We were discussing tonight what that looks like, what challenges it for us right now.  Certain things that I am dealing with sprang quickly to mind.  I got discouraged because I didn’t follow directions, and I checked in on business at home.  I found out there are some issues waiting for me when I get back, and it just took the wind out of my sails.

I began to think about what it means to walk with God.  I thought about how when you fail, it is you who fails.  Failures weigh me down because I fail a lot.  Failures to keep myself from sin, failures at work, failures in my home life.  They are everywhere.  And I can only blame myself.

Yet, when something goes right, as Christians we give God the glory.  It is not us who succeed, lest pride overtake us.  It is God, to His glory.  So we give all the credit away, in humility, but take all the blame upon ourselves.

This is a recipe for disaster.

But the message of this retreat is the truth of who we are in Jesus.  Because of His love for us, because of His sacrifice for us, because of His cleansing of us of our sins, we are wholly clean, and loved without end.  We are loved by God, and there is nothing we can do about it.

It is this miracle, this unconditional relationship that changes everything and makes the first two concepts irrelevant.  I can blame myself for all my failures, but to God, none of that matters.  I can fail at everything – absolutely everything in life, but I can rest in the love of God for me that doesn’t care about those things that I am letting devastate me.  I am perfect in the Father’s eyes because Jesus has made me white as snow.

This is a rich truth.  I am grateful to God for getting me here at this time.

In my first post, I talked about how it seems that we might have been getting it backwards.  In an effort to preserve perhaps the “holiness” of our churches, we have attempted to distance ourselves from people until they share our faith.  We don’t really want them with us until we know they are “saved” and then magically, they become perfect like us (snort, and if you actually believe that, I have a deal on some oceanfront property in Saskatchewan for you).  So it was fine to lead people to the Lord, but you didn’t really want to be around them until they were in the club.  It seems that this is being turned on its head now, with the new idea being welcoming people into your community, and as they get to see your faith lived out between you and the rest of the church (see John 13:35).  As they see, and begin to desire this love for themselves, they seek after the cause of this love (see 1 Peter 3:15).  This leads them to Christ, but in the context of community.

Some have even gone so far as to say it need not be normative that a person can point to a “moment in time” that they became saved.  In fact, many report this reality anyway – that they can’t recall a specific date where they came to believe, but they know they believe now – that they recognize their sin, they have repented of it before God and accepted Jesus’ death on the cross as having made them clean in the Father’s eyes – and brought them into the Family of God.

I think this view has a corollary – that we recognize that the process of discipleship – the process of becoming a fully committed follower of Jesus – is ongoing.  Everyone is somewhere on this continuum.  Some have surrendered more of their lives to Jesus’ lordship than others.  Some have not surrendered at all.  It is impossible for us as mere humans to know with certainty the state of anyone’s soul so we must keep our doors open as wide as possible that all may hear and take steps along their own personal continuum towards Jesus.

It occurs to me as a student of Church History that this reintroduces the problem that many people wrestled with in the past.  More than one Christian group was formed in an effort to be pure and holy (1 Peter 1:15-16) – the spotless bride of Christ (Eph. 5:27) that we are called to be.  What it appears I am advocating is a return to what was first advocated by Augustine – the idea of the church encompassing both the saved and the unsaved.  The difference is that I am not suggesting that the unsaved can in any way participate in the ordinances – they are for those with faith in Christ.  The challenge is, without omniscience, I can’t know for sure who is who so I am forced to rely on confession and admonition – advising people that these things (Baptism, the Lord’s Supper) are for believers so if you are not all there with respect to Jesus, His his sacrifice for you and His Lordship over you – then you need not participate.

Reaction?

Jon Acuff asks us what we think of Hallowe’en, and proposes one of three responses.  I have a fourth.

Hallowe’en looms like a black stain on the fall for many Christians.  It is a dark night, full of the connotations of paganism, spiritism, black magic and occultic practices.  In response, many churches have attempted to absent themselves from the holiday by creating “Harvest Festivals” or other activities where kids can approximate the Hallowe’en experience with “good” costumes, free candy, and fun games instead of the door-to-door “trick or treating” and scary decorations.

When our oldest was getting to the age where he might go trick-or-treating, we had to wrestle with this question a bit.  We wrestled even more when the church we belonged to had one of these “harvest fests”.  Now, as a family we have landed in a different place.  We have decided to participate in Hallowe’en.

Whoa!  There goes our prayer base!  No, please, hear my heart on this.  Hallowe’en is not the first pagan holiday that the Church has had to wrestle with.  I am sure you have seen at some point articles on the origins of Christmas and Easter.  I am sure you have at least heard of scholars who have attempted to figure out the “true” date of Christ’s birth and crucifixion, and while they may debate the exact dates, one thing they unanimously agree upon: Easter and Christmas are NOT them!  They are both pagan holidays that early Christians chose to sanctify, to bridge the gap between pagan culture and Christianity.  To them, it was not important the exact date of Christ’s birth, but it was important to celebrate it.  They took the holiday and its trappings (the Christmas Tree, the Yule Log, and so on) and reshaped the traditions to help tell the story of Christ.  Now, the world knows these dates as Christian holidays and give next to zero thought about their origins.  Christ is glorified throughout the world on these pagan holidays.

In distancing ourselves from Hallowe’en we are distancing ourselves from the very people we are trying to reach.  We are the “no fun” lights out houses on the street when everyone else is having fun.  We are the “stingy” Christians who won’t buy candy for kids.  Sure, we encourage non-Christian friends and neighbours to come to our “harvest fest” but really the appeal is small unless you happen to live in a city where the danger is greater due to crime or local practices.  In most communities, there simply isn’t a reason to absent ourselves.

What shocked me most when I began to think about this holiday, is it is unique.  It used to be Christmas was similar, in that people would go out caroling and sharing cider around fires.  The Christmas season used to be a much more community-oriented event.  Now, as consumerism has taken over much of the season, it is a time of stress and busyness, of catching planes to visit family (or get away from family and go to Disneyland or another warm destination) or driving frantically.  Hallowe’en however, is a day wrapped in the idea that everyone’s door is open, every neighbour smiles and chats, and parents of children stroll up and down their streets, watching their children have fun and striking up conversations with the people around them that they never see any other time of year.  The “my home is my castle” mentality is dismantled for a night.  Christians who desire to build relationships that can carry the message of Christ have a chance to get by the barriers of individualism and begin the process of building into people’s lives.  Why do we not see this as the greatest opportunity for evangelism that we will see for 364 days?

Having just declared an evangelism open season on Hallowe’en, I should add one more thing.   I do NOT see this as an opportunity to save children’s teeth and souls by replacing candy with Bible tracts.  My goodness, then instead of being known as the stick-in-the-muds who don’t celebrate Hallowe’en, we’d now be the people who ruin Hallowe’en for children!  No, what I mean is the greatest openness to the Gospel comes from relationship, and this night is the chance to start a whole slew of them.  Or improve on some.  Think about this: that atheist co-worker with kids you know: how likely would they be to come to an evangelistic Christmas play?  Not very.  How likely would they be to come to a Christian “Hallowe’en alternative”?  Even less.  How likely would they be to coming trick or treating with your family – just to hang out?  Then maybe plan to come back to your place to warm the kids up with some cocoa and relax?  Now that has appeal.

In reading Jon Acuff’s comment thread I happened across this anecdote of a truly brilliant, missional approach to Hallowe’en.  I dare you to try it out next year (or if you can get it together quick, tomorrow!)

What has become of salvation? The evangelical concept of salvation has been communicated so often to culture that it has become the butt of jokes: “have you started a personal relationship with Jesus Christ?” “Have you made him your personal Lord and saviour?” Keyword: personal.

Maybe this emphasis on making an individual decision is a by-product of the individualistic self-centred flavour that western society has indulged in for the past 100 years or so. Maybe it isn’t what Jesus had in mind.

I notice that in the writings of a lot of missional thinkers (Halter and Stetzer spring to mind first as they are two I have read most recently), they talk about a reversal of the standard process of evangelism. Instead of the person staying on the outside of the church family until they accept Christ, then they join “the family”, they come, they participate, they integrate, and as a result they come to faith.

It seems to me that this rings true but think about this: they are not coming to a personal faith, they are joining a communal faith. If it sound a little communisty to you, remember monasticism is a Christian tradition that is 1800 years old, and even in protestantism, the Hutterites have been around for 400 years.

Does Scripture back this up? I will look at a few verses next time, but please, if you think of some verses that shed light on the question for or against this view, please share in the comments.

Well, I was just reading through Isaiah and I came across this passage – Isaiah 11:2 -

The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and of power,
the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the LORD

That’s 1 – spirit of the LORD, 2 – of Wisdom, 3 – of understanding, 4 – counsel, 5 – power, 6 – knowledge, 7 – fear of the LORD.  Seven Spirits!

Revelation 1:5 mentions the seven spirits.  It reads: “Grace and peace to you from him who is, and who was, and who is to come, and from the seven spirits before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.”

It appears on its face to be describing the Trinity.  However, the seven spirits confuses, because theology tells us the Holy Spirit is a person, not a group in its own right.  Interestingly, the first person described is “him who is and was and is to come” – which seems to describe Jesus.  Then the seven spirits, then Jesus Christ named.

Looking back at Isaiah 11:2, we are dealing with a passage that in fact is foretelling and describing the coming of Jesus Christ – he on whom the seven spirits will rest.

Now let’s look at another passage from Revelation: chapter 3 verse 1.  ”To the angel of the church in Sardis write:These are the words of him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds; you have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead.”  We know from the context that the writer of these seven epistles is Jesus Christ himself.    So we have the John attesting that Jesus Christ holds the seven spirits of God.  That points to Jesus having fulfilled Isaiah 11:2.

The third Revelation passage dealing with seven spirits is Revelation 4:5: “From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.”  So now we have the seven spirits explained in the vision as the seven lamps.  The seven lamps of revelation are the seven spirits of God.  Helpful.

The last Revelation occurrence of the seven spirits is in Revelation 5:6: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.”

Hosanna

Anyway, here, Christ is clearly depicted as being in possession of the seven spirits – they are his eyes, sent out into all the earth.  This dovetails quite well with what John wrote about Jesus’ last speech to his disciples in John 16:9-11.  He declares when he goes he will send the counsellor, or the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit becomes God’s presence amongst His people and in the World, doing God’s work in men’s hearts, convicting them of “sin, righteousness and judgement”.

So, let’s go back to these seven spirits mentioned in Isaiah.  The first of the Spirit of the LORD (when it is capitalized, the underlying Hebrew indicates God’s proper name – YHWH).  The Holy Spirit is God, is I AM, is Lord in the same magnitude and being as the Father and the Son.  This is an important fact.

The second is wisdom.  I think about all these purposes or aspects in light of the purpose for which Jesus was sending the Holy Spirit: to convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgement.  Wisdom speaks to righteousness.  Psalm 37:30 and Proverb 10:31 both speak of the connection between wisdom and righteousness.

The third is understanding, which is often synonymous with wisdom.  In fact you can find 32 instances in the NIV of wisdom and understanding paired in the same verse.

The fourth is counsel.  Seeing as how Jesus called the Holy Spirit “the counsellor” it’s a safe bet that this is important.  A guide, one who directs your paths – when I am convicted of sin, I am guided away from sin.  When I am convicted of righteousness I am led to good things.

The fifth is power.  This is an interesting one.  The Holy Spirit is powerful – that is a thought that doesn’t get talked about a lot.  Yet, the Holy Spirit is very powerful.  When I think about His job as restrainer – holding back the great evil that will be unleashed in the Tribulation, I have to be in awe of the power that He wields that the world is completely oblivious to – despite the ample evidence of it.  I mean, in the last 100 years we have been privy to days of immense and disgusting evil – I think of the Holocaust, I think of the Ukrainian Famines under Stalin, I think of the genocide of Rwanda.  Yet these are mere foretastes of what is to be unleashed in the end.  Why do we live in a peaceful nation, and can travel the world in relative safety, despite all the corruption and evil men out there?  It is only because evil is being restrained.  One day it will not be, and I really hope there is a rapture before that storm hits.

The sixth is knowledge – awareness, information.  The Holy Spirit often brings us an awareness or information that we might otherwise not have.  It is a skill that few these days have cultivated – that of listening for the Holy Spirit to impart knowledge.  I must say that I have not cultivated it enough.  I can think of several instances where the Holy Spirit has given me knowledge, but you’d think I’d be listening harder.  Sadly, that’s my sin nature at work still…

The seventh is the spirit of the Fear of the Lord.  This fits right in with the Holy Spirit’s work of convicting of sin.  Being made aware of our sin is part and parcel of recognizing that there is an authority higher than ourselves, and recognizing our rebellion against it.  This is huge.  This is something that I confess I harden my heart against.  I don’t like to fear the Lord.  Sometimes I like my sin too much.  Sometimes I lean far too heavily on the forbearance, the mercy of God.

So there’s a quick run down on the Holy Spirit and the “seven spirits” of Revelation.  It meshes pretty clearly for me now, since discovering the Isaiah 11:2 passage.  John loved to work with Old Testament concepts in his vision of the Revelation of Jesus Christ in the end of days.  A wise scholar I once heard said you won’t understand Revelation until you study the Old Testament deeply.   I encourage you to do that.

In this particular chapter of David’s life, he decides to number Israel. He wants to hold a census. His own advisors know this is wrong, but he goes ahead anyway. This doesn’t sound like a horrible thing to do, but at the time God had been very clear that he would make Israel prosper and be their strength. He had proven to his chosen people over and over again that God could be trusted to make them prosper. David’s census was a demonstration that he didn’t trust God in that moment. He needed to know how strong Israel was himself instead of trusting in God’s strength.

You can find this story in 1 Chronicles 21. What I found most beautiful about this story was the ending – God sends punishment for David’s sin. David is already in mourning over having done wrong, and he has an encounter with the angel from God who is carrying out the punishment. He throws himself at the angel’s feet and asks what can he do to take away the punishment on Israel for his own sin. Then God uses this moment to plant in David the dream of building a glorious temple for God.

David’s heart is full of repentance, and God forgives him. God in His forgiveness grants him a vision of doing a great thing – building a permanent home for Israel to worship God in. This home would be for all time – though it has been thrown down several times, God has promised it will be rebuilt. We look forward to that day.

Forgiveness is likewise promised by God. God will always forgive when we are truly sorry. So many people get wrapped up in God’s justice and get angry at God for not forgiving. Or they get wrapped up in self-pity and refuse to face God again. But God is waiting, waiting to forgive. He takes delight in us turning to him with soft hearts, willing to listen and change when we have done wrong. It is then that he can take us in his arms and comfort us, and sometimes he will even give us gifts like the one he gave to David – a dream of doing something great for God. Let’s soften our hearts today. Let’s not stay wrapped up in our anger or our hurt. Let’s go to God today and experience his love. Let’s pray.

Preached at Community of Hope Church on May 2.

Short summary: The way people think is shifting from postmoderism to pseudomodernism.  This shift is impacting our lives as we adapt to technology uncritically and fail to measure our thinking by the Bible.

Do you watch the news on TV much?  Have you read the newspapers?  What kind of news are they filled with?  Bad news.  For some reason they love reporting bad news.  Bad news upsets people.  It makes us feel worried, scared, sometimes even a little helpless.

It discourages me, sometimes, thinking about all the bad news in the world.  In Jesus’ life, there was some bad news coming.  Bad news from our perspective as a person.  Bad news from Jesus’ friends’ perspective.  I remember near the end of Jesus’ ministry, he had dinner with his friends.  At the end of the dinner, he wanted to give his friends some important instructions.  He knew what was coming.  He knew that he was going to face horrible treatment, insults, anger, and finally death.  He also knew why he was going to do it – for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross.  He was so excited about making a way for everyone to be with him in heaven forever.  But he knew it was going to be hard for his friends, because they didn’t understand yet.

So he said to them, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” This is in John 13:34-35.

Why did he say that?  Why was that the most important thing to him?  I think he said that for a number of reasons.  There are reasons for himself.  He wanted the whole world to know about his love and his sacrifice, so that they could love him and be with him.  He knew this truth would be judged by the messengers that carried it.  If his friends did not love as he loved, if they did not care as he cared, then nobody would believe them.  And that’s a very good reason.  “By this all men will know you are my disciples…”

But I think a big part of it is that he knew what his friends would need.  When we lose someone precious to us, we need to be loved.  We need to feel the care of our friends, our family.  So he told them to love one another.   Love makes us feel valued.  Love makes us happy.  Love brings us joy.  Love covers up, as the Bible says, a multitude of sins.  Love gives us hope.  Love cushions our sadness.   We must love one another.  We love because he first loved us.

One reason I love coming to this place is that I feel that love from you guys.  Your smiles, your gladness, they bring happiness to me.  Another reason I love coming here is because of the people who work here.  It is so nice to see people working here because they love you.  It’s a job that can become hard at times I am sure, but they love and care about you and that makes their work very special.  I don’t think many people in this world are lucky enough to have  a job where they get to give their love away as they work.

So today, take the time to look around you.  Take the time to soak in the love that people have for you.  And I want to encourage you, to give some of your love away.   A kid’s song I learned long ago, says, “Love is something that when you give it away, you’ll end up having more.”  Let’s give it away, and see how much more appears.

Devo – Ephesians 3:20-21

God is doing something.  Today God is doing something.  Did you know that?  He is up to something even right now.  So often we think that because we had a bad day or maybe something went wrong, or maybe we’re even just a little grumpy we think that God is not there.  I don’t know where or why this happens, but I think it’s a part of our humanness, maybe even that sinful side of me that wants to make myself the center of the world.

It’s like you’re walking through a forest, down a path with thorns and bushes on every side.  The path is very narrow, but you can walk it if you are alone.  All alone you walk down the path and sometimes the thorns grab at your coats and hook on your shoes.  And you get mad at God for not being there with you, not walking beside you.  He’s God: why isn’t he right here with me?  Why isn’t this path wider?  Why do I feel all alone?

But then you look up ahead, and around the next corner, you see a camp.  The fire is already lit, the tent is already pitched.  The coffee is warming on a rock by the fire.  There is a stump, next to the fire, cut just to our height to sit upon and rest our feet.  And Jesus is waiting there for you to sit down.

Of course, you’re footsore and grouchy, and you’ve got a ripped jacket.  Your shoes are almost worn through.  You sit down, and begin to complain.  “Why God?  Why weren’t you with me on the path?  Why weren’t you protecting me?”

Then God says, “Do you see your path for tomorrow?”

“No,” you answer.

“That’s because every step you took deeper into the woods, I was at work.  I was building that path ahead of you.  There was no path until I went before you.   But I made it, because I knew where you were going, and I knew about this camp.  I made sure you got here.  I was at work for you.”

And then, you realize the truth of Proverbs 3:5-6.  I talked about it once before.

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart

and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,

and he will make your paths straight.”

And as you remember once again that truth, Jesus gets up and walks over to you.  You see the thorns and bushes that He has been uprooting for you have put holes in his hands and worn holes in his shoes.  You see the scratches of thorns across his head.  You say, “I am sorry.”  And your head hangs in shame for what you thought.

He takes off your ripped coat.  He removes your worn out shoes.  He washes your feet and gives you a new, clean, white coat.  And he says, “See you in the morning.  Follow my path that I prepare for you.”

I imagine that story, and I remember that I cannot imagine all that he has done for me to make my paths straight.  You know Proverbs 3 now, think about what Ephesians 3:20-21 says:

“Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.”

I struggle with “freaky coincidence”, though that may be all it is.  But two wildly different instruments playing the same tune bears closer look.

Before we go on, I must warn you: if you haven’t been to Cracked.com before, the language they use is… colourful.  So if you’re easily offended by that kind of thing you may not want to venture there.  However, the article I read there is called “7 Reasons the 21st Century is Making You Miserable“.  In this piece the writers make a number of very good points about the effects of the way newsmedia operates, the way social networking affects us, and the end result of completely reshaping the way we interact (or don’t interact) with people.  To spoil the article for you, the 7 reasons are:

1.  We don’t have enough annoying strangers in our lives

Money quote:

“Get stuck in the waiting room at the doctor? No way we’re striking up a conversation with the smelly old man in the next seat. We’ll plug the iPod into our ears and have a text conversation with a friend or play our DS. Filter that annoyance right out of our world….As long as you have needs, you’ll have to deal with people you can’t stand from time to time. We’re losing that skill, the one that lets us deal with strangers and tolerate their shrill voices and clunky senses of humor and body odor and squeaky shoes.”

2.  We don’t have enough annoying friends either

Money quote:

“Fifty years ago, you had to sit in a crowded room to see a movie. You didn’t get to choose; you either did that or you missed the movie… Yet, on the whole, people back then were apparently happier in their jobs and more satisfied with their lives. And get this: They had more friends…. It turns out, apparently, that after you get over that first irritation, after you shed your shell of “they listen to different music because they wouldn’t understand mine” superiority, there’s a sort of comfort in needing other people and being needed on a level beyond common interests.”

3.  Texting is a (not good adjective comparing texting to fecal matter) way to communicate

Money quote:

“So did we really need a study to tell us that more than 40 percent of what you say in an e-mail is misunderstood? Well, they did one anyway.

How many of your friends have you only spoken with online? If 40 percent of your personality has gotten lost in the text transition, do these people even really know you?”

4.  Online company only makes us lonelier

“When someone speaks to you face-to-face, what percentage of the meaning is actually in the words, as opposed to the body language and tone of voice? Take a guess.

It’s 7 percent. The other 93 percent is nonverbal, according to studies… That’s the crux of the problem. That human ability to absorb the moods of others through that kind of subconscious osmosis is crucial. Kids born without it are considered mentally handicapped…. And worse, if I do enough of my communicating this way, my mood never changes. After all, people keep saying nasty things to me! Of course I’m depressed! It’s me against the world!”

5.  We don’t get criticized enough

“I’ve been insulted lots, but I’ve been criticized very little. And don’t ever confuse the two. An insult is just someone who hates you making a noise to indicate their hatred. A barking dog. Criticism is someone trying to help you, by telling you something about yourself that you were a little too comfortable not knowing… E-mail and texting are awesome tools for avoiding that level of honesty. With text, you can respond when you feel like it. You can measure your words. You can pick and choose which questions to answer. The person on the other end can’t see your face, can’t see you get nervous, can’t detect when you’re lying… Gone are the common quirks, humiliations and vulnerabilities that real friendships are built on.”

6.  We’re victims of the outrage machine

“But how did we wind up with a more negative view of the world than our parents? Or grandparents? Back then, people didn’t live as long and babies died more often… Every site is in a dogfight for traffic (even if they don’t run ads, they still measure their success by the size of their audience) and so they carefully pick through the wires for the most inflammatory story possible… There effectively is no “mass media” any more… When we can’t even agree on the basic facts, the differences become irreconcilable.”

7.  We feel worthless, mostly because we are worth less

“There’s one advantage to having mostly online friends, and it’s one that nobody ever talks about:

They demand less from you… The problem is you are hard-wired by evolution to need to do things for people. Everybody for the last five thousand years seemed to realize this and then we suddenly forgot it in the last few decades. We get suicidal teens and scramble to teach them self-esteem. Well, unfortunately, self-esteem and the ability to like yourself only come after you’ve done something that makes you likable.”

I got into a conversation with my good friend Adam about the death of postmodernism.  Postmodernism is a description of the zeitgeist – the spirit of our society.  It means (and this nutshell is so small you really need to read something else to get it properly) that people view everything as relative, there is no objective truth.  This has far-reaching ramification effecting how we live our lives.  It has been troubling to a lot of people because when you’re in the truth business, and the person you’re trying to show the truth doesn’t even think that truth exists, you’ve got a tricky conversation to navigate.

What Alan Kirby contends, (the aforementioned Harvard professor) is that this idea, while still prevalent, is dying, being replaced by what he calls pseudomodernism.

“But somewhere in the late 1990s or early 2000s, the emergence of new technologies re-structured, violently and forever, the nature of the author, the reader and the text, and the relationships between them…

Its successor, which I will call pseudo-modernism, makes the individual’s action the necessary condition of the cultural product… Big Brother… would not exist materially if nobody phoned up to vote its contestants off. Voting is thus part of the material textuality of the programme – the telephoning viewers write the programme themselves…

The cultural products of pseudo-modernism are also exceptionally banal, as I’ve hinted…  Much text messaging and emailing is vapid in comparison with what people of all educational levels used to put into letters. A triteness, a shallowness dominates all…

This technologised cluelessness is utterly contemporary: the pseudo-modernist communicates constantly with the other side of the planet, yet needs to be told to eat vegetables to be healthy, a fact self-evident in the Bronze Age. He or she can direct the course of national television programmes, but does not know how to make him or herself something to eat – a characteristic fusion of the childish and the advanced, the powerful and the helpless…

This pseudo-modern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile playing with toys which also characterises the pseudo-modern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state, radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony, is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your activity. In place of the neurosis of modernism and the narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere of silent autism. You click, you punch the keys, you are ‘involved’, engulfed, deciding.”

I shouldn’t have tried to summarize.  Read the whole thing yourself, at least twice.  The first time I didn’t really grasp it.  The second time through it sank in.  Pseudomodernism points out the transition to a fake reality.  A reality where you think you are involved in life, relationships, but you really aren’t.  Both articles touch on how fear and polarization are affecting us, and the end result is an isolation, a withdrawal from the life that humanity has lived for eons into a safe bubble where nobody can hurt you because we have thousands of miles of fiber-optic lines between us.

What is my point?  Both the lowbrow and the highbrow are seeing the writing on the wall.  We are deconstructing culture as we speak and moving into a space where we are more consumer-driven, not individualized but isolated, compartmentalized, and cut off from what used to be known as life.  The horrors that are beginning to play out in our young people need to be changed and the only remedy is recognizing where we are going as a culture and making voluntary choices to step back.

We need people.  We cannot afford to let the zeitgiest tell us how to live.  The Bible, the heilegegeist (hope that’s accurate German) speaks to life as it should be lived.  In relationship.  Loving others deliberately in obedience to God drags us off Facebook, off our phones.  We must look at our technology and recognize where we have allowed it to take us places that are destructive.  We must guard against viewing them as anything other than tools.  Facebook is necessary to communicate with but when we think that wishing someone “Happy Birthday” on their wall in any way involves us in their lives we are dead-wrong.  Throwing them a real birthday party, and taking the time to actually travel to where they are, that is what it means to be in authentic relationship.  Seeing them smile when they receive a gift, not just sending them an e-card.  If we want to know why we are so depressed, maybe it is because in our use of convenience we never get to see that smile, receive that hug.

Being in the presence of people.  We must make this our intention and begin the fight against the use of technology which insidiously isolates us, both physically and emotionally.