Ten or Eleven Gentle Suggestions for Church Members

            Sundays at Lawrence Park Community Church (LPCC) are fun. People come early for a cup of coffee, and stay long after worship for another. Kids run up and down the halls. Worship services are marked by great music. On the whole, they’re also theologically challenging, and creative. We take Paul’s suggestion that we should rejoice always seriously, but know there is a place for lament too.

LPCC's Motto

            So this morning, I sat down and asked myself what are the personal qualities or practices members of LPCC bring to the table that help to positively shape the church—besides their unique beliefs and personal piety? I made a list of ten such practices and turned them into gentle suggestions. Take your pick. And remember, I’ve thought of these things because mostly, at LPCC, people do them!

ONE: Come early for coffee and stay late for coffee and refreshments. At root, churches are communities. Communities are healthy, in part, to the degree that people feel they really know each other and belong. So building personal relationships among church members is crucial. Besides coffee time, everything from meditation classes to Bible studies, from choir practices to committee meetings are also opportunities to build community. Sign up!

TWO: Besides staying for coffee, keep an eye out for strangers. Remember, the Old Testament tells us to love our neighbours only twice, but it tells us to love the stranger something like thirty-six times. Few things will attract new members so much as a warm welcome that stretches into their third, fourth and fifth visits. Remember that every time you look deeply into a stranger’s eyes, you’re looking at your own soul.

THREE: When you’re visiting with church members, and the conversation happens to touch on another church member, remember that we aim to build people up rather than tear them down. If there are serious issues involving other church members that need to be resolved, you should probably go talk to them rather than another member.

FOUR: Let the minister know about pastoral needs or other expectations. Ministers don’t read minds. We don’t know if you’ve had a troubling diagnosis, a spiritual concern, or something else you may want to discuss. Still, we’re always happy to sit down and talk. It’s one of the main things we decided to do with our lives. So call.

FIVE: Learn the names of as many kids as you can, and when you see them, say, “hi.” Make a game of it. See how well you can do. Church is a family. Kids need to feel a part of that. How will they feel a part of that if when they walk down the halls no one calls them by name?

SIX: Make at least one long-term volunteer commitment. I’m always amazed by how much needs to be done at church—from getting coffee ready to buying communion supplies, from singing to administering to attending youth retreats to collecting coats. The list is endless in both length and variety. So sign up for something, anything. Then, whether your commitment is a large one or small, make sure we can depend on it.

SEVEN: If you are on a committee that has serious responsibilities—the church council perhaps, or the Flower Guild, resign if you don’t have time. There are other opportunities that will work with your schedule, so why frustrate both yourself and fellow committee members?

EIGHT: Sing. I’ve been in churches where people mostly listen to the choir, and in churches that lift the roof up off the walls even for hymns they hardly know. Few things make church seem exactly like church than every voice joining in. I know that not all of us have the voice of angels (I certainly don’t). But it’s about letting what lives in your heart out through your lips. Church isn’t a reality show like American Idol. No one is judging you.

NINE: Contribute generously. Not only of your time, but your resources. Do it through PAR, or through automatic withdrawals from your account. Make sure the church is a beneficiary in your will. I still like the idea of tithing toward your charities as a guideline. If the poor Hebrews could do it, why can’t we rich Westerners? We have so much to be grateful for, we ought to figure out how to be grateful in concrete ways. Consider giving a third or a half of your tithe to your church, and the rest to other worthy causes. Of course, none of this applies to people who really can’t afford to tithe!

TEN: Tithe your complaints, too. There is another area where tithing is a great idea. Complaints. Your complaints about what is going on at church should never amount to more than a tithe of your compliments about what is going on in church. By the way, sharing thoughtful suggestions with the pastor or a council member about the preaching, or the music, or the finances of a church is not complaining. It is participating in the life of the church.

ELEVEN: Attend annual meetings. Even if you don’t have time to contribute as a volunteer, and even if you don’t have financial gifts to be generous with, participation at congregational events is crucial. Inform yourself about church priorities, congregational health, and the plans of the church’s leadership. Offer constructive input. Not only does this build a sense of shared responsibility and community, it will bring important viewpoints that might not otherwise have been considered into play.

            I’m sure I’ve managed, at best, to touch on some of my pet peeves, and that most church leaders—whether lay or ministerial—have their own list. But at a minimum, these suggestions will make for a good discussion starter. What items might you add? Or subtract?

Ten Commandments For Preachers (not related to the sermon!)

            When parishioners gather, after church, for some roast preacher, it isn’t always the sermon that gets jabs. And there’s more to being the preacher on Sundays than bringing an exegetically smart, creative sermon to the pulpit. So I’ve put together, here, a list of ten commandments for preachers. None have to do with the sermon. The list is meant to compliment my column from a few weeks ago, “Ten Commandments for Worship Leaders.”

One: On Sundays the wise preacher’s work starts long before worship, and ends long after. Get to church early to greet volunteers, musicians, early comers, kids on their way to nursery, and so on. Stay late to say “thanks for coming,” and “good-bye,” to as many as you can. It’s amazing how many pastoral hints you’ll pick up on. And if church is about community, the pastor’s job is to be a leader in trying to create and model it.

Two: Tell children’s sermons. If church is a family affair, and if the little children are supposed to come to Jesus, and if we are supposed to learn how to receive the kingdom from the child in our

midst—well, they should be in our midst. You’re their pastor too. You get to learn names. Telling children’s sermons humanizes you not only in their eyes, but in the entire congregation’s eyes. You live the reality of church as the family of God. People will laugh at the wise things they unexpectedly say. So get down to their level, eyeball to eyeball. Keep it really short. Don’t talk down to them but talk with them. Laugh.

Three: Remember that announcements made before or during the service, while they may be a challenge to integrate, are another critical part of building community. Depending on how you handle announcements it can sound like there are never enough volunteers, or like you’re glad for the many you have. You can make it seem like nothing of importance is going on, or like the church is bubbling with activity. Whether it is in marriage or a corporation, communication and how it is handled can have a huge impact on morale. So use announcements to show the humane, the exciting, and the empathetic side of your church community.

Four: Smile. I once directed a high school production of Oedipus. Afterwards, Oedipus came to me in tears, wondering why I thought she had failed (yes, this Oedipus was a woman). The thing is, she had not failed. But I was so serious in my demeanour, so critically observant in my role as a director, that even as I sat in the front row for the whole play, I forgot to smile. I nearly ruined the show. Pastors—smile! Don’t be goofy. Don’t avoid other emotions. Don’t try to be a nothing but a cheerleader. But when you have the chance, when the occasion is right, smile. People catch on that whatever else church is, it can often be a happy place, as it should be most of the time.

Five: A bit of self-deprecating humour goes a long way to making people feel at home. Whether in the announcement time, or a sermon, or as I shake hands with people on the way out, making fun of yourself just a bit makes you accessible and real. Nothing signals underlying problems in a church more quickly than a pastor who isn’t laughing at himself once in a while.

Six: Don’t strive for perfection. Or, another way of putting it might be, don’t take yourself and your every move so seriously that you can’t be as human as anyone else in your audience. God knows, I try to dress the part, I try to remember to polish my shoes, and I try to lay my tie straight on my shirt. But like Jennifer Lawrence, I’ve tripped on the steps up to the pulpit. I’ve forgotten lines and misplaced sermon notes. And while I don’t want to play the part of a dufus, I’ve often fallen into the role for a few minutes here and there. When I do, I try to relax, apologize if necessary, and do a bit better next time.

Seven: Every Sunday, try to find someone to thank, publically. It isn’t that there is ever a shortage of people worthy of thanks. But it is human nature to create shortages of appreciation.

Eight: Apologize. Not more than is necessary. But if you miss a hymn, or if the janitor forgets to put water in the baptismal font and you have to send someone out for it, or if you forget the name of your council chair during announcement time—stop for a moment. Note the mistake. Apologize. Smile (see number 3, above), and move on.

Nine: Listen to your own sermons once in a while. You’ll be surprised by what you learn. I drop the end of my sentences sometimes. I use too many “ums.” I can correct these things, with a little effort and if I’m willing to engage in a bit of self-criticism.

Ten: Listening to your own services is also a helpful way for preachers to get some idea of how badly they’ve fallen into the bane of church, the preacher’s drawl. In a way, such drawls are unavoidable—we all have our own style of speaking, our own accent. But if having a style is unavoidable, the best thing you can do is work on making it unpredictable, lively, and engaging. Speak as if to equals (they are, after all). Don’t drone on in a monotone—listen to how the best radio announcers vary tone, loudness, timbre, and speed. Let some emotion in. Important for preaching, but doubly so for prayers.

            I’m sure readers can add their own ten or twenty commands to the list. Perhaps it would be better to call them all suggestions--less presumptuous.  But I’d love to hear more suggestions, especially from those in the best place to offer them--pew sitters. And maybe, one day, I'll write a list of ten commandments for sermon time.

Is God Disappearing? And Is that All Bad?

I think it is fair to say that God has mostly disappeared. And maybe that isn’t all bad.

I was struck by this thought while listening to a new song by Portugal. The Man (Yes, no period. The punctuation is odd). It’s entitled “Modern Jesus.” As I listened the first time, I expected the song to offer up some sort of humanistic alternative to faith but I was struck by the fact that that band didn’t even try. After a rather maudlin swipe at preachers, (“we may be liars preaching to choirs”), all they have is, “the only faith we have is faith in us” and “who cares if hell awaits? We’ve been drinking at heaven’s gate.”

Well, I guess it isn’t so surprising that a group of young men with (as far as I know) no formal education other than some college and no serious history with church or synagogue or mosque doesn’t have anything deep to say about faith, hope, doubt, or God. But their song got me to thinking and so I googled “atheism” and “songs,” and discovered that atheism has just about as many hymns as Christian Contemporary Music does. It’s a popular meme. Religion apparently still has plenty value for those who want a can to kick.

But it goes to show that atheism is a definitely a thing. There’s the music. On the more scholarly front, we have the new atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, doing a reprise of themes from Time Magazine’s 1965 “Is God Dead,” cover. Nearly a quarter of Canadians (slightly lower in the States) won’t list a religious affiliation when asked, and I’m guessing many more are practical atheists—baptized Catholic or United or something like that, and happy for the church’s help when it comes to weddings and funerals, but mostly, they never, ever think of religion.

CNN is also taking note. It ran an interesting article about an atheist family entitled “The Friendly Atheists Next Door.” It’s good because the article tries hard not to caricature the people it highlights. They’re good citizens. Really nice. But don’t believe in God.

All this hits a bit close to home for me for a couple of reasons. I have personally struggled hard—and sometimes still do—with faith. I’m not sold on God, even though I know and understand most of the philosophic and theistic arguments for God’s existence. The only reason I can offer for hanging in there (besides being a pastor) is that it seems to me that God won’t let me go, which is as close as I can get to saying I have a personal relationship with God. So I try to make the best of it—while remaining honest, and seeking, and trying to sort out what in scripture (or other inspired writing) will help my parishioners live a good life, and why. I’m glad to be in a congregation that wants this sort of approach.

While I’m on my church, I can’t help but be aware of the fact that the previous pastor was a post-theist. Not for his entire run, but the last few years. He was done with a sovereign God keeping watch on how everything turned out according to his divine purpose. That, in turn, attracted a few new members who were curious—or convicted—about this approach to Christianity. It’s a complicated story, but the bottom line is that when I preach, I do so knowing that there are people sitting in the pews who, while they understand I am a theist, are thoughtfully critical about a lot of my preaching. When I preach, I constantly need to keep these people—and their agnosticism or atheism—in mind. You may want to know why they go to church at all—but they have their reasons and maybe that’s a column for another time. But they are welcome, involved, and interesting.

All of this reminded me of a book I read a few years ago, and have since dug up. It’s by Richard Elliott Friedman, and entitled, The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery. This Jewish author notes that in the Old Testament, the nature of God’s presence slowly diminishes from beginning to end. He walks and talks with Adam and Eve. By the time of Noah, and the patriarchs, he only makes special appearances, often veiled in fire or confused as encounters with angels. Moses gets to see a burning bush and the back of God, and all the people see a pillar of fire and cloud, and they don’t want to see more. When Miriam and Aaron ask if God has only spoken through Moses, God answers from a column of smoke and says that in the future he will make himself known to prophets in visions. The last persons the Bible says God “revealed” himself to are Samuel and Solomon. The last great public miracle happens on Mount Carmel when Elijah calls down fire from heaven. Excepting Daniel—problematic on many accounts—for the rest it is all visions and dreams.

In the New Testament God reveals himself in human flesh so ambiguously, so mysteriously, that many who met Jesus, even among his disciples, did not believe he was God. It took the church several hundred years to come to a consensus decision that he was. And as a Unitarian with some Trinitarian tendencies (Check it out here), I’m not sure what I can say about the nature of Jesus’ revelation.

What do we make of the disappearance of God as a progressive diminution in scripture and/or as a cultural reality for us, at least in the West? Well, maybe this—one of the arguments that Friedman also makes. God wants us to grow up.

That is, perhaps God chooses to hide him or herself or itself so that we as humans will own a morality and a destiny that fits with being mature children of God. After all, it is “precisely when humans are closest to God that they rebel most blatantly” (101). Adam and Eve, as well as the Israelites in the desert, not to mention Solomon, all come to mind. For all their walks with God, Abraham and Sarah both laughed at God’s promises. Moses didn’t get to enter the Promised Land. “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be,” God explains. And Isaiah adds, “Indeed, you are a God who hides himself.” 

Why does God hide himself? Maybe Friedman is right. God’s desire—as the Biblical writers understood it, was ultimately that humans should grow up. “Gradually from Genesis to Ezra and Esther, there is a transition from divine to human responsibility for life on earth. The story begins in Genesis with God in complete control of the creation, but by the end humans have arrived at a stage at which, in all apparent ways, they have responsibility for the fate of their world” (30).

So maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that God is disappearing. But then, at the same time, a big responsibility too. It involves, whether you go to church or not, a commitment to doing more than drinking at heaven’s gate, here and now.

The Meaning of Life. I Think.

Having changed my mind about the old certainties my faith and church handed down to me, I wonder more than ever about the meaning of life. I have some ideas. In fact, I’m writing a book. I may call it The Meaning of Life (I Think). The title is tongue-in-cheek. It will increase curiosity while dampening expectations.

Many people—sometimes whole societies—get the answer to the question, “What is the meaning of life,” dead wrong. I certainly think that I have, in the past. We do so because we cannot escape the prejudices of our time or the loyalties we were schooled in.

It’s a common problem, not unique to us. Take Pieter Schuil, for example. Pieter is a first cousin of mine, four generations back, on my mother’s side. I know about Pieter because I have a copy of his diary.

Pieter Schuil c. 1899

Pieter immigrated to South Africa as a single young man in 1898. In his diary he hints that he emigrated out of a sense of religious duty. The Boers had been recruiting Christian School teachers in the Netherlands. Pieter writes as if he was answering a divine call. But—given the way he describes what he saw and did in South Africa—there is also something of the Romantic wanderer in Pieter. It is possible that he rationalized this wanderlust with a fine religious argument. It is hard to tell.

But Pieter also loved literature. His favourite poet was Heinrich Heine. He wrote his diary with feeling and sensitivity. After reading it—stories about his steamer trip to South Africa; of riding a mail cart to Rustenburg with a secret policeman as his companion; of getting caught in a raging thunderstorm, at night, on the veld—after reading his diary I found I really liked my distant cousin. Even more, I saw something of myself in Pieter: romantic, a writer, religious, introverted, a bit of a dreamer. Someone who wanted to get just far enough away from his roots to find true meaning on his own.

It was a valiant effort on Pieter’s part, but he failed, I think. He was drafted into the Anglo-Boer war. He mostly served as secretary for his commanding officer. When his commando—his guerrilla unit—went off to fight, his fellow soldiers usually made him hang back, to watch the horses. That’s what he was doing when the English overran his position. They claimed that Pieter then lowered his Mauser rifle, with a white flag of surrender attached to it, and blasted away. He and his fellow Boer soldiers denied it. He was court-martialled that night and shot by a firing squad the next morning, October 2, 1901. The novel and the poems he had written before the war, and buried for safekeeping, have never been recovered. A suburb of modern Rustenburg sits over his old schoolhouse.

Pieter’s execution was tragic. So too the disappearance of his life’s work. But the tragedy was actually far worse. I discovered, reading his diary, that Pieter was also a deeply racist person whose attitude mirrored the systemic racism of his Boer compatriots, his church, and all of his wider society—including English South Africa. He fought to establish a Republic where Africans would be treated as sub-human.

Pieter consistently uses the racist term “Kaffir,” or sometimes “Kaffir Boy.” It means “person without religion,” and so, more properly, “someone less than human,” or “a soulless person.” It was a term that allowed Pieter and other whites to deal with Africans as if they were animals rather than people. He describes the Zulu as “uncivilized” and “notorious for their bloodlust.” He condemns the English for arming Africans, because this shows far too much trust and respect.

Pieter also willingly, if not enthusiastically, fought in an unjust war. Granted, the judgment of history is that the war was especially unjust on the English side. They invaded two independent Boer republics mostly because gold had been discovered in them. The English habitually conquered nations and territory for the glory of the Crown and private economic benefit. That is the whole idea behind Imperialism.

History’s judgement on the Anglo-Boer War is also deeply coloured by the fact that the English used it as the occasion to invent modern concentration camps. During the course of the war, tens of thousands of Africans and Boers, the latter mostly women and children, died in them amid absolutely appalling conditions.

But beside the petty geopolitical concerns of England and the small Republics, both the Boers and the English fought their war without any regard for their African neighbours. It was a white man’s war that brought ruin, death, hunger, and disaster upon all the Africans it touched, in large measure because neither the Boers nor the English seemed to believe that Africans were fully human.

Boers shot Africans in the employ of the English forces as a matter of course, like dogs. The English rounded up Africans who worked on Boer farms and threw them into concentration camps. And when, at war’s end, the issue of reparations for devastated Boer farmers was discussed, nothing was forthcoming for the Africans who suffered as badly—or worse--than anyone else. During the final peace negotiations, the Boers even managed to exclude Africans and coloureds from receiving the franchise at the end of the war. Voting rights were based on wealth and property, so very few Africans even in the English Cape Colony had the wherewithal to vote, and even fewer would have been able to do so in the old Boer Republics. But still, it was another case of showing complete disdain Boers like Pieter had for Africans, their humanity, and their rights.

And as he sought to make something of his life, wrote his diary and poetry and novel, none of this seems to have dawned on Pieter. He was used by all the prejudices of his age and tribe. For all of his other qualities, he lived and died for causes that we today recognize as badly mistaken, unjust, and even evil.

I liked Pieter, as he spoke to me across the years; but I was horrified too. How could such an intelligent, sensitive, Bible-believing idealist be so wrong about almost everything?

Well, he was merely a child of his time and place, some will say. And yes, of course, that’s true. And perhaps it even helps us empathize with Pieter a little bit, forgive him even, for his racism and miscalculations about what was most important in life.

But there’s the rub, too. We’re all children of our time. Perhaps the single most difficult task for anyone who really wants to explore what life is all about is to figure out how to set our time and place aside, so that we can see things as they are.

It is almost impossible to do so. How do we set aside the entitlement, for example, that allows us to consume earth’s resources, raise its temperature, eat well while millions go hungry, and so on? How do we set aside our own racist, or patriotic, or faith-based presuppositions long enough to recognize them, let alone weigh them?

When our great grandchildren learn how we built our suburban mansions, fought overseas wars with pilotless drones, ate meat, treated First Nations, coddled the banks and big corporations, fished the sea empty, frittered out time away playing games on TV or shopping, and argued about original sin in our cozy churches—will our great grandchildren think we understood the meaning of life?

Living in a specific time and place is like sleeping under a heavy blanket in a bedroom where the window has been left open in February. I used to have to do that, because my parents thought it was healthy. So, I pulled the blanket tight around me, and even buried my head under it. In fact, I found that sleeping in this warm cocoon was actually a real joy.

That’s how it is for most of us, even today, when it comes to finding meaning for our lives. We usually sleep through it unawares, dreaming fractured dreams, bundled in our churches and tribes, hopeful that nothing will disrupt our reverie.

Not very helpful when it comes to truly understanding what life is really all about. And probably one of the biggest challenges I face if I’m ever going to get started on my book, The Meaning of Life (I Think).

  

John Suk's Interview of Karen Armstrong

I interviewed Karen Armstrong, author of Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence, about this her latest book. Ms. Armstrong was gracious and fascinating, both. She is also, of course the author of many more books that have been bestsellers. The History of God is my personal favourite.

I did the interview last November, and it is published in the United Church Observer. You can find it here: Fields of Blood Interview

The Big Tent Church

            A few Sundays ago, I was asked by the Youth Group of the church I serve, Lawrence Park Community Church (LPCC), to preach about prayer.

            Hmm. This is going to be interesting, I thought.

            Not interesting because I don’t have something to say about prayer. I do. But preaching about prayer will be hard because my congregation is a big tent congregation. People are all over the map on prayer and whether there is a God who listens.

• Some members at LPCC are post-theist. Post-theists believe sacredness is the quality that makes us fully human, the energy driving us to the fullness of life. They think sacredness is not up there, but in here and among us. For these church members prayer is sharing hopes and concerns and dreams with other church members.

• Some members at LPCC are traditional in their beliefs. They believe in God the Father (and Mother) and pray the Lord’s prayer expecting a divine audience.

• Some members at LPCC don’t have strong opinions about what they believe. But they are curious about faith, love worship and value trying to live like Jesus.

            We’re a big tent church, a place where people care deeply about spirituality, morality, and church community. Many members are also knowledgeable about these things. But few members are concerned when others don’t agree with them.

A worship dialog about Art and Spirituality

with Alice VanderVennen

            So, what do I make of this sort of church? After nearly three years I’m still figuring it out. But here are a few thoughts.

            For the first time in my career as a pastor, writer, editor and educator, I’m not looking over my shoulder, worried that someone is gunning for me because I have some moral, social, or theological formulation wrong—from their hallowed perspective, at least. Over time, I’ve learned that the pressure to conform to a small community’s doctrinal standards, to that community’s squeakiest wheels, can be very painful, intellectually and spiritually. The freedom to change my mind now comes as a great relief, even as I still treasure all I learned in my first community.

            I think that this sense of safety extends to my congregation as a whole. Many of these people have strong convictions. Many are well educated—including a few who are at ease in the worlds of theology and philosophy. I can learn a lot from many of them. Few, if any, however, insist that their way of seeing things is the only way. They know how to muse, how to throw out an idea for discussion, or how to get their oar in a conversation, all without clobbering others. This attitude is deeply writ in this congregation’s culture. I love it.

            Am I sugar coating a situation because I’m still enjoying the honeymoon, or because I’m in full marketing mode? Perhaps. On the other hand, it isn’t all smooth sailing. Not everyone is always pleased with everything that goes on at LPCC. Some gripe about the lack of contemporary music. Some think we’re missing the boat with respect to youth programming or adult education. Some people think I’m too focussed on stewardship issues. Like every church, we have our fair share of difficult personalities and recurrent building problems.

            Another difficulty is that where so many perspectives are present, preaching is challenging in a way it never was. I used to see my audience as a pitcher to be filled. Even when I tried to be imaginative about it, I didn’t leave much to the imagination.

            It’s different now. I’m trying to inspire people to do the right thing rather than think like me. Sure—that suggests I know what the right thing is, and they need to be told. It is more complex than that, though. The right thing is has more to do with a few general commands we do agree on—love your neighbour (for example)—than it does on specific demands—don’t get divorced. I try to encourage people to explore what to do, exactly, on their own. Jeremiads are not recommended.

            Another strategy I’m trying out is “sampling” spiritual treasures from different traditions, not to critique them so much as to ask what makes these treasures valuable to those who have them. And what might we learn from them? Understanding is more important to me than defining “us versus them.” My prayer sermon, for example, lays out how people with very different ideas about God can still do the discipline of prayer together.

            Still, I’m opinionated. Sometimes I rant about what I believe are badly mistaken ideas. I know that seems inconsistent with what I’ve said up to now. I’m working on that.

            Does anything go? I don’t know, yet. Certainly, by embracing and learning from people with post-theistic inclinations we certainly go a long way compared to most churches. But we do have standards. I think these are the implicit rules that govern where we are: love for each other is more important than being right; theological curiosity does not kill the cat; community is more important than getting your own way. Do unto others and all that.

            I’ve been trying to think of an analogy for the big tent church. Pizza? Every topping has its own flavour, but the whole would be less if the pizza was limited to one topping. Maybe a Biblical metaphor, like the body, works. A variety of limbs and organs are required to make the whole work. In the end, I think the best analogy is the Apostles’ Creed’s “one Holy Catholic (universal) Church,” shrunk to congregational size. The worldwide church today has Pentecostals and Liberals, Liturgical innovators and those who recite medieval chants, Unitarians, Arminians, five point Calvinists, and maybe even Mormons. At LPCC we’re like one Holy Catholic Church. All of us, regardless of our doctrinal distinctives, sit together in one congregation. Sometimes it is a circus, but always a big tent.

Finding God in the HTML

So, here is a picture of me. For two hours, on January 22, this was my new Facebook Profile Picture. I thought I looked distinguished. Unfortunately, within a few minutes of posting it, Facebook Friend Paul responded and said, “C’mon, John, nobody’s going to buy that.”

An overly dignified John Suk 

Now, I have never met Paul. He lives in Southern California. He once wrote me a letter when I was editor of The Banner. It wasn’t an angry letter. It was funny. So I never forgot it. But now Paul did not like my picture.

Ten minutes later, my sister Janet wrote, “Maybe a little too serious bro. Show some of that Suk charm!” So, only two hours later, I took my new Profile Picture down and put up this one instead.

Reaction was immediate. “Nice to see you, my friend,” said Alejandro, a Nashville book editor I used to work with. “Wow, that is awesome,” said Shelly, a Vancouver pastor. She was referring to my grandson, Taps. Within hours forty likes and comments rolled in. I could feel the love.

Taps and Opa Suk

Or could I, really? As I was watching the “likes” pour in, Irene was also in the living room, also on her computer. We spoke to each other, briefly—about whose turn it was to take out the dog and about who would go shopping the next day. Honestly, however, we were not feeling the love from each other. I was too preoccupied with my 600 Facebook friends, many, like Paul, people I haven’t ever met, or like Alejandro, who I haven’t seen in years. Irene was preoccupied with Search Engine Optimization for her business webpage. We sat together in that room for hours, and hardly had a thing to say to each other until we were in bed together. And this happens more often.

But that’s a Snapchat of social media, isn’t it? We’re there, but then, we’re not. We like people we haven’t seen in years, but don’t love the one we’re with. And it isn’t just social media. Who wants to be disturbed when we’re binge watching old episodes of West Wing or Modern Family? And God forbid that we fail to reach the next level of Minecraft or Titanfall because dad wants to know how our day at school was.

You know what I mean. Honestly. The two-year-old whose gaze is fixed on an iPad. The typical cell-phone carrying new mom who spends six hours a day tweeting with one hand while holding the baby in the other—at least according to a recent article in The Psychotherapy Networker, Irene’s professional journal (“The Rise of the Two Dimensional Parent: Are Therapists Seeing a New Kind of Attachment?” By Ron Taffel, Sept/Oct 2014). And there is the co-worker checking Facebook and Kijiji on the firm’s clock. The date who actually pulls out his iPhone at a restaurant table and places it face up beside the lit candle. The busy exec checking email while the car idles at a red light. And the teen who tragically kills two people in an oncoming car while texting and driving.

What’s going on? Have we lost our minds? Well, in a way we have. Neuroscientists have discovered that human brains are plastic. That is, our brains can be shaped by how we use and exercise them. If we consume a lot of social media, our brains rewire themselves to want even more social media. It is a very complex process. It involves growing new neurotransmitters and the expression of brain chemicals like dopamine or oxytocin that give pleasure. One way to think about what happens is that when our brains are on social media they become addicted to social media—not in the exact same way we are addicted to alcohol or drugs, perhaps—but our need to check-in begins to interfere with our normal relationships. If we stop using social media and other screen-based platforms for any length of time, we may suffer from withdrawal--mood swings, distractedness, even depression.

Another concern is that research demonstrates that watching screens, whether it be an iPad or computer monitor—watching screens not only bulks up our new social media neurons, but watching screens starves the very different and complex neural pathways that get used for reading. It’s a little bit like pretty dandelions taking over your lawn.

As a result, people who are preoccupied with social media read less, less deeply, and with less understanding; they have more trouble listening to linear, rationally organized presentations like a (good!) sermon, and they have more trouble thinking slowly, deliberatively and strategically.

Among neuroscientists, such findings are not controversial. Among teachers with long experience, such findings reflect their everyday frustration with today’s students. But let’s be honest—these findings are hard for most of us to accept. We say things like, “well, my daughter loves to read,” or, “we hardly ever watch TV in our house,” or, “my son still does great in school!” At the same time, this defensiveness suggests, I think, that we are pretty shy of really confronting the deeper issues that surround our social media and Internet use. We are primed to ignore the virtual elephant in our homes, because it is sort of scary.

But it isn’t just that we read less, or follow complex arguments with greater difficulty. Along with the new neural pathways, there is something else happening to us, I think—something I can get at best, I think, if I retell the myth of Narcissus.

The myth is told and retold in many versions from both ancient Greece and Rome. It basically goes like this. Narcissus was an extremely handsome and athletic hunter. One of his parents was an Olympic God, so he was half-divine. Anyway, one day, while hunting, he leaned down to drink water from a pool. Doing so, he caught a glimpse of his face. It was, as I said, beautiful. He stopped drinking, so that the water would stop rippling, and he looked at himself again. Absolutely drop dead gorgeous. And as he looked, and looked, he found he could not tear himself away from his reflection. He stayed there, on his knees, for days, totally in love with that image of himself, absolutely taken by how his beauty made him feel, unable to respond to the love overtures of the beautiful nymph Echo who sat by and watched. He stayed there, by the pool, gazing at his face, until he died of hunger and thirst.

Of course, we get our word Narcissism from this story. Narcissism is defined as an unnatural preoccupation with our self and our image, a preoccupation troubling because it interferes with our relationships to those nearest to us.

The reason it kills us to be interrupted while we’re lost in our laptops or monitors is that Social Media—the texts, the tweets, the emails, the likes, the selfies we endlessly post—all of it is a way of focussing attention not on our neighbours, but on our own inner need for fleeting affirmation. We get a little high every time someone suggests, electronically, that we are pretty special, handsome, beautiful, funny or whatever. We enter into an implicit pact with our electronic friends—I’ll notice you if you like me. We may lose ourselves, and lose track of our neighbours, and the families we live with under the same roof, all because we cannot tear ourselves away from the electronic mirror we gaze into, hoping without even realizing it, that the mirror will tell us just how special we are.

Look. Many theologians and philosophers, including the philosopher I’m reading now, Joseph Needleman (What Is God), make a big point out of the fact that one of the greatest ills that humans suffer through—often without realizing it—is that we never actually wake up to who we really are and the shocking gift of a life to actually live. Instead, we live our lives half in a daze. We go along to get along. We are swept away by cultural fads and wants and ads and artificially induced needs and passions. We are running like crazy in a rat cage, never getting anywhere, just trying to stay even with the bill collectors and responsibilities and obligations. And our preoccupation with social media satisfies our need for affirmation just enough so that we slumber on, focussed on our nagging little need for a ping or a poke; we never step forward, seize real life, or real learning, or real commitments on behalf of people that might matter to us if we did. So even as our brains are changed, our souls slowly waste away, and we and our neighbours become shades of the person we could or should be. We have found god in the HTML and it is us.

I know. There is an important other side of the story. And I don’t want to totally loose track of that. The truth is, few of us can live without engaging social media or the Internet. I would be wrong to fault people here for spending the odd evening learning how to play a new video game. And sure, there’s nothing wrong with answering a few texts during the course of a day or checking your status update at lunch. My life, for example, is truly enriched by hearing regularly from colleagues and friends around the world, as we discuss things like faith and music and worship and writing books.

So, I don’t want to be heard here as someone who says, “no, this social media and Internet stuff is no good, you should stop it.” Not at all. But I am saying that there is a body of scientific research—and our own experience, if we’re honest with ourselves—that teaches us that social media is like fire. There is a place for it, in the hearth. Only then—only when it is controlled, properly contained, and behind an ember screen—only then can a fire offer warmth and serve as a gathering place for family and friends. We need both fire and social media—contained and thoughtfully controlled.

But I also confess that in my own life it is sometimes hard to contain that fire and to leave it where it belongs. I know my own struggles to read as much as I really want, to stay focussed on writing a sermon, and to not be distracted by my various social media accounts.

In Romans 14, the apostle Paul says that followers of Jesus ought not conform themselves to the world. That is, we ought not mindlessly and soullessly live for and do what everyone else is doing, just because they’re doing it. Instead, says Paul, we ought to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. And what I think is true for me, as it is probably true for many of us, is that when it comes to the grip that social media and electronic entertainment are always trying to exert on us and our neurons, we could all use a little less conforming, and a bit more transformation. We could, and should, really choose to live in the world rather than settle for the pixel lands.

One more thing. The people most affected by social media are children. They suffer when we engage in distracted parenting—a growing problem, according to the same Psychotherapy Networker article I mentioned above. And their young brains are at greatest risk of not learning to read deeply and with pleasure by overexposure or much too early exposure to social media, or to its older cousin, the TV screen.

So parents, parent. Take control not only of your own consumption of Internet entertainment, TV, and social media, but of your children’s. Neil Postman once said, “With the Second Commandment, Moses was the first person who ever said, more or less, 'Don’t watch TV; go do your homework.'” His words could easily be applied to Internet and social media use as well. Similarly, that high priestess of contemporary pagan culture, Camille Paglia, once called for “the enlightened repression of our children,” by which she means rigorous word-centered education to the near total exclusion of electronic media, if we want our kids to become all they can be—if we want them to wake up to real life, rather than live in the shadow land of virtual reality.