ask someone to do it with you.

And together, become the kind of people who know—and are known—in Him.

You are not your curated self.
You are not your online community.
You are not your predictive feed.

You are His.
And He knows you. Fully.