The It, The Thou, and The Tweeper

In social media use, one of the things that's perhaps most challenging personally, spiritually, and existentially is escaping the human tendency to view others as objects.  

Here is this spanking new medium, one that should allow us to connect with one another, in some wildly creative ways.  New ways.  Unprecedented ways.  Twitter can be like that, in its churn and whirl and global reach.  I can offer a word of affirmation to a South African, and drop a word of silliness with a colleague, and confirm the beauty of a sunset in Taiwan, all in thirty seconds.

But if social media becomes not about our encounter with the friend and neighbor and stranger, but instead becomes an instrument for furthering our own power, what is it?

 "Here I am," we cry.  "Look at me!  LOOK AT ME, YOU MORONS!   I AM THE QUEEN!  I AM A MIRACLE!  I AM THE SAVIOR OF MY TWITTERVERSE!"

And so we shout and flail about, doing the wild honkey dance with a box on our head, trying to get the world to Harlem Shake to our amazingness.  We provoke and we challenge, a hundred million trolls bellowing from under their bridges.

Worse still, we can come to see our "followers" as trophies, objects that validate our amazingness.  They can become not the sentient, self-aware souls that create those tweets and posts, but things.  Notches in our belt.  Kills on the side of our fighter.  Hair care products lined up in a row in our shower.  The bulging bag of stuff on the back of a wandering, homeless soul.

If we are like this, we do not say to them "Thou," as Martin Buber described life-giving human relationships.  We do not say, "I see the light of God behind your eyes, just as surely as it burns in me."   Instead, they can become "It."  They can become dead things, just instruments for furthering our own goals.

The distinction, I think, comes from direction of our intention.  If we approach social media as an instrument to further our agenda, then we are likely to think instrumentally about those we encounter.   We become like that corporation that focuses not on product, but on profit maximization.  We become like that government that focuses not on justice, but on order and power.   This is a loveless place.  It is a dangerous place, the alien wilderness in which our souls dissolve, consumed by the acid of their own desire.

If, instead, we view each human creature behind the tweet as a soul, our attitude changes.  That troll who howls out rage is just alone and in pain.  That catty remark comes because she's just had a bad day.  The beings around us remain as they were made, and our connection with them is deepened.

The Call

One of the oddest things about the way the Good Lord lines up pastors with communities is that it works so very differently than we tend to expect.

My denomination has a "call process," which appears to be most closely modeled on the federal government's approach to hiring. It's an endless cycle of committees and requirements and measures that, taken individually, make sense. There's a good solid reason behind everything we do, and it all seems very official and circumspect. What it results in, though, is frustration for everyone involved...and not sufficiently better results than if folks just looked at a few resumes and made a decision. Call does not work the way we force it to work. It can work through the process, sure. But the two things are not the same.

It also doesn't work in the same way church shopping works. Pastors often ask themselves this key question: Would I attend the church I am serving? The idea behind this is simple. A pastor needs to be excited about their congregation. They need to instantly love it, and be filled with joy at the prospect of it growing and flourishing. If the community isn't a match for them, and they feel out of place or in some way distant, then they're going to stagnate or grow frustrated or be less vested in it's flourishing.

For that love to take place, the argument is simple: The pastor needs to feel that this church is their church. It's the place where they go for spiritual sustenance and fellowship with People Like Them, the place where folks are always glad they came and people are all the same and everybody knows their name.

That does not even come close to describing my church. When I started, my congregation was a tiny struggling group of elderly Anglos. The church was riven with conflict-echoes and despair after a particularly ugly break with the previous pastor. If I'd shown up on a Sunday looking...as a lay person...for a vibrant progressive community, one with a heart for Christ and for neighbor, I'd not have sensed it. I'd have felt mostly the aching pain of loss and desperation. As a church product for the savvy consumer, it had little to offer.

Now, my church is bigger, but not by much. Coming in this Sunday, I'd walk in the door...as folks do about once a month...and instantly see that with the exception of the anomalous White Guy up front, it was Not Me. Though it aspires to be multiethnic, it is almost entirely Korean. It is also very, very young...bordering on feeling like a youth group, even though it most certainly ain't. The worship is mostly contemporary, meaning heavy on the Chris Tomlin and Hillsong. It's still a little church rattling around in a big sanctuary. As a shopper for churches, I'd have sniffed it, found the scent unfamiliar, and moved on swiftly, as dozens and dozens have...sometimes before the service is even half over.

But being called to serve a congregation does not work that way. It just doesn't. Nowhere in the great story that runs from Torah through the Epistles can I find any evidence of that. Not a single call...at least, none that mattered...worked that way. Not Abraham or Moses or Jacob, not Isaiah or Jeremiah, not Paul, and most certainly not Christ.

The "process" is not like something an HR department does. It's also not like the market process by which we select consumer products. Call is more...heck...mystic than that. More God-related. It's a work of the Holy Spirit. It's an urging. It's a hunger. It's a strange compulsion driven by dreams and obscure theophanies.

And where that compulsion takes us is to places where everyone is not Just Like Us. Where things are difficult. Where we are forced to grow, and struggle, and grow some more. Where exposure to the Other and the Different makes us realize that what is not familiar is not automatically evil, and that we can come to care deeply and passionately for those who are not already neatly part of our marketing demographic.

As, over the last six years, I have.