I used to like watching the news. These days it makes me want to crawl back in bed and hide my head under the covers. The daily drumbeat of chaos and tragedy grieve me, but it’s more than that. The insults, sound bites, and shouting over one another weary my soul. Instead of listening to one another and engaging in the process of vigorous but friendly debate, the pundits’ and politicians’ main goal seems to be not letting the other side win.
On a smaller scale, I’m guilty of the same thing. I’m not one to shout over people; I don’t get excited about the prospect of a good fight. My tendency is to avoid arguments and stay silent to maintain peace. So while I like keeping up with what’s going on in the world and thinking politically, I keep quiet in real life and seek out conversation on social media. The “mute” and “unfollow” buttons on Facebook and Twitter are beautiful things, making it easy for me to filter out ideas I disagree with and voices I dislike.
That’s a problem. It’s a problem because social media makes it possible for us all to retreat to our own little digital enclaves. We find safe spaces where everyone agrees with us, where we can hide our worst features, self-edit our thoughts for maximum impact, and separate ourselves from people who don’t see the world the same way we do. Our online communities reflect our opinions back to us, reinforcing our preconceptions and offering affirmation and applause. We separate ourselves into tribes and define the world by “us” and “them”–a scenario in which “we” always wear the white hats and “they” are always the enemy who must be defeated.
I’m grateful for my online communities. Technology allows me to connect with women in ministry and fellow writers from around the world. My freelance writing clients have included people based in England, Austrailia, Asia and the Middle East. Yet I also have to acknowledge that social media friendships can make me relationally lazy. Sometimes I prefer my safe online spaces over the hard work of real-world relationships.
I need real-world friendships. I need to relate to people without holding my phone at the best angle to hide my double chin; people who recognize that I get snippy when I’m tired, that sarcasm is my go-to defense mechanism, and that having to be “on” in a large group of people wears me out. I need to be in community with people who see my real self and who can remind me that sometimes it’s not that one side is right and one side is wrong–sometimes it’s simply two sides of the same coin. To grow, we need to risk revealing our true selves.
In 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, Tony Reinke writes that we need “opportunities for personal growth in places of unconditional love, providing the soul a respite from the now unceasing demands of social approval.”
Reinke continues:
Maybe this is a key function of chuch attendance in the digital age. We must withdraw from our online worlds to gather as a body in our local churches. We gather to be seen, to feel awkward, and perhaps to feel a little unheard and unappreciated, all on perpose. In obedience to the biblical command not to forsake meeting together, we each come as one small piece, on individual member, one body part, in order to find purpose, life, and value in union with the rest of the living body of Christ.
Church is a place for real encounters with others and for true self-disclosure among other sinners. In the healthy local church, I do not fear rejection. In the healthy local church, I can pursue a spiritual depth that requires agitation, frustration, and the discomfort of being with people who conform not to “my” kingdom but to God’s. The challenge for us is to “cherish corporate worship, that most counter-cultural of practices, for which no virtual substitute can be found” (Reinke, 72).
Some 2000 years ago, the Apostle Paul told the church at Colossae how to value community:
Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And oer all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Colossians 3:12-14).
Compassion. Kindness. Humility. Gentleness. Patience. Forgiveness. Love. These qualities are what allow us to live in real community with real people, growing and learning from one another as we reveal our real selves. Community requires us to work past awkward moments, to relate to people who are different than us, and to discover that my real, flawed self is still worthy of being loved. It takes work–exerting myself to begin a conversation, making space in my busy life to connect with a friend, and learning the art of talking through disagreements and loving people anyway. Christ gave us a miraculous gift in the church. In church, we discover our beauty in diversity and the wonder of being made one in him.
Q: Do you ever feel that online spaces are easier than real-world relationships? Why should we challenge ourselves to connect with and relate to others in the real world? In a virtual-driven world, how can cherishing corporate worship help us find true community?
8 comments
I totally get it! I actually work in news and it’s just as horrible for us to put it on. I honestly think that this digital age is desensitizing people we NEED real life relationships so that we can be humanized. See people for who they really are and not who they are on the interwebs. Thanks for sharing!
We need real relationships! I am so over this “technology” filled world. We are teaching the next generation not to have vocal conversations anymore and it’s very frustrating as parents. I limit the amount of time that our whole family is allowed on electronic devices.
I think it’s hard to find real life relationships because people are so busy! It seems like no one wants to slow down enough to nurture a relationship.
I so agree with this! We’ve created a bubble of perfection that others don’t want to approach because they feel like they can’t measure up. People need to see our real ness, our fleshiness and how we overcome it victoriously in Christ. Having friends in real life creates a real ness of support and love.
Getting together with other believers is vital to our walk with Christ. We need people to love and be loved by, who love to be with us, so that we can live and breathe and be healthy and free before God and not bogged down.
I am blessed enough to have both. I really appreciate the community of women bloggers but I really love my church as well.
“We must withdraw from our online worlds to gather as a body in our local churches.“ more than agree … we grow when we connect with our physical being than through phones and texts and online messages.
Nurturing and developing real-life relationships is a hard one for me. It’s an area that I know I need to pray over more.
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