Fakebook: What's Your Connection?
By Jessica Greer
Connectedness. How do we connect with one another in a way that will maintain our humanity? The digital age has shrunk the world. Networking socially and economically has bound its populations together horizontally.
The Earth has been reduced to an ever-changing, rapidly morphing piece of information.
We have millions of current events flooding our attention and streaming by our eyes, while our more personal "friends" are updating their relationship status as often as President Obama's celebrity White House parties.
Although we are receiving more information at a faster rate than ever, the question becomes: is this information useful, or even relevant? Can we connect with one another using this information, or is it simply a never-ending stream of irrelevant thoughts and images?
I began to think of my own social networking, wondering about the impact I actually make on humanity. A photo of my children playing. An opinion on the current political state.
Do any of these exchanges matter, or are they all just floating narcissisms?
What is required of us if we are to genuinely connect to each other in a way that impacts our social existence?
Networking has become a cultural phenomenon that dominates our interconnectedness with its swift social updates. Because this information constantly changes and moves, we are never able to be settled in our attention or thoughts.
Everything we think and speak has become an ecstasy of immediate gratification.
Our mantra of conversation has become: If I feel it, I say it. Our Facebook status box continually asks What is on your mind?
This impulsive, uncontrollable need to let an entire virtual world know what is on our mind or to display for them what we ate for dinner follows an inevitable pattern of narcissism.
Now we have entered a world where everything we say or think is important.
The minute someone "likes" our photo or thoughtless thought, we feel that approval.
What exactly did we do to earn this approval? Absolutely nothing.
Narcissism reasserts itself again and again. Every "selfie" photo we take, every opinion we give, they add up to nothing more than a morass of self-interest.
We have become a culture of blurbs and statuses. Our thoughts are no longer inspired by books or great thinkers, but by a quick quote updated on a status.
Words become meaningless as every blogger becomes a self-aggrandized writer and every mindless feeling becoming an actual topic of discussion.
Matthew 12:36, 37 says this: "But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned."
Is it possible that an entire generation could be judged by the countless empty words they speak and write on an hourly basis? If our words do not connect us to our neighbors in a meaningful way, if they do not encourage our brothers and sisters, then what is their point?
Networking has become the ultimate tool for self-promotion. YouTube sensations are considered a mark of success. Even the local news reports the latest trending videos on the Benghazi trial. From Rebecca Black's "Friday" song to the Harlem Shake revival, the inundation of constant flashes of the latest shocking versions of entertainment flood our brains so deeply that we are unable to recognize our need for connectedness.
The fallacy comes in the idea that by networking we are connecting, but it is in fact quite the opposite. Connectedness is perpendicular to networking. It is a vertical relationship that moves from the past to the present and thus towards the future.
To be connected with our fellow humans we must think, speak, and live with the profound revelation that we are a part of a world much greater than ourselves.
This means we come from somewhere, and our actions have consequences that affect the future.
Perhaps the most radical enlightenment we can have concerning our own connectedness is to first acknowledge our heritage. Unlike the liberal version of progress, heritage plays a vital role in reconstructing the future. We must build upon a foundational grasp of the past.
In Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind, he describes the lack of historical connectedness in the American home: "There is always a more or less open belief in progress, which means the past appears poor and contemptible."
As we become more distant in knowledge, as our traditions become more abstract than practical, we lose our stability in this life. We compromise our pillars and replace them with ideals that teach us to love ourselves rather than each other.
Psalm 36:2 says: "In their own eyes they flatter themselves too much to detect or hate their sin."
"In the United States, practically speaking, the Bible was the only common culture, one that united simple and sophisticated, rich and poor, young and old,” Bloom says. “and as the very model for a vision of the order of the whole of things, as well as the key to the rest of Western art, the greatest works of which were in one way or another responsive to the Bible- provided access to the seriousness of books." This quote so brilliantly captures the essence of true connectedness.
The Bible is considered by many to be an archaic measurement for living. This is not simply a cultural clash in ideas, but has become a generational movement. A movement toward abandoning an old hateful religion only to replace it with a YouTube video of preteens gyrating in front of a computer camera.
The question resurfaces: How can we as Christians, as part of the body of Christ, maintain our connectedness with God and with the Bible as a traditional value system, and with our fellow humans in a rapidly technologically evolving world?
I believe the answer lies in looking toward the future. Progress is an imperative part of growing and advancing, but so is faith.
In Habakkuk 2:3 it says this: "For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end
and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay."
Although networking serves a purpose in our daily lives and may even be enjoyable as a hobby of sorts, the skewed reality of us becoming flatterers of ourselves fogs our forward vision.
Seeking God in a personal corner in faith helps us to gain an eternal perspective, which consequently connects us to humanity. Galatians 3:28 says: "There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Connectedness is a vertical relationship, first with God and then with humanity; likewise we are connected with the past, present, and the future.
As Christians we are accountable to stay connected. Do not let your horizontal relationships obstruct your view of being truly connected.
Your 275 Facebook "friends" are mere shadows in light of your personal relationship with God.