|
 |
|
|
|
Google your own name.
Seriously, put your name in the engine and see what comes up. I realize that it seems totally narcissistic and self-glorifying, but take a little ego trip and look yourself up. I wouldn’t doubt that many of you have already done this. However, don’t be surprised to find unknown links, references, and information about yourself on one of the most frequently utilized search engines available to every person with an internet connection. People know more about you than you think. Insert paranoia here.
Our world is modeled and engineered in such a way that no information is out of our reach, regardless of whether or not the information is true. We, meaning anyone who has done any communication over these cyber-surfaces are now part of the landscape. We are the “happy trees” dotting the technological highway. In one way, this is a positive thing especially for those seeking to communicate a God-ordered reality. We have more opportunities than ever to disseminate the Gospel reality, and should be integrating and encountering the journeys of others through this medium when possible.
There are negatives however: there is equal time for both “heretics” and “heroes” (determined by whatever categories the individual reader might take) and sometimes the bias of information, even in conveying the Gospel, comes through and over the Gospel itself. The other issue is one of chronology: communication on this medium is archived by date, but hardly ever considered by date. The acts committed years ago, given the whims of a search engine, can become the realities of present-day. There is nothing more detrimental to the idea of forgiveness than the resurgence of things long dead. Redemption on these streets is difficult to come by.
As individuals, we can become conditioned to believe that this is the way life really flows. Nothing of our past indiscretions, when entered into a public database, ever disappears. How do we address the concepts of forgiveness, reconciliation, and redemption in a context in which the broken act is never truly buried? How do we enter into a meaningful dialogue with people who have become increasingly individualized by the cyber-relationships they maintain and at the same time maintain a stringent “closet life” knowing that exposing it to the public medium of a blog or message board means to immortalize that brokenness—as long as it exists somewhere then it is still true.
The prophetic address to this culture is to break dependence on certain mediums of communication, of this there is no doubt. Part of the break is a practical and pragmatic indictment of our avoidance of community for the glow of solitude and selective communication. However, another part of the prophetic address is the need for Christian communities to fully embrace their role as a redemptive and reconciliatory community: to break people from the cycle of unending, archive-proliferated brokenness means offering a place of true hospitality where a “funeral” and “burial” of those long-standing mistakes can be obliterated.
We have done a thorough job, as Christian communities, of fully utilizing and prophetically critiquing the isolationism of media. Yet in the same turn we have offered nothing to replace the online communities and cultures that have begun to permeate the life and habits of people in all communities. I’m not one to advocate a return to a 1950’s pseudo-utopia, due to the fact that it is neither possible nor a fitting antidote for the present abuses of technology. We, as followers of Christ, must help people seek redemption in a world in which, for the most part, their failures and fallings can be immortalized and “Googled” at will. In an all-access world, redemption does not come through ignoring but confronting failures and dismissing them as a true community.
|
|
|
|
|
(4)
NO COMMENTS HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THIS ARTICLE