Friendship, the 8-Hour Work Day, and Electronic Gnosticism

I just read this article about the ineffectiveness of the 8-Hour work day. It was interesting, and by and large, I agree. We need to make adjustments to the fact that information and creative work does not happen the same way as manual labor. As a youth pastor, my I really needed space to think and recharge. I couldn’t write sermons or small group curriculum for hours straight. I had to go for a while and then stop and let things percolate for a while. I needed to work when I was productive, but do something else when I wasn’t mentally on to the top of my game. I suspect that being a student and writing will be similar. So, a flexible schedule makes sense.

However, I wonder if working at home makes the most sense? I hated working in the office at church. It was distracting and unproductive. I worked best at home or the local coffee shop with WiFi. And yet, I wonder if I would have lost something if I wasn’t in the office regularly, both in terms of personal health and productivity. It is the intangible element of relationships. My coworkers were really fun. I liked the people in my office. I liked joking around, talking, and telling stories with them. Over time, what I realized was that my non-work related interactions with my co-workers were almost as important as my direct and official collaboration with them. Our interpersonal connections made collaboration easier because we were more in tune with each other. It made out of the box ideas come up more often because of random conversations that were never intended to connect to work. It made me more able to understand their unique opinions and skills. I could see strengths that they had that weren’t coming out in official business because I saw how they talked with other friends, their families, and even the way they talked on the phone to others. Simply being around other people stimulates a creativity that could not happen if we all worked at home and only collaborated via the Internet or phone. Official collaboration is not as fruitful without accidental collaboration. When I talked with the junior high pastor or the emerging ministries guys I had more good ideas that I never would have had because I was not “officially” working with them. We need the relational indeterminacy that an office provides to provide some of the more creative ideas to come out. We also need more friendships for healthier workers and a healthier society. And for me, I need the accidental contacts that an office creates to really make friends. Of course, if everyone worked at home, perhaps we’d all know our neighbors better and that would have some of the same effects.

I also am hesitant to move more of my life into a mode where physical proximity does not matter. I think we loose a lot of the texture of life if our identities and interactions all exist across wires. When my physical location doesn’t matter anymore, I think I loose something of my identity. There is a gnosticism to the Internet, a duality between the physical and the electronic, between the body and the blog. We have a way of projecting our identity into a world of bits and bytes that get detached from our flesh and blood presence. We become images and profiles of ourselves. Many, if not most, of my friends have become nothing more than a Facebook profile or a blog to me. They physically could be anywhere, but it is okay because their real identity is electronic. Of course, I am one who is guilty of living a very dis-embodied existence. A good portion of my world is on Google Calendar, Gmail, Claytonius.com, and two flash drives in my pocket. My location doesn’t matter. I can do my work from any place that has a USB port and a decent Internet connection. My body is in Wheaton, but my soul is in cyberspace. I think life like this can devalue our physical presence in the world, flatten our friendships, and perhaps because of that impact our productivity in the world of ideas, communication, information, and creativity. I think decentralizing offices tends to move in this direction, and I wonder if it is beneficial. It is a strange world we live in.

Kind of random thoughts today, I know. Not my usual topics, but the thoughts struck me.

Mr. Diety

I saw this on Doug Pagitt’s blog. Now, I have pretty thick skin when it comes to humor. I don’t take offense at much that pokes fun at religion. But this, I think, crosses the line. I find it insulting to God, portraying God as an imbecile. Maybe I’m being hypersensitive, maybe this fits in the same category as the Vintage 21 Jesus videos. Maybe I am supposed to see this as a comic portrayal of people conceptions of God. I’m supposed to laugh at people who think of God in this way, right?…But still, I just feel like it crosses the line. Maybe I am wrong, feel free to convince me otherwise.

With that being said, at the same time, I feel like it presents how a lot of people see Christian beliefs. It is clever and hits on real questions and problems people have with Christianity. For that reason I pass it on: Mr. Diety.

(I do like that God has the same phone as me.)

Religion in the News and Public Discussion

I want to recommend to you two blogs/columns that are incredibly fascinating when it comes to religion in the news and American life. If you don’t read them, you should.

Get Religion is basically news about religious news. It examines how major media and news sources cover different religious issues. It does a great job pointing out the story behind the stories, as well as poking at the assumptions and misunderstandings of the media when it comes to religion. They are fair, insightful, and they point out things most of us miss when we read the news.

On Faith is fairly new, I think, but is fascinating. It is sponsored by the Washington Post and Newsweek. From a missional perspective, this is one of the best sources of input about the religious opinions of the American public. The column poses a question about faith in America each week and a panel of famous religious leaders responds, giving their opinion from a wide variety of religious perspectives. Look at the list of contributers. It is a stacked group. Some of my favorite people read include Miroslav Volf, Brian McLaren, R. Albert Mohler, Richard Mouw, Luis Palau, Desmond Tutu, Rick Warren, Jim Wallis, Elie Wiesel, Marcus Borg, and John Dominic Crossan. (Even when I don’t agree with them.) There are Christians, Jews, pagans, Muslims, atheists, and others. It is very, very interesting. I almost never have time to read them all, but I think it gives a great window into the world of religion in America. From a missional perspective, it is invaluable. This week’s question about whether America is a Christian nation is very interesting. Other questions cover topics such as conversation between people of different religions, interfaith marriages, Christian and Muslim relations, and religious fundamentalism. It is fascinating.

Cell Phones and the Fragmentation of Families

In our family, we don’t have a home phone. We have two cell phones, one for my wife and one for me. When someone wants to talk to me, they call my number. When someone wants to talk to Michelle, they call hers. The other day, Michelle observed how this could breakdown family relationships. She noted how when one of my friends calls, she never picks up the phone, because they are calling on my phone. She never has a casual conversation on the phone simply because she picked up and not me. I don’t ever interact with her friends because when her phone rings, I let her pick it up. I know it is for her, right? What would this mean for children and students? When students call each other, do they ever have a chance to accidentally interact with their friend’s parent? Do children have a chance to learn the skill of talking to an adult in a polite way on the phone, even if they don’t know them? Do they loose out on the relationship that build over time when you call your friend’s house and your friend’s dad makes conversation or tells a joke before handing off the phone to the person you called? These are some of the little experiences that help young people develop a sense that adults are for them and like them. Plus, it helps families feel more connected. I hardly know some of Michelle’s friends because I don’t ever pick up the phone. That robs me of a window into her life. I even interact with her parents and sister less, because most of the time, they call her phone. I wonder what long-term effect this will have on our families. It is interesting that some cell phone companies advertise cell plans that are pitched as ways to “keep the family connected” by giving everyone a cell phone. The reasoning, I assume, is that if everyone in the family can reach everyone else at all times, they will be more in touch. The problem is, a family cell phone plan makes people less interdependent, and therefore more fragmented. A family cell phone plan may actually have a negative impact on your family. This is one of those technologies that sociologists will point back to as altering the structure of American families and culture dramatically. The question is, do I break down and get a land line and ditch the cell phones?

An Apology from Driscoll for his Rant against McLaren

Driscoll has come out and apologized for the way he responded to McLaren in his post on Out of Ur. Way to to go, Mark: Apology | Resurgence.

McElwee’s Response to McLaren on Homosexuality

My friend, chrismc responded to McLaren’s lastest post on homosexuality here:Homsexual questions to agonize over or not. I thought he did a pretty good job. I agree with him and his straightforward style or responding. That is good, because we share an office, and I’d hate to get in a fight over this one.

Back from the Big Easy

I’m back from Louisiana. I’m going to blog about that tommorow, but I’ll just say that it’s really bad. I know that it is probably obvious, but there the reality doesn’t really hit you at a certain level until you see it for yourself.

I finished The Connecting Church on the plane. It was excellent! I’ll write more about this also. The short response is that I have not longed for very many things more than I long to have the kind of community in this book. Other than being united with Michelle in marriage and seeing Jesus recreate the world as its King, I have never felt a craving for anything quite as strong as this. My soul aches for the type of community described in the book.

When I got back, I found out, sadly that John Piper has cancer. We should pray for the Pipers and Bethlehem. My church has seen the challenges when cancer and serious illness hits leaders in the church. They will need prayer. It does sound, thankfully, like it is not going to be severe in the long run.

When using the bathroom at my inlaw’s house, I had a chance to read some CT (thanks to my father-in-law putting a recent edition on the back of the toilet.) There was an interesting editorial by Andy Crouch about how Christians influence culture. I thought it made some good distinctions about how people go about infulencing culture for Christ. When looking up this article online, I also found a good one he did about C. S. Lewis and Harry Potter. As a fan of both, I found it interesting.

Also, I let it slip this morning in my sermon to the youth group that I had a blog of my own (beyond the one on our youth group website). Some of the students may search for me. I don’t know if they will find me. If you guys do stumble across the blog, welcome. You’ll find that I speak pretty freely here. I hope you fill find, like we talked about this morning, that I am promoting community, and not slandering or gossiping about people here. (Dad, I know you’ll find me. Welcome. Feel free to comment. A little online father-son debate could break out, who knows? It’ll be fun. Once you set up your blog, we can comment on each other’s stuff. I’ll add a link to your blog on my sidebar, once you set it up too.)

I’m taking the day off tommorow, so hopefully I’ll get a chance to blog.

Wikipedia

Ever since I first encountered Wikipedia, I have had a facination with it. The idea of an open-source encyclopedia that anyone can edit sounds like a sure failure, but on the whole, it is fairly accurate. For that reason, I find it remarkable. The self-correcting power of an invested community is really pretty amazing…and one worth pondering in the realm of spirituality, theology, and church life…of course, you are bound to run into some problems with any system like this, so I found these articles interesting:

CNet: Growing Pains for Wikipedia
CNet: Wikipedia and the Nature of Truth

Popular Sci-Fi and Religion

I am a sci-fi nerd as well as a theology junkie, and I have always found the interaction of the two interesting. Sci-Fi is mostly antagonistic to Christian conceptions of God, although I have found that the perceptions of human spirituality can often lead to helpful insights. Most sci-fi embraces either a form of universalism (all people are spiritual and all religions tap into that), or an atheism in which “the gods” or “God” are explainable as part of the natural world. At the very least, I have found sci-fi to open my mind to questions and things to ponder that I might not have considered otherwise.

I found these articles interesting on this topic:
Journal of Religion and Film: Any gods out there? Perceptions of Religion from Star Wars and Star Trek
Of Myth and Men (An Interview with George Lucas on the Religion of Star Wars)

Spanglish

Michelle and I just watched the movie, Spanglish, at the recommendation of my parents. I highly recommend it. It deals with themes of cultural differences, the affects of affluence, family…I know all that is real vague, but trust me, its a worthwhile flick. The characters are well developed, and I actually cared what happened to them. It got me thinking, and it was funny…in a quirky, not quite right out there sort of way…the kind of funny that I like. Not much to complain about. (Rating: A-…or 3 1/4 stars)

Wifi, Coffee Shops, and Isolation

Another example of why I have a love/hate relationship with the internet:
A Coffeeshop’s Weekends without Wi-Fi

I don’t care about the business side of this as much, but the loss of community because of technology is terrible. We are such a lonely, isolated society, and I hate it. I feel like ranting about how unhealthy our culture is, but now is not the time.

Email Reduces IQ

I found this interesting. Another good reason not to have the internet at home next year. I mean, I feel it now. I feel less sharp because of the overflow of information and stimulation from the internet. In some ways I process multiple streams of info better because of surfing the web, but I feel my concentration on long term things really suffers. I get bored way more easily. I can’t think through a long argument when I read a book as quickly anymore. Its time to cut back.

CNN: Email “Hurt IQ more than pot”

National Review Article on Sex in Our Culture

Here is a well-done, but sad article on the sexualized-culture we have made:
Culture-Whipped

The article isn’t all that insightful as far as reasons for the problem or solutions. It isn’t, in the end, anything new. All it does is document what most of us (especially those of us who are Christians) already feel as we go about in our world. I post it, because this subject is something I am passionate about. I don’t have a great solution in mind for the problem with sex in our society, but it makes me so frustrated to see how far off we are. Why do we have to mess up sex so bad in our culture? It is such a good thing, and we do it all wrong. It make me so sad.

Teens as Moral Therapeutic Deists

This article on the Revealer was facinating to me. The assesment and description of the “moral therapeutic deism” which is the religion of American youth was very interesting. The scary part is that it is a result of how parents have raised them that they are MTD’s. I’m 22, and I know that most people I know my age embody MTD completely. We’re nice. We don’t argue too much about religion. We think that God really just wants us to feel good about our lives and be content consumers. That’s it. We’re happy capitalists who feel good about God and nothing more than that.

How do we as the Church react to this? In what ways do we, as adults, need to repent of our own moral therapeutic deism? Do we need to take a long hard look of what we are passing on to the youth? How do we spur on parents to combt this? Is the solution to MTD more a matter of formal institutional practices or the living conditions in which a teenager grows up? Is MTD a result of poor Christian education or socialization in the home and school? What practices need to change for us? What about our lifestyles need adjustment? What things do we do to teach MTD implicitly without knowing it? Are our youth groups feeding or fighting MTD? How should we respond as youth leaders to students who are MTDs? How do we make sure that we as youth leaders are not MTDs ourselves? Is it possible that many of us who confess adamantly our evangelical beliefs are functional MTDs? What if we live like moral therapeutic deists, even as we talk like evangelicals?

Religious Symbols in Popular Fashion

I just read this article about religious fashion that is growing in popularity: Wearing their Beliefs on their Chests.

What does it mean when Paris Hilton and Ashton Kutcher are wearing religious symbols? What does it mean when “religion is becoming the new brand?” Why are people who do not ascribe to a specific religious community or practice any religion very…umm…religiously interested in religious clothing? This article describes it this way:

“To a generation of young people eager to have something to belong to, wearing a ‘Jesus Saves’ T-shirt, a skullcap or a cabala bracelet is a way of feeling both unique, a member of a specific culture or clan, and at the same time part of something much bigger.”

Some say that it is about religion adapting to the idiom of the culture to say viable:

The commodification of religious faith “is born of a consciousness that any religious movement, to stay viable, has to speak the idiom of the culture,” said Randall Balmer, a professor of American religion at Barnard College in New York. Dr. Balmer also observed that airing one’s religious views in public, which would have been regarded as unseemly or even presumptuous 20 years ago, has become acceptable. “We live in a multicultural, pluralistic environment,” he said, “and acknowledge implicitly that individuals have a right to differentiate themselves. In fact, there is cachet in that.”

Others see it as a chance to cash in on the spiritual and religious interest in society, regardless of the value of the religious tradition:

Not surprisingly, some secular retailers stock religious-based paraphernalia because they are loath to miss an opportunity. “We don’t just want all the punks and rockers to walk into the store,” said Priti Lavingia, the owner of the T-Shirt Stop in Marino Valley, Calif., which carries the Not of This World line. “Maybe 20 percent of the people in this area are very religious,” Ms. Lavingia said. “I want their business also.”

I wonder. What does it mean when people are interested in spirituality but not organized religion? What does it say that we want an individualized spirituality, taylored for me? What does it mean when we want religion to be fashionable, but not intrusive? What does it say about us if we make religion simply a commodity to buy and sell? Does this elevate spirituality or demote it to the same level as low-rise jeans and trucker hats, simply a fad or passing style? Do religious symbols belong in fashion? Does this show personal atachment to religion? Does it remove reverence from religion? How does a Christian approach fashion? How does this impact how we do ministry? How does a Christian respond to this? At the same time, how does a Jew, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist respond to this? Their symbols are being used too. Is this good or bad?