Towards a less robust digital "life"
The resurrection community is embodied, synchronous, deep, and communal
He is risen indeed! What a marvelous celebration of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus last week–and our participation in those events through baptism, eucharist, belief, prayer, and praise.
At Christian concerts, conferences, and mass gatherings, I remember a repeated illustration, with the noble goal of inviting personal faith in Jesus Christ. It went something like this: Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian anymore than going to McDonald’s makes you a cheeseburger. Granted, I’ve been to many burger joints, and have never myself been a cheeseburger. That said, if I am looking for a cheeseburger, the most reliable place to go is to a burger joint! The community of Christ’s church is not ancillary to the making of Christians, but is, not to stretch the metaphor, the burger joint that makes cheeseburgers!
Derek Thompson is an agnostic journalist who wrote this week in The Atlantic, “I have spent most of my life thinking about the decline of faith in America in mostly positive terms.” His past positivity about the decline of faith is connected to the normal culprits: hypocrisy, abuse of power, and political entanglements. He hasn’t changed his mind about God, but he is concerned about the contemporary loss of communal faith. After the litany of statistics about secularization, de-churching, and the fastest growing religious group in America–the unaffiliated, Thompson summarizes, “America didn’t simply lose its religion without finding a communal replacement. Just as America’s churches were depopulated, Americans developed a new relationship with a technology that, in many ways, is the diabolical opposite of a religious ritual: the smartphone.” The problem with the smartphone replacing communal expressions of faith are many, but he points out these: loneliness, mental health crisis, decline in volunteerism, and a growing dissatisfaction in their own community.
Drawing on, what I think is, the most significant research of our time, Thompson uses Jonathan Haidt’s recently released work, The Anxious Generation to diagnose the problem with screen time (phone, gaming, television) replacing face-to-face relationships. Haidt summarizes digital life as “disembodied, asynchronous, shallow, and solitary.” Maybe we will take some time to reflect more deeply on these insights, but suffice-to-say, the resurrection might be the most opposite thing in the world to digital life. The resurrection of Jesus, and our baptism into the life of Jesus and his body is embodied, synchronous (at the same time), deep, and communal.
Come to church, because you are the church! Even the agnostics are recognizing the True Cost of the Churchgoing Bust, which is the title of Thompson’s article.
Jesus’ peace, Nathan
PS: I think a free article or two from The Atlantic each month is available.