This is the second week looking at the aspects and unique challenges Christians face in this age of amazing technological advancements. We must be knowledgeable of this world God has called us to live in if we are to speak the gospel into it appropriately and effectively.
This week we will be looking at relationships in the digital age.
Biblical Relationships
Let's look quickly at just a few things the Bible tells us about what sort of relationships we are supposed to have as believers.
With Believers – Christians are called to important and active relationships with believers around them. We are to love one another—which is quite a feat when we look through 1 Corinthians chapter 13. We are to encourage one another to love and good works,[1] as well as reprove, correct, and forgive sins.[ii] We are to bear one another’s burdens. In short, each one of us has the task of helping believers around us closer to Jesus.
With Unbelievers – We are called to have redemptive relationships with unbelievers—to interact with them in loving and meaningful ways; and to live out the gospel before them in word and deed.
With Enemies – Jesus specifically said that we should love our enemies.[iii] This is one of the things that sets us apart. Everyone loves their friends. Everyone loves the lovable.
With the Hurting and Outcast – James makes it clear that as representatives of Jesus and bearers of the Gospel, we must reach out to those who are in need.[iv]
With Diverse People – We see that the Church was purposefully composed with diversity [v] that helps us grow. We are encouraged to have relationships across all sorts of gaps, especially age gaps.[vi]
We must show love to all, even those we do not wish to show love to. If we show partiality in who we decide to love, we are doing it wrong. Both Jesus and James attest to this. And as Jonathan Edwards points out, if we insist on only showing love to "deserving" people, we fail to love as Christ has loved us—for we were and are far from deserving.[vii] We show mercy and grace, through hard times and easy, to lovable people and unlovable people alike.
It is not impossible to have these kinds of relationship over a digital medium, but the internet can make some of these things very hard—and it primarily does that by making the hard parts of relationships easy to skip over and get away from, and by making hard relationships easier to not have at all.
So let’s look at relationship challenges in the digital age.
Selective Relationships
The world is more connected now than ever before, yet it is a lonely world.
The kind of connectedness we have is selective. We connect on our own terms with people we choose. We have safe, efficient, convenient, and low-demand relationships. We don't have to have uncomfortable encounters with people and their awkward problems or opposing beliefs.
Despite the vaunted abilities of tablets and smart phones to connect people, it can also close people off. We can bury ourselves in our phone checking our "likes" and our friends' "statuses" in public, rather than having to make eye-contact with strangers or meet new people. We don't even have to go through the check out with a real person any more.
Interacting with more or fewer people isn't a problem. In fact, online relationships don't have to be a problem at all. We can use the internet to build bridges, form networks, and expand relationships. Just understand that the internet presents relationships as optional, and lets you pick your friends in a way that the physical world seldom does. You can opt to ignore people or interact with them at your convenience.
This has given us a sense of entitlement to our own time—as if we were terribly important and only certain people at certain times in certain ways should approach us. We, our time, and our resources are at the center of our social connections. Social media gives the purposeful impression that all your relationships revolve around you (of course we all need things out of relationships, and those needs are real—however, biblically we are also called to give of ourselves to others in relationships of kindness, grace, and love).
Disembodied Relationships
Not only do we connect with people we select, but we select and control all means of communication with those people. From forums to text and chat to video calls, we have relationships we can turn off, limit, ignore, or walk away from easier than ever before. This is in large part because our relationships over an internet connection are disembodied—that is, we are not physically with those to whom we are interacting.
I want to say right off the bat that your physical self doesn't define who you are, and that you can have good relationships with people you can't be physically near. However, being physically present brings a kind of commitment and focus. You can only be in one place at a time, and people cannot fully escape your physical presence.
Again, I want to stress that this doesn't prevent people from having good relationships in which they hold on through hard times and don't let it become fake. But the reality of the medium is that it is very tempting to take the easy way out when the other person isn't present.
Much of this culture equates conversations with relationships. However, a conversation is only a medium intended to convey the meaningful connection of a relationship. Many words can be conveyed without establishing any meaningful bond. Furthermore, the time comes in almost every valuable relationship when one person or another may need something other than words. People need a hug or a pat on the back, or to sit together and say nothing.
As discussed last week, many people are uncomfortable with silence or inactivity. I am not sure how comfortable this upcoming generation will be with community and communication that is not conversation.
Note: terms like "real" or "normal" are usually unhelpful when comparing digital reality to spatial reality; because these terms are relative by nature, and discussions devolve into bouts of definitions or continue in confusion because of opposing definitions. Of course people are having "real" relationships on the internet. The question is are we having the kind of relationships God wants us to have, in whatever reality we find ourselves.
Closing Remarks
While this digital age connects us to many people in new and exciting ways, it also tends to close us off from certain types of people we could benefit from. It also does a poor job of conveying whole and healthy relationships.
There is a definite temptation to avoid the gritty, messy relationships awaiting us in our neighborhoods, jobs, and communities because we already have a network of relationships we have hand-crafted online. Is it possible we are losing the desire or ability to handle messy relationships? Is it possible that this culture is raising socially dysfunctional people who think they are socially savvy because of their social media connections?
The relationships we are called to, online and offline, can be messy; but as Paul Tripp says, they are "a mess worth having."[viii]
Under Grace,
John Fritz
John Fritz is the Volunteer Coordinator for Thoughtful Life Ministries and the primary author of the Thoughtful Life Journal, which is published weekly from March through September. The purpose of this blog is to challenge and encourage those who have a desire to cultivate a more meaningful walk with Christ. Visit our Homepage to learn more about the ministry and our annual two-week summer Discipleship Program for teens and young adults.
[i] Hebrews 10:23-25 [ii] Galatians 6:1-2 [iii] Matthew 5:43-48 [iv] James 1:27-2:9 [v] 1 Corinthians 12 [vi] Titus 2:1-6 [vii] A tract by Jonathan Edwards on the duty of Christian charity [viii] From Paul Tripp’s book of that title