Christchurch Parish News, July 2017
This is the third in a series of articles where I explore what it means to be a Christian in the digital age.
The union of difference is one of the grand themes of the Bible. In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, we read ‘With all wisdom and insight [God] has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth’ (Eph 1.8-10).
We see this union perfectly expressed in Jesus Christ, God enfleshed in human form. And it is in the light of Jesus’ resurrection that we look ahead with confidence to the union of heaven and earth that John describes in his vision as follows, ‘Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth … And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God’ (Rev 21.1-2). There is to be a new union, a reunion as heaven (God’s dimension) and earth (ours) are once more brought together and the story that begins in a garden with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ends in a city and the tree of life, the leaves of which ‘are for the healing of the nations’ (Rev 22.2). That which has been separated by sin and corruption is healed by resurrection and new life.
Living in between the moment of Jesus’ resurrection and the future resurrection of all creation, the church is called to bear witness to both events. When speaking of the relationship between husband and wife, Paul, in the same letter to the Ephesians, calls husbands to love their wives ‘just as Christ loved the church’. It is from drawing on verses such as this one that down the ages the church has spoken of itself as being the bride of Christ. In the wedding liturgy, the minister says, ‘Marriage is a gift of God in creation through which husband and wife may know the grace of God. It is given that as man and woman grow together in love and trust, they shall be united with one another in heart, body and mind, as Christ is united with his bride, the Church.’ That which is different is brought together into union.
As such, when at its best, the church models a way of being that gives expression to this union of difference in the here and now. It’s not always the case, of course, as we know. But that’s nothing new. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he has to remind the Christians to whom he writes that ‘there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for all of your are one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal 3.28). The divisions which preoccupy and distract us no longer apply when we are in Christ. That which is different in the eyes of the world has been brought into union in the presence of God.
With this important theme in mind, an increasingly vital question for the church in our day to consider is to what degree the internet helps or undermines the union of our differences in the presence of God. As church, does the internet draw us closer together or drive us further apart?
Undoubtedly, the internet enables all sorts of communication which were inconceivable only a few years ago. We now email, Facebook message and WhatsApp each other throughout the day. The immediacy is addictive, as these short little modern-day telegrams whizz back and forth around the globe. Whilst many of us have mobile phones, few of us use them anymore actually to speak to anyone. Instead, most of the time, we use them to send little bursts of information about ourselves and await the response.
This is changing what it means to spend time with each other. Can you remember the last time you sat with a group of people and no one around the table had an iPhone or a tablet in reach? There’s been research done which shows that even the very fact of there being a smartphone (iPhone etc.) on a table changes the nature of the conversation between two people sitting opposite each other.
We all know why this is. You can be talking to someone and suddenly their phone bleeps and you can see them desperately trying to concentrate on what you’re saying. But in reality, your friend’s attention has gone. They’re no longer paying attention to you. Instead, they’re now distracted by whatever Facebook update, Instagram photo, Snapchat image or WhatsApp message is waiting for them on their phone. For the time that they’re distracted, you might as well not be there. So what do you do? You reach for your own phone, of course! Soon enough, the two of you are sitting there, staring at your screens, oblivious to each other’s presence.
On the face of it, in such a situation, there’s little opportunity for union, for a sharing and coming together of the ‘I’ that is you and the ‘I’ that is your friend. The technology is disruptive. When your friend picks up their phone to check the message that’s just come in, yes, you no longer have their attention. They may be physically sitting there opposite you, but in reality, they’re no longer present to you. This is described by social psychologist Kenneth Gergen as being an absent presence.
But there’s another way of looking at it. In that moment when your friend is looking at his or her phone and starts to respond to the latest message they’ve received, they are in fact a connected presence (this phrase was coined by Barry Wellman at MIT). Not to you, no. To you, they’re now an absent presence. But they are a connected presence to someone else – another friend, a family member or work colleague etc.. Viewed from your friend’s perspective the person who has just sent them a message is what we might call a present absence. The person who sent the message to your friend isn’t physically sitting there, hence they’re described as an absence. But they are very much present in that moment to your friend via a smartphone.
Those of us who have these devices all do it. We all reach for our phone when they notify us with a bleep. Whilst we may find it highly irritating when others do it, we know that when it’s a message for us, what we’re experiencing is a degree of connected presence with someone who is physically absent in that moment and yet who has become a very real presence to us, however fleetingly, before we resume our face-to-face conversation with the person sitting opposite us.
The question that’s being increasingly asked is that in this world of connected presence, where there is this constant dynamic of present absence and absent presence, what possibility does there remain for those moments when we are a present presence to each other. In other words, what room for those moments when we give our full attention to the person we are with (and vice versa) without any distractions issuing from our mobile devices. The worry is that we are increasingly coming to prefer these asynchronous methods of communication rather than being present together, face to face.
Negotiating our differences and experiencing the union that God holds out for us in the presence of Christ can be very difficult. It can often be easier to avoid the inevitable confrontation and disagreement we encounter along the way by deliberately avoiding being a present presence to each other and instead seeking refuge in our screens, preferring in that moment the company of those who are not here, who are apresent absence.
Needless to say, it’s obviously not an either or. By turns we can be a connected presence to someone elsewhere and then two minutes later, be a present presence to the person we are physically with. But we as the church need to be alert to how the culture around us and of which we are a part is changing and how in our time, we are being encouraged in the name of connectivity to be connected presences to each other, all the while unaware that this is increasingly coming at the expense of our being a present presence to each other. As such, we must guard against our spiritual practices being diminished as we spend more time connected to others elsewhere and less time connected to each other in the here and now, face to face.
Having discussed absent presence, present absence and present presence, next month I’m going to discuss the fourth combination: namely, when we become an absent absence to each other. It is then that we will turn our attention to what it means to speak of death and resurrection in the digital age.