lifeasmission

I’ll leave it up to you to make the final decision on how related these two thoughts I have been having are…

At Living Hope, we have been talking about and trying to get to a place where some of the practices that typically happen on a Sunday morning (baby dedications and baptisms for example), happen at other times because they are the sort of things that really pertain to those who truly share life together, not a general population of people who are gathered on a Sunday morning who may or may not have much of a real connection with one another. We have talked some about the ways in which we can actually create a false sense of community by giving people glimpses into really important facets of the lives of others - devoid of any real relationship. We are sensitive to this, I think, because we have a strong conviction that both personal discipleship as well as the life of Christian community in general needs to flow out of people sharing life together in a deep sense. To give anyone a false sense of community then, would be to rob them of the actual need they have to both be investing in the lives of others as well as being invested in by others.

On a similar note, I have been thinking about Instant Messaging and texting. My job is basically relationships. As a young adult pastor, I spend most of my time thinking about and engaging in the lives of young adults. But, I have no office and run no programs. So, when I am not actually with people, I spend a good part of my day either on my phone or on my computer. I enjoy being accessible to others by way of text messaging and instant messaging (not to mention email), but similar to what I mentioned above, these mediums can provide a false sense of connection.

Texting and IMing can be convenient means of communication, but there is also an intrinsic distance introduced. Devoid of the presence of the other, you miss out on non-verbal communication, the investment of time that it takes to actually be in the presence of one another, and other facets of face to face relationship. It may not be going too far to say that instant electronic communication actually winds up commodifying and objectifying the other. We are more easily able to see and treat others as resources at our disposal as opposed to relationships we are bound to.

Or what about something like Facebook? How much of a temptation is there for me to fool myself into believeing that I actually know someone becasue I am pretty up to speed on where they’re at, what they’re doing, and how they are (electronically) interacting with others?

I suppose the point of all I am saying is this; we live in a day and age where people are starved for community and connection. Sadly, the information age has provided us with innumerable options of instantly connecting with others, but at what expense? What if the very thing we relied on these mediums for was obscured or lost altogether by its shadow? Worse, what if we slowly but surely began to lose our ability to authentically relate to one another across the range of human emotions and dispositions because we had become so used to a dehumanized sort of communication?