Faith Works 2-6-21

Faith Works 2-6-21

Jeff Gill

Discussion, declaration, and discernment

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If you agree, as I said recently, that neither you nor I are God, then it's not a big leap to accepting that neither of us can know everything.

This is where the firehose of the internet becomes a challenge. You can be tempted (aha! theologically familiar ground) to think you can know much, even almost everything you need to know, if you take enough bites out of the apple of online information.

Looked at reasonably, let alone theologically, we know that's not true. In fact, many of us have had reason to look back at things once often said, including by ourselves, about how the main barrier to understanding and transformation was lack of information. "If only people knew more about others, different cultures, various ways of being, we would have a better and more loving world." Yeah, that experiment has been run, and having at least access to, and maybe even actually getting more information doesn't necessarily change behavior or attitudes or feelings. 

And that's really what I've been talking about here for the last few weeks. More information actually is creating room for confusion, even adding to tension and dissension. On a personal and practical level, I don't think less access is a good thing, so censorship or restrictions on free speech aren't where I'm going, but in truth I do believe we need to think and even pray about how we do consume content, how we choose what to read and view and take in. Or in the metaphor I keep coming back to, I don't want government or even, up to a certain point, my faith community, to tell me exactly what to eat, but I do think it's a part of healthy religious dialogue and teaching to be reminded that "we are what we eat."

Everyone generally acknowledges this with food: eat junk, especially too much junk or exclusively fast food, highly processed and additive-laden, and you will get poor outcomes in your physical health. "You are what you eat." Eat junk, feel junky.

How much more so, then, your media diet. "You are what you view." If you watch crud, your thinking and emotions and reactions are going to get cruddy. If you view lots of porn, your understanding of intimate relationships will become twisted and unrealistic and damaging for both you and those you love. If you absorb mass quantities of celebrity gossip, I think it's emotional and financial pornography of a sort: it messes up your understanding of what real life and relationships are like. And when it comes to political news . . .

These are perilous waters I'm proposing we paddle in. It's easier for me to talk about why you should avoid porn or gossip entirely for the health of your soul, and I hope that case is clear here as well. But civic affairs and electoral activities are something you really can't avoid 100%, nor do I want to make that case. Yet if I even hint I have the absolute solution for which channel or outlet to watch, I'm going to push the eject button for many of you still reading this far into my reflections on this terribly important subject.

Can I for this week say this much, as a former parish pastor and still an ordained Christian minister: in most churches I've served, if I had two solid hours a week of your ear, I was doing well. Sunday morning worship, maybe a Bible study midweek or evening prayer and devotions service. A newsletter could add to that impact, and now we have email and social media, but it's still in bits and chunks.

Two hours plus some change is the absolute most I could imagine having access to your ear and mind and heart. But what my predecessors in ministry couldn't imagine is a time where, on leaving the church building, many of the most devoted members would then go home and give another perspective an average of three to 23 hours (or more!) per week.

Look, I've always known some would leave church and go home and hear what Robert Schuller had to say. And would hear about how my message didn't quite measure up to his. Made my (relative) peace with that a long time ago. But I had an hour, and the Crystal Cathedral had an hour. Now, with 24 hour cable news, and online push notifications, Sean Hannity has at least five hours a week to my one; Rachel Maddow or Wolf Blitzer ditto. How does a preacher compete, just on the hour by hour basis? On a certain level, you just don't.

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's been thinking a great deal about media and ministry this past year. Tell him what you're thinking at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.