Plugged In, But Disconnected

Sunday was our Rally Day, and our Ministry Fair, and our Annual Church Picnic… all rolled into one glorious day. With near perfect weather, we celebrated our ministry efforts and opportunities, provided a sumptuous picnic lunch, played games, raffled prizes, shared in awesome fellowship, and consumed huge numbers of snow-cones (well… the kids sure did). The parking lots were full to overflowing, and so was the street parking around the church. We had many more people show up than we anticipated, but we didn’t run out of anything. That had less to do with any type of miracle, and more to do with some intelligent planning by all the hard-working folks that made the whole thing happen.

Before taking up my position of snow-cone wrangler, I was determined to try to photograph most of the event. Now, being the person I am, that also meant talking to almost everybody. Since I am the chief contributor to the ‘Alive in the Spirit’ blog, I am also the chief promoter of said blog, so… I would ask people if they had read the blog lately. The unanimous answer was: “No.” Now these are my brothers and sisters in a fellowship better know as ‘church’, so rather than just leave it at that, most seemed to need to offer some sort of reason as to why they hadn’t read the blog lately. There were some really creative excuses, but for the most part, one basic problem resonated among my friends: “I’d love to read the blog, but I can barely keep up with email and Facebook, as it is. I just haven’t got the time!”

I really enjoy the comic strip ‘Zits’ by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman, as they have their fingers on the pulse of the ‘plugged-in’ society in which we live. Most of us are constantly connected to our cell phone, and through them we are connected to text messaging, email, and the internet. We are plugged into our families, our friends, sports scores, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, Myspace, and Facebook. We can communicate instantly and we have access to much of the learning and information that is available in the world today.

Never in history have we ever been so plugged in.

Yet, never in history have we ever been so disconnected from each other!

So much information, so little time… and it’s getting worse. Just look at all the spam email you receive. I mean, really… various body part enhancements, drugs, debt consolidation, chain letters, hoaxes, and political mud slinging. Sadly, more than half of it comes from our friends. Sure, a funny YouTube video might really be hilarious, but after 10 of your friends send it to you, it is just a big time waster… having to delete what now amounts to spam from your mailbox.

Compared to text messaging, email is only a minor time-waster. So many parents have had to place their families on unlimited calling plans because their teenager had racked up hundreds of dollars in text messaging charges. And what’s so important that it needs to be messaged 24/7/365? From what I can tell, after exhaustive survey of teenage text users, it’s pretty much critical information like:

- i’m bored
- this class is so lame
- sk8ers 4evr
- ur a noob
- i’m hungry
- ; p

Twitter, Myspace, and Facebook are pretty much more of the same. I’d guess that 90% of what passes for communication and social networking is totally useless idle chatter. What isn’t vacuous content is coarse, crude, or rude. It should really come as no surprise: people text whatever happens to pop into their head. Should anyone attempt to castigate them, they act like you are infringing on a God-given right. Of course, since spelling, grammar, and vocabulary don’t matter to this plugged-in world, most are horrified that you would even think of castigating them. Though they might be erroneously thinking of a surgical procedure, threatening them with a rebuke is just as onerous. LOL!!! I’m not worried about any of them taking offense, because they stopped reading at 255 characters.

While being plugged-in is tremendously important these days, we seem to be disconnected in a big way.

Like Jeremy in the Zits comic strip, we can be so focused on being plugged-in that we completely disconnect with those around us… often in rude, thoughtless, and boorish ways.

Some of the most spectacular recent public examples of this disconnect have been impossible to ignore:

- Representative Joe Wilson shouting “You lie” during a speech by President Obama.

- Tennis star Serena Williams threatening, with expletives, to cram her tennis ball down a lineswoman’s throat at the U.S. Open (after Serena had earlier splintered a racket on the court in a rage, I think everyone was quite concerned for the lineswoman).

- Singer Kanye West grabbing the microphone from Taylor Swift and insisting that the award she was accepting should have gone to Beyonce.

No less spectacular, but far less newsworthy, are the daily disconnects we see in rude and volatile drivers, the disrespect children show to their parents and teachers, the disrespect we show each other when a call, text, or twitter is more important than a face-to-face conversation.

The irony of me writing this on a computer, formatting the pictures, posting to the blog, and knowing that it is forwarded to Facebook does not escape me.

On Sunday, I saw people connecting in a good way. During our picnic they queued up politely for food, brought drinks to people sitting near them, worked and shared and served together, played together, and encouraged their kids to be polite and nice (this sometimes reads: scolding). It was a fine summer day, a fun picnic, good friends, and stimulating conversation. People were pretty much unplugged for several hours, and they really seemed to be enjoying themselves. Our picnic accomplished what we can’t even do during our church services… it got people to turn off their phones! You can’t text and toss a water balloon at the same time… you can’t twitter and be in the 3-legged race, and you won’t be on the phone while they might be calling your winning number for the big raffle prize.

The more we plug into our social network sites and smart phones, the less we connect with God. God wants us to connect with His words… not ours. God wants us to make a difference in people’s lives… not see how many Facebook friends we can have. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t utilize technology; it’s a great tool! But we need to be able to put the tool down from time to time; otherwise it’s just another addiction… a replacement for God. God sent Jesus to redeem us from the sin that separates us from God. Jesus calls us to walk with Him in the light… don’t miss His call because you were too busy being plugged-in!

Your brother in Christ,

Dave