Faith and relevance in the 21st century

Category: Relationship (Page 3 of 3)

Everything is relational

Source: http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-06/22/content_8416951.htmOver the last year or so I’ve been realising how everything in life is related to our relationships, whether we realise it or not. All of our interactions are either constructive or destructive for our relating. That’s why life is so difficult. I thought of saying during a sermon once that life is easy until you have to relate to someone!

It is for this reason that doing our best to get our relationships to work is the most important thing we can do with our lives. Now, getting our relationships to work doesn’t necessarily mean they will be easier, but it does mean we will be more at peace. There is not much we can control in our relationships, but we can control the way we come across, with the help of God’s Spirit within us and with the help of others who love us enough to speak lovingly into our lives.

What we can’t control is how others relate to us. We can try to manipulate our relationships to get people to be nice to us or like us, but when we do this we will always know, deep down, a sense of distance from those people. That distance will be because we are actually trying to use them to make ourselves feel better. Whenever we are doing this we are not loving, and whenever we are not loving, we are not living as God intended and therefore not joyful.

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Simon Moyle’s thoughts on leaving Facebook

Facebook_heart_c-thumb-200x154-94395_180A typically well-thought-out and humble post by Simon Moyle on his reasons for quitting Facebook. Some of his thoughts are exactly those I have wrestled with at times over the years. Here are some of his thoughts that resonate with me:

  • When it begins to feel like a burden and is liberating to stop…that’s a pretty good indication right there that something’s been wrong.
  • What does it mean when the new ‘marginalised’ means those not on Facebook?
  • We have more information than ever but I wonder if we are more informed?
  • Do we give information enough time to do its inward formation work on us or is it just washing over us because of the sheer volume? Or do we listen only to that which reinforces our existing beliefs?
  • What are the lines between information sharing, boasting, and straight out propaganda? Where’s the line between “letting your light shine before others” and not “practising your piety before others in order to be seen by them”? I’m not sure I know anymore. Does anyone even care?
  • it’s the question of whose desires ‘run’ me…I’m glad my posts have been valued, but I don’t think I should allow others’ desires to run mine. There’s only one Other whose desires I want to run me, and if I spend more time listening to the louder voices instead of the still small one I’m going to have a hard time being ‘run’ by the latter.
  • [Getting off Facebook is] less “efficient” in terms of reaching fewer people in a smaller geographical area, but then efficiency is not a gospel concept.

I agree with most of Simon’s post, though I’m not sure I agree with all of it. That is something I will have to think through. Or perhaps it’s something I don’t want to face. What I am sure about though is that I definitely agree with his points that I have quoted above.

I have written a number of posts (here, here and here) about the impact of Facebook on human identity and relationships, and challenged by someone like Simon who doesn’t just write about it, but as usual, puts it into action.

Porn – the ultimate misconnection

Recently ex-porn producer Donny Pauling was in Melbourne talking about the reality of what goes on behind the scenes in the porn industry. Here are some of the frightening facts that he and others from an organisation called Guilty Pleasure presented:

  • People in the porn industry deliberately get themselves onto Christian email lists because Christians click through to porn ads faster than anyone else.
  • Playboy owns some of the most hardcore sites in the industry.
  • Psychology Today magazine in September had an article about teen boys who get hooked on porn. By the time they were in their twenties, 33% of them couldn’t get an erection.
  • If Christians alone stopped using porn, it would reduce the profits of the porn industry by 40%.
  • In anonymous surveys, 90% of Christian men, 70% of women and 50% of pastors admit to looking at porn in the last 30 days.

This and other information can be found in the video below:

[vimeo https://vimeo.com/33375303 ]

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More on the impact of digital culture on our relationships

iPhone distractionFurther to my previous post, Frank Viola had a guest post recently which talked about the illusory nature of online firendships and their impact on our ability to form relationships. The author of the post is Stephanie Bennett who has written a fair bit about this. Some of the points to come out of her piece are as follows:

  • “Today’s mobile media foster a multi-tasking lifestyle that easily leads to a mentality comfortable with fitting people into packed schedules that rarely leave enough room for meaning conversation or quality time together.”
  • “While our mobile media create a plethora of new opportunities that allow us to use language in many creative ways, they are also changing our perception and experience of the relationships we hold so dear.”
  • “As we become more accustomed to giving partial attention to people, we lose the important focus necessary to truly connect and commune with them.”
  • “Along with multi-tasking our relationships, several other unexpected challenges arise. As dependence upon our personal mobile media for friendship and fellowship becomes entrenched in everyday experience, one main challenge is in dealing with something we might call a hyper-knowing of others. This is that tendency to be much more open with those we don’t live with – sharing personal (and increasingly private) information about ourselves with those whom we have no primary responsibility or actual embodied experience. When this happens, people often feel they are closer to their distant online friends than they are to the people around them. The main problem here is that the online friendship is mostly illusional.”
  • “Words are magnificent gifts given by God to help human beings make meaning, but words are not sufficient without action to back them up.  Too easily, words alone mask our real needs and motivations. The thing is – masks must be removed for intimacy to grow and it is life together that has the greatest potential to reveal who we really are and all that we can be.  Fellowship is face-to-face settings has much greater worth to accomplish the work of the transformation of our souls.”

And perhaps the quote that says it all:

  • “These are no substitutes for truth and reality. Our Father thought human presence significant enough to send Jesus the Christ in the flesh. He could have sent a message in a bottle, but chose the incarnation instead.”

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How digital culture is rewiring our brains

Digital CultureThe Age had a great article today on the way our digital culture is actually changing our brains. There has been alot written about this in recent years. The Atlantic had an article back in May about the fact that social media like Facebook and Twitter is making us lonelier while at the same time we have never been more connected. Here are some very insightful quotes from the Age article:

  • ”There is a massive and unprecedented difference in how [digital natives’] brains are plastically engaged in life compared with those of average individuals from earlier generations and there is little question that the operational characteristics of the average modern brain substantially differ,”
  • “Eye contact is a pivotal and sophisticated component of human interaction, as is subconscious monitoring of body language and, most powerful of all, physical contact, yet none of these experiences is available on social networking sites. It follows that if a young brain with the evolutionary mandate to adapt to the environment is establishing relationships through the medium of a screen, the skills essential for empathy may not be acquired as naturally as in the past.”
  • “A recent study from Michigan University of 14,000 college students has reported a decline in empathy over the past 30 years, which was particularly marked over the past decade.”
  • “A survey of 136 reports using 381 independent tests, and conducted on more than 130,000 participants, concluded that video games led to significant increases in desensitisation, physiological arousal, aggression and a decrease in prosocial behaviour.”
  • “Can the internet improve cognitive skills and learning, as has been argued? The problem is that efficient information processing is not synonymous with knowledge or understanding. Even the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt, has said: ”I worry that the level of interrupt, the sort of overwhelming rapidity of information – and, especially, of stressful information – is, in fact, affecting cognition.”

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