I was reminded yesterday that "90% of caring is just showing up", and for ministers (read: the priesthood of all believers), this is especially true. Being a witness to the love of God most certainly involves the very rare occurrence of leaving the laptop at home, the iphone in the purse (maybe even on silent...God forbid), and giving our whole attention to someone who just needs to talk, cry, rejoice, or die.
Our digital addiction is a distraction not only from our time spent with God's people, but from awareness of the problems of the world. How quickly we can forget that our neighbors (read: family down the street, or refugee family in Syria) make their beds in a shelter or an alley tonight when we enjoy our evening distractions and then sleep peacefully in our warm beds. Yes, this technology can connect us with others around the world, arouse our inner fire of justice, but it can equally distract us and keep firmly the wool over our eyes. Indeed, we often don't even need technology to distract us from the pain of others.
Yet here's a new article that might not only defend our (sometimes pathological) focus on our technology and concern for our neighbors, but get us out of the house too. Apple's new "eyeglasses." Yes, it's a new layer of technology, with its new realm of freedom and choices, and a new round of fear about driver safety and protection of personal information.
But what I see is that technology, as it moves toward more convenience, is actually doing the opposite of what it used to do. Before, it kept children at home with their games, rather than pushing them outside to play ball. It once kept parents tethered to a machine in an empty room, with distractions enough to fight off the inevitable existential battles of middle-age. It forced families into separate realms of existence that were only broken by family dinners and electrical outages, a separation only before successfully seen through the Victorian architecture philosophy of a separate room for each person or each task.
Now, technology wants you to go outside and play. It wants you to stay connected with your friends online so that you can visit with them in the real world. It wants you to have the freedom to enjoy its convenience while still functioning in a basic physical capacity. As I write this in my pajamas (it's a snow day- I see no reason to change) in the late afternoon, after spending all day working on a website, an email service, an e-newsletter, etc., I think about this battle between mental activity and physical presence often. Of course, pastors, professors, and many others battle the realm of the overactive mind and the underactive body in many other ways that have little to do with technology. Still, I see that as technology progresses, I'll have little excuse for sitting here in my pajamas like this in 10 years from now. I'll be out playing in the snow, or visiting the coffee shop (wait, why am I not there now?), while I inform the church that the Wednesday night activities are cancelled due to snow. Or maybe, we'll be having some of those activities online. But I hope we'd never move all our activities online- I like hugging people when I share the peace of Christ with them, and breaking bread physically together.
I'll still turn it off my Apple eyeglasses/implant/brain-reader when talking to people though. I hope that in 10 years, you can meet with a pastor and have her/his full attention, as we as a society build a respectful etiquette in relation to our devices and our fellow human beings. I hope that if I am one day dying in my bed while my family is sitting with me, they'd have the courtesy to turn off their football game while I cross over to the other side.
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