BLOG 11/26/16. NON-COMMUNICATION: FROM EDEN TO SMARTPHONES
It is interesting to contemplate some of the implications that we get from that primordial story of the rebellion of the first man and woman against God, their Creator. The seductive temptation was that if they did exactly what they wanted to do, no matter what God had provided them. … that they would be as ‘gods’ to themselves. Sounded good. They succumbed. But it didn’t turn out that way. Whereas in the innocence they had been in intimate communication with God, walked with him in the Garden of Eden, … suddenly they were afraid of God and sought to hide from him. But that’s not all. They also had existed previously in a blissful intimacy with each other and were not at all aware of their nakedness. But after their rebellion, they also sought to hide their nakedness from each other. It went downhill from there.
So, let’s take a look at the role of communication. Adam and Eve suddenly entered a whole new human experience of the fear of each other, of hiding from each other, … yet being forced to live in immediate proximity with each other, … but with the necessity of ‘hiding’ from each other. As the human story unfolds, it was when the human community sought to be somehow masters of their own destiny at Babel that their tongues were confused and they could not even communicate with each other. Communication, intimacy, truthfulness all became the victims of their estrangement from God and his original design for them to be formed into his likeness.
The human community became The Lonely Crowd, as the author David Riesman entitled his study a generation ago—we can live in a crowd and be lonely. Why? Because we are afraid to come out of hiding. One-on-one conversation has become a rare commodity for so many, even in the information age. We communicate only on the level of topics that are safe, i.e., the weather, sports, entertainment, politics (?), etc. But the willingness to have other intimates with whom we can share the more hidden realities, such as our doubts and fears, meaning of life, hopes and aspirations, become more and more rare.
This becomes so obvious in the era of Smartphones / iPhones. On the one hand is the positive blessing of having more information at our finger-tips than is available in the Library of Congress or the British Museum, … and at the same time these same instruments become places of hiding. One watches folk walking their dogs with their ear-buds in, and their eyes on the iPhone, and oblivious to others around them. Or one sees a family in a restaurant around the same table but all engaged in their iPhones and not with each other. Wholesome conversation becomes the victim of the information age.
I’m not one to condemn others. I don’t even own an iPhone, but I can still hide. Having been a public speaker for much of my career, I am a ‘talker’ and can hide behind my loquacious-ness. My late-wife was a classic listener, and was on to me. When I would get back from an appointment, or a lunch date with a friend, she would periodically ask: “Did you listen?” Her influence on others was incredible because she listened so well. She was not in hiding.
We, who are God’s people, will do well in this society of ‘hiders’ to learn to both come out of our own hiding, and to help others to come out of theirs. iPhones can become a great hindrance to this as folk seek to use them as hiding devices. When Jesus initiated his public ministry, there were several guys hanging around after he had spoken, and he asked a great question: “What are you seeking?” And when they sort of bumbled over that, they awkwardly responded: “Where are you staying?” That was the beginning of what would become the church. Jesus engaged those followers in a context of intimacy-discipleship, of being set free to know who they were and what they were seeking. It could be that one of the first steps in disciple-making and our Christian presence day by day, is to refuse to allow our smartphones, or apps, etc. to become places of hiding, … and to engage in redemptive conversation, to reclaim communication with our neighbors—and God?
