How very sad that Glasgow’s night shelter had to post on social media that it wasn’t actually necessary to take a selfie when you decide to ‘help’ the homeless. The speech marks are theirs, and it speaks volumes that this extra touch of irony was added by an organisation that brims over with generosity.
Social media can be such a force for good – it can, for example, let people in crisis know where the night shelter van is going to be at weekends – as well as the growing aggressive force we have seen in politics and public life.
But to posing for a selfie of your donation to a rough sleeper (A coffee? The remains of your kebab? A woolly hat?), and posting on Twitter or Facebook surely does nothing for your own dignity and can only disrespect the recipient.
According to Matthew 6:3–4, Jesus said that when we give to the needy, the right hand shouldn’t know what the left hand is doing. Nor, indeed, He said, should we blow our own charitable trumpet. I think that had Instagram been around at the time, He might well have added that we shouldn’t take a selfie of ourselves giving to the needy and post it for the world to marvel at our act of charity.
It seems to be a sad symptom of today’s need for self-affirmation. Here is my perfect life: my perfect children in their perfect clothes; my perfect pet doing the cutest of tricks; my perfect meal in the coolest eaterie in town. And in case that doesn’t make me perfect enough, this is me handing over a doggy bag of my left-overs from that cool eaterie to someone who isn’t as perfect as me.
I’m being hypocritical, of course. I’ve donated, for instance, to causes on line and let them display my name. Most of us could probably tick the guilty box in allowing not just the right hand but a whole load of folk know that we are buying a ‘real gift’ from SCIAF or planting a tree in the Caledonian forest instead of giving Cousin Jim the usual scarf and gloves and our bestie a bottle of bubbly for Christmas.
I suppose it’s the competitiveness of ‘selfie giving’ that feels like the last straw in social media self-indulgence. Social justice seeks equality for everyone. And if we can’t make that an equality of wealth, we must surely let it be an equality of dignity, respect, and self-worth.
The Nativity scene was set in a stable because the Holy Family had nowhere else to go. They were soon to be refugees, fleeing from injustice. Shepherds and kings knelt at the cradle – their gifts given with respect.
One of Mother Teresa's favourite texts was ‘Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40). I’m with the night shelter people in thinking that the selfie takers attack the dignity of a brother or sister.