Stephen Marche takes an interesting turn in “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely,” found in this month’s The Atlantic.  He reviews the contemporary problem of loneliness in America.   He cites Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, and more recent treatments to establish the deeply troubling fact that many Americans are deeply and pathologically lonely.

He explores the pervasive role of Facebook in American culture.  He identifies a variety of ways social media complicates the issue of loneliness.

Our omnipresent new technologies lure us toward increasingly superficial connections at exactly the same moment that they make avoiding the mess of human interaction easy. 

He cites Sherry Turkly from, Alone Together, to establish what some of us sense:

These days insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time.

He affirms what we already believe: social media provides a pseudo community, a convenient but poor substitute for the real thing.

Then comes the twist.  Marche identifies the status posts, the photo presentations, the constant checking in and self-presentation of Facebookers.  He reports,

Among 18-to-34-yer-olds, nearly half check Facebook minutes after waking up, and 28 present do so before getting out of bed.  The relentlessness is what is so new, so potentially transformative.  Facebook never takes a break.

Marche suddenly shifts and suggests that the true problem of Facebook is not so much its effect on relationships, but the failure to disconnect, to get away, to be truly alone…because we’re always on…Facebook.

Solitude used to be good for self-reflection and self-reinvention.  But now we are left thinking about who we are all the time, without every really thinking about who we are.

What we’re losing is not just intimacy with one another, but intimacy with God.

God and politics is one of the themes of Andrew Sullivan’s “Crisis in Christianity.”  For my taste, he pushes a bit too hard for a faith that runs the danger of being “privatized,” that is, kept to one self rather than brought out into the open of public discourse.

For example, when addressing the occasional engagement of Christianity in politics, Sullivan suggests that the church filter the God-talk out of the discussion.

When politics is necessary, as it is, the kind of Christianity I am describing seeks always to translate religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments that can appeal to those of other faiths and none at all. But it also means, at times, renouncing Caesar in favor of the Christ to whom Jefferson, Francis, my grandmother, and countless generations of believers have selflessly devoted themselves.

This seems naïve.  How do you contend for a public policy rooted in a transcendent reality without the language of faith?  Part of the broader crisis of our time is the failure of the public sphere to grant a place for conversation that acknowledges the possibility of a divine presence.  The default, acceptable world view becomes a materialistic atheism, with politics devolving into a scramble of how to divide up the pie.  After all, there is nothing else out there.  Presumably. 

Lots of people, Muslims, Jews, Christians, et. al., say that’s a bad presumption.  I don’t think it is possible to always translate “religious truths into reasoned, secular arguments.” 

Let’s try one.  “God is love.”   Okay.  Let’s see, “Transcendent reality is good, personal, and to be trusted.”  Does that work?  It’s not very warm.  It makes my head hurt a little bit.  And, frankly, I don’t think it will make it through the filter of the secular pluralists Sullivan is asking us to appease.

Sometimes the conversation needs to be frank, honest and hard.  The only way I know to maneuver through that successfully is, well, by being anchored in that simple Truth, God is love.  

Kyle

Andrew Sullivan has made interesting observations in his Newsweek Easter article. Really, he's saying out loud what a lot of people are thinking.

When speaking of the traditional church structures, practices, and patterns, both Catholic and Protestant, sometimes made notorious through the media’s reporting, Sullivan fingers an important reality.

Something has gone very wrong. [The church reacts in] impulses born of panic in the face of modernity, and fear before an amorphous “other.” This version of Christianity could not contrast more strongly with Jesus’ constant refrain: “Be not afraid.” 

He makes a good observation here.  The MO of the church appears to be aggressive and reactionary (the “religious right”) or controlling and evasive (the Catholic child abuse scandals) as if God needs to be protected or defended.  No matter how “bad things may get,” I believe we can trust that God will continue to be God and continually be at work for his purposes.

As the people of God, we really can relax, take a bit longer view, even as we contend for truth in the public square.  The more thoughtful our expressions, after all, the more likely we will be heard, even if rejected.

The writer of Hebrews extends to us a wonderful invitation,

So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has  entered God's rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.  Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort  of disobedience.  Heb. 4:9-11

I long for the day when the public face of Christianity will look more like humble, open hearted confidence than a strident campaigner or an evasive bureaucrat.  

Kyle

Are we living in the truth or are we campaigning for the truth?  Another challenge Andrew Sullivan lays out there in his Newsweek Easter piece, “Crisis in Christianity."

Whether or not you believe, as I do, in Jesus’ divinity and resurrection—and in the importance of celebrating both on Easter Sunday….What does it matter how strictly you proclaim your belief in various doctrines if you do not live as these doctrines demand? What is politics if not a dangerous temptation toward controlling others rather than reforming oneself? If we return to what Jesus actually asked us to do and to be—rather than the unknowable intricacies of what we believe he was—he actually emerges more powerfully and more purely.

In an election year it’s good to be reminded that we are citizens of heaven before proponents of a particular ideology.  We make a mistake if we think a savior will come out of our bitter party spirit electioneering rather than from the midst of a community indwelt with the Spirit of Jesus.

In Sullivan, however, I hear the contemporary pitfall of an isolated, privatized faith.  If “reforming oneself” leads to a deeper sense of personal satisfaction and contentment, and it ends there, the church remains the kept pet of a secularized, pluralistic culture.  I fear Sullivan falls into the individualistic trap that so pervades the West. 

While he is right in recognizing that the delusion of political power has captured the heart of many in the church, he misses the mark in suggesting that the central point is “reforming oneself.”  The tough thing to think through is the public, communal application of what Paul describes as our aim, which is, “love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”  (1 Timothy 1:5)  That public application, especially in America, will always have a political expression, although hopefully not the dominant expression.  To suggest otherwise is to relegate faith to a “behind closed doors” privatization, leaving the public sphere vulnerable to real confusion, if not evil.

Still, Sullivan’s rightly recognizes that the call to discipleship first begins in our own souls as we seek to become the people Jesus died to transform us into.  From our souls the transforming power must move through Christian community to impact the world around us, or it is mere spiritual titillation. 

Kyle
 

The American media still gives attention to Jesus during Holy Week.  In Newsweek Andrew Sullivan wrote the cover article, “Forget the Church-- Follow Jesus.” The headline alone captures a broadly held, and perhaps spreading, view.

He identifies “Christianity in Crisis” and reflects upon it with the help of Thomas Jefferson and Frances of Assis.  For my money, Jefferson in his 18^th century dissection of Scripture is not at all helpful.  Frances, however, continues to challenge a culture in the grip on Mammon.

Sullivan touches upon some transcendent realities.  The central questions continue to haunt our hearts:

The thirst for God is still there. How could it not be, when the profoundest human questions—Why does the universe exist rather than nothing? How did humanity come to be on this remote blue speck of a planet? What happens to us after death?—remain as pressing and mysterious as they’ve always been?

Yep.  The God question simply refuses to go away.  We can know, without a doubt, that every soul we encounter wonders about these things.  If we will take the time to develop real friendship, we will be invited to go to that place in the heart where such questions are asked.  Are we taking the time with lost others?  How do we make the time?

Real conversation heard Friday morning, about 15 hours before the Mega Millions drawing:

“I’m going to win ½ billion dollars today.”

“Why don’t you make it a full billion?”

“I’m talking about the lottery tonight.”

“Yeh, but if you’re dreaming, you might as well dream big.”

“Somebody’s going to win it.  Might as well be me!”

We feed people 6 days a week out of our building.  Obviously they don’t have a lot of money and need every penny.  Why in the world do we allow our states to generate income out of the desperate hearts of America’s most vulnerable?

The Washington Post reported that folks had a greater chance of…

…being hit by lighting,

…being wiped out by an asteroid,

…getting a royal flush in a five card draw,

…having identical quadruplets,

…being killed by a bee sting, or

…dying in a plane crash.

Great wealth makes us independent…isolated…and lonely.  It’s a vanishing hope.  Lord, make us wise.

Kyle