Did you see the confrontation between California Senator Barbara Boxer and Harry Alford, CEO, of the Black Chamber of Commerce? If not, watch the following video.
It doesn’t matter in which camp you reside, but apparently, according to Mr. Alford, Mrs. Boxer assumed that all blacks in America should do or think the same. In other words, she pigeonholed the gentleman, which offended him greatly. As a naturalized American citizen, I have experienced this type of misconception from both Christians and non-Christians.
Recently, an old student of mine who had read my blog wrote me saying, “Don’t tell me you believe in Rob Bell’s crap.” She was referring to the Author of “Velvet Elvis” who is an emergent church pastor. Although I own the book and had read parts of it, I had forgotten whom Rob Bell was. Later, when I remembered who he was, I realized why my student had made the comment. She was assuming that because some of my ideas were like those of Rob’s, I must be an emergent teacher forgetting that, because of my background, I have had those thoughts long before Rob wrote his book.
Right after 9/11, I began traveling all around the country and abroad with my American flag bandanna. At that time, for security reasons, the airlines started the policy of randomly checking three passengers’ carry-ons. The computer provided the names of the passengers. On one of my flights, proudly brandishing my bandanna, I sat next to a young white lady from San Diego.
As we began to talk, she said, “In the past week I have been to 5 different cities and in every city, when boarding the plane, my name has come up for inspection. I am so happy they are doing it that way.”
“Why?” I asked
“Well, for your sake!”
“What do you mean?”
“This way you and people from your background don’t feel like they are being singled out.”
Again, just because of the way I look, she assumed I might somehow be offended or annoyed if the airlines had decided to only go through the luggage of those who resembled the Arab terrorists. I think my reply shocked the heck out of her.
I said, “With all due respect madam, this is one of the most illogical statements I’ve ever heard. Why should the authorities go through your stuff, a white blond woman, while I, a Middle Easterner, can freely waltz onto the plane? For what? So my feelings might not get hurt? I wonder if you ask the men and women who lost their loved ones in that cowardly attack what they would have rather seen: 12 Arabs having their feelings hurt or their loved ones being slaughtered? After all, the men who slammed the planes into the Twin Towers were not a bunch of white men from Sweden.”
In my last blog I talked about Postmodernity, which, automatically, made one of my readers assume that I must believe in Process Theology. I wasn’t aware that there was such a connection between the two, but, apparently, the reader had a need to pigeonhole me. By the way, no, I don’t believe in Process Theology.
I’ll never forget the first time I met with a New York Times best-selling author of a book that is brilliant and yet not very complimentary toward evangelicals. This was our first meeting and she knew nothing about me. In the course of our conversation, I don’t know what I said, when, with a surprised look on her face, she exclaimed, “So, you’re a Republican?” She had assumed because I’m a minority who liked her book, I must be a liberal Democrat.
Please don’t assume since I’m a naturalized American citizen from Iran that I automatically desire all illegal aliens in the US to be given amnesty. I believe the same rule of law that applied to me must be applied to all. On the other hand, just because I have a great passion for Christian gay men and women who struggle with their sexual identities and their place in the Body of Christ, one should not pigeonhole me as gay man (my wife will convince you otherwise) or some misguided liberal Christian. Would you label Jesus a whore and a criminal because He had compassion for and spent time with all those hookers and thieves? I doubt it.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Modernity, Postmodernity, Metanarrative and the Prayer of Jay-booz
Recently, I started corresponding with a young man who has been reading my blogs. From reading his email, it is clear that he is bright, quite articulate and painfully honest. When I first asked Tom (not his real name) to tell me about himself, this is what he wrote:
I'm a 28-year old white man. My parents are pastors in a suburb of Seattle. They founded the church they currently pastor when I was two weeks old.
I attended a private Christian elementary and junior high (but a public high school), then marched straight to a Bible college, my dad's alma mater - it seemed like the logical "next step". I never seriously considered any other colleges.
It's an old, familiar story: fell in love, tried to have the perfect Christian wife and marriage...and was divorced 5 years later. I think that the breakdown of my marriage was just one, however significant, step down the road I've been on for years: if my faith, obedience, dedication and spirituality were not enough to keep my marriage together, what else could all the "Christian experts" have been withholding from me?
It was Tom’s last question that gripped my heart the most. A question that I never asked till I was well in my late 40’s, over 30 years after becoming a follower of Christ. A question that today Christians younger than my own children are asking me over and over again. How did we, evangelical Christians, come to the conclusion that our faith, obedience and spirituality should guarantee us of a life void of pain and failure? Of course, the preacher from the pulpit and the televangelist on TV are quick to point to the Bible. But I believe the answer lies in understanding the word metanarrative. However, to understand the phrase, one needs to understand two other phrases: modernity and postmodernity. I hope I don’t bore you to death!
Modernity
First introduced in 1627, this term describes the knowledge, power, and social practices which emerged in Europe around that time. Modernity was not associated solely with ‘newness’, but also with beliefs in rationality and ‘progress’, and came to be seen as a central attribute of Europe, which the rest of the world were expected (or compelled) to adopt. (Answer.com)
Postmodernity
Said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by Postmodernity and into the present. (Answer.com)
Metanarrative
A metanarrative can include any grand, all-encompassing story, classic text, or archetypal (original pattern or model) account of the historical record. They can also provide a framework upon which an individual's own experiences and thoughts may be ordered. These grand, all-encompassing stories are typically characterized by some form of 'transcendent and universal truth' in addition to an evolutionary tale of human existence (a story with a beginning, middle and an end).
According to Jean-François Lyotard, a defining condition of postmodernity is a widespread skepticism or "incredulity" toward metanarratives. (Wikipedia)
Examples of metanarratives
1. The Enlightenment theorists believed that rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.
2. Marxists believe that human existence is alienated from its species being, although capable of realizing its full potential through collective, democratic organization.
3. Freudian theory holds that human history is a narrative of the repression of libidinal desires.
4. An uncritical belief in the free market is a belief that through humanity's acquisition of wealth all who work hard and are afforded the right opportunities will succeed materially.
5. Categorical and definitive periodizations of history, such as the Fall of the Roman Empire, are rejected by postmodernism. Other periodization schemes include the Dark Ages and Renaissance.
Do we, Christians, have our own metanarratives, or as I like to put it, “one size fits all stories”? Do we insist that all the stories in the Bible are universal and if something was promised or worked for Abraham, Jabez or David should work for all Christians? Let me give you a couple of examples.
A year ago, two weeks after I had had my second operation in less than three months, a dear pastor friend of mine asked if I would fill in for a speaker who could not fulfill her commitments at his church. I readily accepted his offer for two reasons: friendship and needing to make some money. My friend’s church was about two hours west of where I live and because I was in too much pain, I asked another dear friend to drive us to the church.
The meeting went well and many people stayed afterwards to talk to me. As I was saying goodbye to my friend and his wife, because of the pain, I was leaning against the wall and kind of hunched over. It was then that he asked, “Why did you have a second operation after your cancer operation?”
“My cancer operation unmasked a hernia which needed to be taken care of.” “A hernia is nothing like cancer,” he replied.
“True, but the operation hurts more,” I answered.
And, that’s when he said something that completely threw me for a loop: “Joseph had many trials, but he never complained.”
According to my friend, since Joseph suffered much in his life and yet, never complained, I should have also acted accordingly and not reveled that I was in pain. If the Bible gives us that story, it is because God wants us all to behave as such—a biblical metanarrative. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded keeping my mouth shut and had never said anything about my pain, if my friend could have guaranteed the second part of that formula: Enduring the pain would eventually have made me the ruler of Egypt.
Do you remember Bruce Wilkinson, the author of the best selling book, The Prayer of Jabez, a 93-page, $10 tract published in 2000? The book, which sold over 22 million copies, is based on a passage in the book of Chronicles, in which a man named Jabez prays, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, and that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.” And the Lord granted his wish. According to Mr. Wilkinson, the lesson is that God wants believers to ask for blessings. Those who ask—by reciting Jabez’s 33-word prayer—unleash miracles. Those who don’t ask don’t receive. Squabbling couples should ask for happy marriages, he writes. Business executives should ask for more customers—another biblical “one size fits all”.
Having heard the voice of God, in 2002, Wilkinson, whose self-help prayer book had made him a rich man, moved to Africa and announced his intention to save one million children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.
However, in October 2005, Mr. Wilkinson resigned from the African charity he founded. He abandoned his plan to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, bible college, industrial park and Disney-esque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, came back to the US and went into an early retirement.
According to everything I have read, Bruce’s failure was mostly due to his lack of intercultural understanding and refusal to listen to the advise of the western aid-workers who had lived in Swaziland for many years. But, to me, his greatest mistake was to fall victim to his own myth. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Wilkinson says that he blames neither God nor man. He says he weeps when he thinks of his disappointed acolytes, and is trying to come to grips with a miracle that didn’t materialize despite his unceasing recitation of the Jabez prayer…”
To say that because God granted Jabez’s wish, He desires the same for everyone who prays the prayer, is as diluted and misguided as saying, “…rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.” To believe that is simplistic, naïve and denies the complexity and mysteriousness of the God we serve. But even more heart-wrenching is not realizing how much damage Christian metanarratives have done to the faith of Christians like my young friend, Tom, a man who was taught that his faith, obedience, dedication and spirituality should be enough to keep his marriage together. And, of course, the reason his marriage failed was because he wasn’t faithful, obedient or spiritual enough.
I'm a 28-year old white man. My parents are pastors in a suburb of Seattle. They founded the church they currently pastor when I was two weeks old.
I attended a private Christian elementary and junior high (but a public high school), then marched straight to a Bible college, my dad's alma mater - it seemed like the logical "next step". I never seriously considered any other colleges.
It's an old, familiar story: fell in love, tried to have the perfect Christian wife and marriage...and was divorced 5 years later. I think that the breakdown of my marriage was just one, however significant, step down the road I've been on for years: if my faith, obedience, dedication and spirituality were not enough to keep my marriage together, what else could all the "Christian experts" have been withholding from me?
It was Tom’s last question that gripped my heart the most. A question that I never asked till I was well in my late 40’s, over 30 years after becoming a follower of Christ. A question that today Christians younger than my own children are asking me over and over again. How did we, evangelical Christians, come to the conclusion that our faith, obedience and spirituality should guarantee us of a life void of pain and failure? Of course, the preacher from the pulpit and the televangelist on TV are quick to point to the Bible. But I believe the answer lies in understanding the word metanarrative. However, to understand the phrase, one needs to understand two other phrases: modernity and postmodernity. I hope I don’t bore you to death!
Modernity
First introduced in 1627, this term describes the knowledge, power, and social practices which emerged in Europe around that time. Modernity was not associated solely with ‘newness’, but also with beliefs in rationality and ‘progress’, and came to be seen as a central attribute of Europe, which the rest of the world were expected (or compelled) to adopt. (Answer.com)
Postmodernity
Said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by Postmodernity and into the present. (Answer.com)
Metanarrative
A metanarrative can include any grand, all-encompassing story, classic text, or archetypal (original pattern or model) account of the historical record. They can also provide a framework upon which an individual's own experiences and thoughts may be ordered. These grand, all-encompassing stories are typically characterized by some form of 'transcendent and universal truth' in addition to an evolutionary tale of human existence (a story with a beginning, middle and an end).
According to Jean-François Lyotard, a defining condition of postmodernity is a widespread skepticism or "incredulity" toward metanarratives. (Wikipedia)
Examples of metanarratives
1. The Enlightenment theorists believed that rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.
2. Marxists believe that human existence is alienated from its species being, although capable of realizing its full potential through collective, democratic organization.
3. Freudian theory holds that human history is a narrative of the repression of libidinal desires.
4. An uncritical belief in the free market is a belief that through humanity's acquisition of wealth all who work hard and are afforded the right opportunities will succeed materially.
5. Categorical and definitive periodizations of history, such as the Fall of the Roman Empire, are rejected by postmodernism. Other periodization schemes include the Dark Ages and Renaissance.
Do we, Christians, have our own metanarratives, or as I like to put it, “one size fits all stories”? Do we insist that all the stories in the Bible are universal and if something was promised or worked for Abraham, Jabez or David should work for all Christians? Let me give you a couple of examples.
A year ago, two weeks after I had had my second operation in less than three months, a dear pastor friend of mine asked if I would fill in for a speaker who could not fulfill her commitments at his church. I readily accepted his offer for two reasons: friendship and needing to make some money. My friend’s church was about two hours west of where I live and because I was in too much pain, I asked another dear friend to drive us to the church.
The meeting went well and many people stayed afterwards to talk to me. As I was saying goodbye to my friend and his wife, because of the pain, I was leaning against the wall and kind of hunched over. It was then that he asked, “Why did you have a second operation after your cancer operation?”
“My cancer operation unmasked a hernia which needed to be taken care of.” “A hernia is nothing like cancer,” he replied.
“True, but the operation hurts more,” I answered.
And, that’s when he said something that completely threw me for a loop: “Joseph had many trials, but he never complained.”
According to my friend, since Joseph suffered much in his life and yet, never complained, I should have also acted accordingly and not reveled that I was in pain. If the Bible gives us that story, it is because God wants us all to behave as such—a biblical metanarrative. Actually, I wouldn’t have minded keeping my mouth shut and had never said anything about my pain, if my friend could have guaranteed the second part of that formula: Enduring the pain would eventually have made me the ruler of Egypt.
Do you remember Bruce Wilkinson, the author of the best selling book, The Prayer of Jabez, a 93-page, $10 tract published in 2000? The book, which sold over 22 million copies, is based on a passage in the book of Chronicles, in which a man named Jabez prays, “Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, and that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.” And the Lord granted his wish. According to Mr. Wilkinson, the lesson is that God wants believers to ask for blessings. Those who ask—by reciting Jabez’s 33-word prayer—unleash miracles. Those who don’t ask don’t receive. Squabbling couples should ask for happy marriages, he writes. Business executives should ask for more customers—another biblical “one size fits all”.
Having heard the voice of God, in 2002, Wilkinson, whose self-help prayer book had made him a rich man, moved to Africa and announced his intention to save one million children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.
However, in October 2005, Mr. Wilkinson resigned from the African charity he founded. He abandoned his plan to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, bible college, industrial park and Disney-esque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland, came back to the US and went into an early retirement.
According to everything I have read, Bruce’s failure was mostly due to his lack of intercultural understanding and refusal to listen to the advise of the western aid-workers who had lived in Swaziland for many years. But, to me, his greatest mistake was to fall victim to his own myth. According to the Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Wilkinson says that he blames neither God nor man. He says he weeps when he thinks of his disappointed acolytes, and is trying to come to grips with a miracle that didn’t materialize despite his unceasing recitation of the Jabez prayer…”
To say that because God granted Jabez’s wish, He desires the same for everyone who prays the prayer, is as diluted and misguided as saying, “…rational thought, allied to scientific reasoning, would lead inevitably toward moral, social and ethical progress.” To believe that is simplistic, naïve and denies the complexity and mysteriousness of the God we serve. But even more heart-wrenching is not realizing how much damage Christian metanarratives have done to the faith of Christians like my young friend, Tom, a man who was taught that his faith, obedience, dedication and spirituality should be enough to keep his marriage together. And, of course, the reason his marriage failed was because he wasn’t faithful, obedient or spiritual enough.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
I Need A Friend
The year was 1971, which was probably the worst year of my life. I was in my second year of college and due to terrible grades, I was facing expulsion. My most soothing thought at the time was suicide. I couldn’t face being such a failure to my family who had made many sacrifices to send their oldest son and brother to the United States to become an engineer.
I lived on campus at the time. One day walking to the bookstore, deep in thoughts with my head down, I passed a student who was just coming out of the bookstore, whom I didn’t notice at first.
“How are you?” he asked
Not expecting any reaction, I said, “Not well!”
To my utter astonishment, he did something that I will never forget for the rest of my life.
He stopped dead in his track, turned around, caught up with me and looking straight into my eyes, he asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
I was surprised to see someone actually caring about how I was doing, especially someone I only knew by face (I wish I knew his name so I could look him up and thank him). Later, when I became a follower of Christ, I found out that he was also a believer and a part of an acting group called “His Players”.
I have never forgotten that simple act of kindness and have made a point of practicing that every chance I get.
Let’s fast forward to 1999 during my last year at Fuller Seminary. Once a year, the school had a “Muslim day of prayer” when students from what was then called, “School of World Mission” would gather together to pray for the Muslim world. I was asked to say a few words to encourage the students prior to Brother Andrew, who was the main speaker that day.
I started my talk by first thanking the students who had invited me and made a few comments about the great work that Bother Andrew’s ministry, The Open Door, was doing and then made the following statements:
I have been attending Fuller for the past 10 years —Yes, I am so smart that I managed to cram 2 years of graduate school into 10 years. The sidewalks on our campus are no more than 5 feet wide. I know! I’ve measured them! When you pass someone, your shoulders almost touch each other. However, there has hardly ever been a day when anyone of you passing me has squarely looked me in the eyes and greeted me. How can you care and pray for my Muslim mother whom you have never seen when you don’t even bother to greet her son whom you can see?
Needless to say, I was never invited back.
I wish I could say that young students at Fuller were the only group of Christians who acted this way. Years ago, attending a Christian convention in Atlanta, I walked up to a group of men on the street and said:
“Gentlemen, you must all be pastors.”
“How did you know?” one of them asked.
“Because I noticed you all kept to yourselves and never acknowledged a passerby with a simple greeting or a smile.”
Yes, I know I am harsh, but I believe, sometimes, that’s what it takes to wake the Christians up to the reality that, according to Jesus, the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself and that that act of love can start with a simple smile followed by the heartfelt question, “How are you?”
I offer this to all passersby every morning as I sit at the base of the foothills across the street from our house while playing with Cocoa, my dog, knowing that my sincere smile and question can change the life of someone who might be thinking of killing themselves that day.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
I Went to a Hybrid Open-Source Conference!
I love jazz. No, not because it doesn’t resolve (Blue Like Jazz fans know what I’m talking about) but because, to me, it’s the quintessential iconic example of how the church is supposed to function.
The next time you go to a Jazz concert, pay close attention to the way the musicians interact with each other. It is usually clear who the leader is, but he/she doesn’t hog the show. A tune is played and repeated over and over, so that each musician has a chance to present his or her interpretation of melody. The result is many different angles on the same basic idea, because that basic idea means very different things to each musician. The end result is a combination of the experience and personalities of each artist, and the communication between them. For me, this is what Paul’s talking about when he says:
"He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." Ephesians 4:10-12
To be a follower of Christ is like being in a jazz band. We all have a part—an instrument, if you will—to play and we should all be allowed to participate by playing our solo parts. It should not be only by “the few, the proud: the pastors” who play every instrument from the pulpit on Sundays.
But what does jazz have to do with a hybrid open-source conference? Well, let me start from the beginning. A dear friend, Charles Lee, was the brain behind this combination of a conference/unconference gathering called the Idea Camp, which from the start had taken a different approach to doing a conference. Charles used every paperless means of communication from word of mouth and conventional landlines to cell phones, email, texting, blogging, Facebook and Twitter (I’m sure I’m missing a few more means) to promote the conference, and boy, was he successful. If I remember correctly, about 500 people attended this two-day conference and over 1200 watched it on their computers via live streaming and it was all for free.
The goal of each workshop in this gathering was to allow for more conversation rather than another classroom approach to a conference. All the speakers like myself acted as facilitators and not talking-heads. We all had 10 minutes to talk about who we were, introduce the class to some challenges facing the church today, and then let the class respond to those challenges for about 45 minutes. If you’ve ever heard me teach, you know this is my style and my cup of tea when it comes to challenging a room full of young and old believers—asking questions and letting everyone play his/her instrument.
With this being my first time involved in such a gathering, I came away with mixed feelings. As I said, I loved the way every modern means of communication was used to promote the conference. It was truly a “green” conference. Even the conference schedule was emailed to everyone’s cell phones and laptops so it didn’t have to be printed on paper, of course, except for the very few that were posted on bulletin boards. But after experiencing this magnificent way of communication, I came away wondering if, with all our latest tools in communication, we’re developing better relationships?
I noticed throughout the various “question and answer” sessions that many people were busy reading and answering email off their laptops, web-surfing, text messaging or twittering—something that I had to learn before attending the conference. I even saw one guy watching the event that was taking place right in front of him on his laptop. Even worse, there were people who would do that as they were trying to have a face-to-face conversation with one another. By the way, no one did that to me—I guess they knew better— but I heard several of my friends complain about it.
I find this type of behavior to be quite dishonoring and self-absorbed. If it is more important to answer an email that can wait till you are out of the conference or retweet a #tweet to another friend who is sitting only a chair away from you because it’s so cool that it can’t wait till the meeting is over, then maybe you should step outside to do your emailing, surfing and retweeting instead of so blatantly ignoring and disrespecting those around you who are trying to tackle the challenges facing them. And please know that I’m not questioning anyone’s ability to multitask.
Today, many of you have several hundred friends on your Facebook and just as many followers on Twitter. I wonder how many of these friends will show up to help you when your car breaks down on the 405 freeway in the middle of rush-hour traffic. Just like our theology, have our relationships become millions of miles wide and a tenth of an inch deep? You know…Shallow? You tell me.
The next time you go to a Jazz concert, pay close attention to the way the musicians interact with each other. It is usually clear who the leader is, but he/she doesn’t hog the show. A tune is played and repeated over and over, so that each musician has a chance to present his or her interpretation of melody. The result is many different angles on the same basic idea, because that basic idea means very different things to each musician. The end result is a combination of the experience and personalities of each artist, and the communication between them. For me, this is what Paul’s talking about when he says:
"He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe. It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God's people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." Ephesians 4:10-12
To be a follower of Christ is like being in a jazz band. We all have a part—an instrument, if you will—to play and we should all be allowed to participate by playing our solo parts. It should not be only by “the few, the proud: the pastors” who play every instrument from the pulpit on Sundays.
But what does jazz have to do with a hybrid open-source conference? Well, let me start from the beginning. A dear friend, Charles Lee, was the brain behind this combination of a conference/unconference gathering called the Idea Camp, which from the start had taken a different approach to doing a conference. Charles used every paperless means of communication from word of mouth and conventional landlines to cell phones, email, texting, blogging, Facebook and Twitter (I’m sure I’m missing a few more means) to promote the conference, and boy, was he successful. If I remember correctly, about 500 people attended this two-day conference and over 1200 watched it on their computers via live streaming and it was all for free.
The goal of each workshop in this gathering was to allow for more conversation rather than another classroom approach to a conference. All the speakers like myself acted as facilitators and not talking-heads. We all had 10 minutes to talk about who we were, introduce the class to some challenges facing the church today, and then let the class respond to those challenges for about 45 minutes. If you’ve ever heard me teach, you know this is my style and my cup of tea when it comes to challenging a room full of young and old believers—asking questions and letting everyone play his/her instrument.
With this being my first time involved in such a gathering, I came away with mixed feelings. As I said, I loved the way every modern means of communication was used to promote the conference. It was truly a “green” conference. Even the conference schedule was emailed to everyone’s cell phones and laptops so it didn’t have to be printed on paper, of course, except for the very few that were posted on bulletin boards. But after experiencing this magnificent way of communication, I came away wondering if, with all our latest tools in communication, we’re developing better relationships?
I noticed throughout the various “question and answer” sessions that many people were busy reading and answering email off their laptops, web-surfing, text messaging or twittering—something that I had to learn before attending the conference. I even saw one guy watching the event that was taking place right in front of him on his laptop. Even worse, there were people who would do that as they were trying to have a face-to-face conversation with one another. By the way, no one did that to me—I guess they knew better— but I heard several of my friends complain about it.
I find this type of behavior to be quite dishonoring and self-absorbed. If it is more important to answer an email that can wait till you are out of the conference or retweet a #tweet to another friend who is sitting only a chair away from you because it’s so cool that it can’t wait till the meeting is over, then maybe you should step outside to do your emailing, surfing and retweeting instead of so blatantly ignoring and disrespecting those around you who are trying to tackle the challenges facing them. And please know that I’m not questioning anyone’s ability to multitask.
Today, many of you have several hundred friends on your Facebook and just as many followers on Twitter. I wonder how many of these friends will show up to help you when your car breaks down on the 405 freeway in the middle of rush-hour traffic. Just like our theology, have our relationships become millions of miles wide and a tenth of an inch deep? You know…Shallow? You tell me.
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