One issue that we talked about a week ago while I was in Chicago working on the Small Group Leaders' Handbook was the importance of community, particularly given the cultural shift from modernity to post-modernity.
So our culture clamors and longs for connection and relationships. But the problem is that because sin is at work in our world we also have self-defeating behaviors that undercut our ability to actually enter into community. There are several of these, the ones we talked most about were the addiction to convenience/a consumer's mindset to community and technology.
It is impossible to be a consumer of relationships and have those relationships actually develop the depth that we crave. Genuine community only takes place over a long period of time in a context of forgiveness and working through plenty of conflict and inconvenience. Real community is never convenient. As long as our own comfort and "safety" is our primary concern, we will never be in real community.
Secondly, technology; it can augment relationships but never replace them. If some of my students spent half the time in face-to-face conversations instead of updating their Facebook profile,they'd be much better off. Technology as a primary method of connecting doesn't work. It can round out or be a starting place but as a finish line it is a dead end. Technology apart from human contact is only further isolating.
The challenge with both of these issues is to get a hearing without sounding like an angry luddite. But maybe that's just the cost of speaking into culture
No comments:
Post a Comment