The Temptation to Sound Clever
And a bit about chasing numbers online and in Church
I am often tempted to have something clever to say. Let’s be clear - this is about wanting to sound clever and therefore be recognized in some manner for that cleverness. If someone reads what I’ve written or hears a talk I’ve given, and then tells me, “oh, I’d never thought about it that way before,” I feel smart, as though I have really done something.
Wanting to sound clever is actually wanting others to think I’m clever. I make their compliment mostly about me. I am less inclined to think about how what I have said or written is participating in some greater journey that the reader or listener is on.
Getting told I am smart, or that something I said was interesting supplies me with a little dopamine hit. This isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. We all need positive encouragement. In fact, without positive encouragement it is very difficult to continue in creative work, or any kind of work, really. Receiving thanks, positive reviews, likes, comments, and also financial compensation or awards/accolades play a role in sustaining continued creative output.
But, there are obvious problems here. A major one is allowing self-worth to be determined by the reaction (or non-reaction) of others. When I receive a positive comment I feel smart, and good, and worthy. This doesn’t seem too bad in and of itself, until we rev up the old social media machine in an all out pursuit of like like like, share share share, more more more.
Social media isn’t the real culprit, however. Is an accelerator though, sometimes for audience growth, but more often for the insidiousness of believing that the likes and shares mean people really know and love you, or worse, if the metrics go down, that nobody does. We all know that social media success is a poor measure for things like quality work or loving relationships (and lots of people are quitting social because it’s been recognized as so harmful), but many keep playing the game anyway, letting worthiness be decided by algorithms and whatever skill we might aquire at crafting an image… or is it a mask?
One of my versions of this, as I’ve noted, is wanting to be seen as smart. In this pursuit I may be tempted to cease developing a more skilled craft or I might stop bothering with a deeper exploration of my subject. Ironically, in a chase to have more people think I’m clever, I might actually do less things to contribute to my own education.
For others it’s not about cleverness, but just popularity. They might water down their message to get a broader base, though this rarely works anymore. Instead, people choose more of today tactics, choosing the path of being purposely divisive, vulgar, or downright mean online, just to get more followers.
Letting our personal worthiness be based on the numbers is hazardous partly because the goalposts keep moving. When you go from 3 subscribers to 37 that feels great until you spend the next four months scratching to get to 41. You can begin thinking less of yourself because you only have 198 readers of a particular post, or you only got 16 likes on a photo, or you only have 97, or 899, or 9,682 followers. Essentially, you can just pick a random number and it will never feel like enough.
Chasing accolades or likes can lead to no longer appreciating the goodhearted individuals who actually do want to hear what you have to say. You might start taking for granted the brave readers or listeners who leave comments or send you emails or a letters of appreciation. In fact, sometimes you might stop seeing the people who are liking your photo, video, or post, as actual people at all. Terribly, they become just a stat.
I’ve seen this same kind of thing in a completely different realm than social media, because of course, this isn’t unique to the online world. I’ve seen this time and time again among church leaders. For church leaders It can be very discouraging to see less people in church services.
Post-Covid, there are rafts churches where not a lot of people have come back to their weekly gatherings. The feelings of loss are often compounded for pastors and other church leaders when they see the odd story of certain churches having significantly higher attendance than before the pandemic. It is easy to feel like a failure when you see other places “succeeding.”
Some of the credit for recent success stories (measured tragically soley by service attendance) goes to the reality of a spiritual shake up in the culture. Yes, that has happened. I have a hunch, though, that some of the many people who left churches simply started going to a different church. When that happens, you end up with a large swath of Churches that have declined even more rapidly than before, and a much smaller band of churches that have increased in size, having welcomed some of the post-pandemic spiritual wanderers. And of course, overall church attendance has continued on a nosedive that was firmly in place well before 2019.
A few years ago, I intentionally tried to shift my mindset from “I hope more people come today,” to encouraging the people who were there just because they chose to be there. I mean, this is Canada in 2025. People could choose to be somewhere else, but they are choosing to come together and hang onto the reality of Father, Son, and Spirit in their lives, clinging to the hope of renewal through this God of love and compassion. These are the ways I like to think about the Christian narrative.
In the same way, if you are sharing any creative work in the world and anyone is showing up for it, that’s actually pretty amazing. It would be way easier for them to ignore you, to not comment, to not hit the like button, and certainly way easier for them to not subscribe or to not support your work financially. What an amazing thing if you have a few people who are in your corner, appreciating what you do!
So, for me, I guess this post is about two hangups. 1) Wanting people to think I’m clever, and 2) having enough people who think that to be around for me to feel pretty dang good about myself. When I’m honest about this and write it down, I see right away how misguided it is, because in it I am centring myself over you, the one reading this.
One solution is to double down on my inner voice. To say what I want to say how I want to say it, and then trust that my words will find the people who need them.
Another solution is to pay close attention to those who are already reading or listening and serve them. What is it they need to hear? Of course, this might not always be what they want to hear, and with a group of more than one person you will always have some level of competing interests.
I might also ask “what do I feel led to say?”
No matter how I approach writing or preaching, I have to actively resist my attempts to merely sound clever. Of course, saying something in a particular way, perhaps with a certain turn of phrase that does something within me or within a reader can be very helpful. But the goal cannot be to try and get people to think “oh, he’s smart!”
Something I love about writing novels is that I can spend a long time working on a story and a voice can be developed without the audience, at least at first. Rarely when writing a novel am I thinking about the reader and how cool they will think the story is (and consequently how cool the author must be who wrote it!).
But often, when writing a novel, I am simply thinking “oh, this is cool.” At its best, I enjoy the story as I write it, and there have been wonderful times when I have looked around the coffeeshop and thought about how fun it is to be in on my own secret of a story that no one else has yet seen. I get to follow the narrative and be led places where I might not have considered going. In some way the story itself takes the lead. This reminds me very much of how I think God works.
If I can manage to get out of the way and let God lead in preaching, writing, and life, it is always surprising and always so much better.
In contrast to writing novels, there are times when I love the immediacy of preaching. Every week I have to consider the listener. What do they need to hear? Every week I have to consider what I am being led to say. This is no easy task, and I can be tripped up if my main goal is to get people to think I’m clever. If I take that tactic, I may easily miss both the needs of the listeners and the point of the sermon that is rooted in the biblical text itself.
Cleverness can easily get in the way, rather than draw people in to greater understanding. I am usually hoping that preaching will do more than get someone thinking, but will play its role in helping that person participate more fully in an encounter with the triune God, whether in the worship service right then or out in their life. If my hope is that people will think I’m smart, I’ve really missed the mark.
Writing here on Substack is similar to this. The reader is right there. There is no editorial process other than what I do myself. How might I best be helpful? What am I being led to write and share? Is something I have written better kept just for me or could it become something to be shared with the readers here?
I don’t really have any full answers here other than I know when I start leaning toward “cleverness” I’m in jeopardy. This, for me, is often the same as wanting just more and more likes and comments, rather than serving the reader or the listner who is here already.
So, if you are here, if you’ve made it this far… thank you for reading and/or listening. I do hope you find some of what I say helpful or beautiful or perhaps inspiring in some way. From time to time, you may even think I’m smart. It’s okay if you tell me that. I’ll try not to let it go to my head. I’ll still strive to write and speak and serve you from the heart.