In a world driven by clicks and likes, I’ve come to deplore followership. The internet, on and off social media, is a fantastic resource. It’s the biggest library the human mind can conceive, conveying ideas in written, spoken, and visual media. But it’s also a constant temptation to comparison and imitation.

How often do you watch a video and decide you need to think like the speaker thinks? How often do you flip through an Instagrammer’s homeschool photos and decide you need to educate your child with the same plans and materials? Yes, these things can be resources, but they can also be an excuse to cede your agency and intelligence to someone more popular, convincing, or attractive than you feel yourself to be.

They call them “influencers” for a reason.

The longer I live, the more I see that people are just people. Even attractive, convincing people are just people. I respect actual credentials. If you have an accredited degree in your field, I’m much more likely to accept the information you are sharing.

But if your credential is the number of YouTube followers you have, I’m frankly not interested. You are a human, and I am a human. Probably, we’re both adults. Like my opinion, your opinion is just that – an opinion. It may be your best effort at putting together the disparate threads of your experience, and I can honor that. But I don’t need to bow to it.

There is only one Person we should be following, and that is Christ.