2 L8 2 Go Back?
(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
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Yep, I am on Facebook again, though not under my own name. I was getting too many friend requests so I returned under a pseudonym. At least I can see the pictures my children post of those adorable grandkids.
Since the time of my earlier departure, Facebook has not changed much. Facebook is now overshadowed by Twitter, and by the time this is in print probably some brand new social networking site will have made both irrelevant.
The term “social networking site” is telling. I cannot imagine Jesus saying, “And love those on your social networking site as you love yourself.” Christianity by its nature is incarnational. From the resurrection to the Lord’s Supper, Christianity is all about embodiment.
When I was first asked to join the board of directors of a Christian television network, I suggested the Hippocratic oath should be modified and applied to Christian broadcasters: “First, do no harm.” In our attempt to respect the incarnational nature of our faith, our network ended up with pretty simple television—scenes of nature, music, and Scripture. We knew doing any more would press the limits of what could be accomplished through the disembodied images of television.
Now, 20 years later, our attempts seem almost quaint. Churches have video venues, and in the largest churches people do not even watch the preacher anymore. They just stare at an image on-screen to the speaker’s right or left. If you are a preacher, it is disconcerting to have no one watching you as you speak there in the flesh. It’s kind of like living with teenagers.
Now we have to contend with social networking sites. Last summer Cathy and I took our granddaughters to feed the ducks at a Long Island park. While they were throwing pieces of bread in the water, three teenage girls sat on swings nearby, never speaking, never looking up, texting on their cell phones. I wondered at what age this change takes place, when little girls go from awe and wonder to the mind-numbing world of “social networking.”
I am no Luddite. I have the latest technological toys. I am typing this column on a MacBook Air that is thinner than a legal pad. But all this fleeing the flesh to devote oneself to badly spelled words about nothing is not benign. It changes the very nature of human interaction.
For God’s sake, look at a human face every now and again. Study the contours of it, note the way it forms shapes and expresses emotions. Listen to a human voice as it tells secrets with subtle nuance. Touch the skin of another and feel the power of flesh on flesh. Celebrate our bodies, and the God who created them and dwelled in one.
Go ahead and use the tools of technology. Let them save you time and make your life easier. But beware. Do not let them anywhere near your soul.
Paul Williams is saddened when youth spend time texting and social networking. He tells us to “look at a human face…listen to a human voice…touch the skin of another.” Yet I believe he is a great reader of books. Leroy Lawson in the same issue encourages us to read more books. Yet books are by far the most antisocial invention of all time. At least during social networking one is engaged with another living human being. When reading a book you are alone, or at most the passive receiver of information. The next time Paul picks up a book, I hope someone encourages him to “look at a human face…listen to a human voice…touch the skin of another.”
This is meant in good humor. I just think that what we in the Gutenberg generation think is human interaction shouldn’t blind us to what is human interaction in the internet generation.
I FIRMLY disagree Mr Frantz.
Mr Williams [and myself-I too am a reader] read to expand our knowledge or the truth so as to lead others to truth. Paul is a prime examplt [me-not so much] as a leader who pours himself out daily into others [hense the article] and shares the journey to find pure truth and most importantly, shares this humble desire to help others find it for them selves so that it can make as great a difference in their lives as it has in his.
Engagement with another through a machine that e-communicates is not any different that engaging with the writer of the book. The exchange of information STILL flows…the tool of delivery is a little different. The gulf between the delivery of information and social interaction is seemingly wide. Once again, it is determined by the participants who determine whether they are spending their time on chit chat or discourse.
Readers are leaders…those who read, can not help but lead … when you soak it all in and it just stays dormant and simply lays there…that is true antisocial behavior; to have life and withhold it, to be able to live life to iuts fullest, and waste it- blasphemy. To desire knowledge and truth are not antisocial behavior but to have to and keep it all to yourself is the most antisocial [and miserly] behavior of all.
Thank you for sharing your opinion and thank you for letting me share mine.
Did you say, “the tool of delivery is a little different”?
Just a little different? Might I suggest that in our contemporary culture, the image, the sound bite, the twitter, and the fabricated have displaced the natural, the studied, and the carefully worded, until reality itself has been converted into stagecraft—little more than entertainment. We now see ourselves moving through life as a camera would see us. We imagine ourselves as the main characters. We have learned ways of thinking, speaking, posting, and typing that disfigure the way we relate to the world.
Images have become a commodity. In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, people spend most of the day watching giant television screens that show endless scenes of police chases and criminal apprehensions. Life—edited, packaged, and filmed—had become the most compelling form of entertainment.
Sadly—and I think this is part of what Paul is saying—we are a culture (and there is little distinction between believer and non-believer here) that has been denied, or has passively given up the linguistic and intellectual tools to cope with complexity, weigh truth, or separate illusion from reality. We have traded the printed word for the shiny image. We can no longer decipher the fine print. Shame, shame.
Is it 2 L8 4 Praying?