Faith and technology: who is in control?
Adapted from yesterday's message, "Who is in control?"
Technology allows me to distract myself by Facetiming with myself and taking a picture of it.
The world today is very different from the one that we were in even ten years ago. Teenagers nowadays share their passwords as a show of affection ... yes, really. We're a generation that has seen immense (particularly technological) change--and have adapted to it pretty seamlessly. We're good at that. We own cell phones, computers; we're on social media; we've joined the digital revolution without really giving it a second thought.
Because when something is as ubiquitous as media and technology, we usually don’t even think about it. It’s like oxygen; we don’t tend to think about how we breathe, about the biological or physiological processes that are going on; we just do it. And for many of us—I’d be so bold as to say all of us—this is the same with media and technology.
- When we watch TV, we aren’t necessarily tuned in to what’s happening as we watch this show or that movie.
- We’re a culture where we “like” somebody’s link or picture or comment on Facebook if it takes our fancy.
- We post things online about our lives, and sometimes about other people’s lives, without thinking about the ramifications or the consequences.
- When we see, hear, or read an ad or even the news, we often just receive it.
We don’t tend to actively think about how something impacts us or how we interact with it. And we don’t tend to think about how our faith might impact the role these things play in our lives.
At The District Church, we're going through a series called Mustard Seeds. The background is from Matthew 17:20, where Jesus says, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there,' and it will be so; and nothing will be impossible for you." We want to talk through what it looks like for us to have faith to move mountains (and it's not a lot!) in our everyday lives.
Yesterday, I talked about the impact of faith on technology, and framed it with the question, "Who is in control?" Technology is all around us, enabling us to do more, to see more, to experience more. The world of media and technology that we inhabit is not in essence good or evil. These things can be used for good or for harm.
- We can send emails that build up or we can send emails that gossip and tear down.
- We can be manipulated by the way a news channel spins its reports, or we can seek the truth and point others to it.
- We can allow advertisers to tell us what we’re missing and how their product will make things all better, or we can laugh at the lie that is being told and remember that what we’re all missing, what we all need at root, is a Savior to rescue us from the disease of sin and selfishness.
Who is in control?
Sherry Turkle has this interesting story to tell, and I think it may resonate with many of us:
I check my e-mail first thing in the morning and before going to bed at night. I have come to learn that informing myself about new professional problems and demands is not a good way to start or end my day, but my practice unhappily continues. I admitted my ongoing irritation with myself to a friend, a woman in her seventies who has meditated on a biblical reading every morning since she was in her teens. She confessed that it is ever more difficult to begin her spiritual exercises before she checks her email; the discipline to defer opening her inbox is now part of her devotional gesture. (Alone Together, 154)
My friend John calls this, “the first battle of the day.” And it’s a battle I fight every morning too. Who is in control? Whose voice do I want to hear first thing in the morning and last thing at night?
It sounds really basic, right? I mean, we're really talking about Facebook and the gospel? Email? Twitter? Texting?
Yup.
Because it's in the basics where the rubber hits the road. It's all well and good to say, "Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength," or "Love your neighbor as yourself," but it's in these basics--in the simple things--where that's really worked out. One of the greatest disconnects that people outside the church see, and that people inside the church feel, is the disconnect between Sunday and the rest of the week—that what we hear and say and read and experience on Sundays doesn’t always slide very easily into the molds of Monday through Saturday. Well, it's not just in the big things; actually, it's faith worked out in the small things that in time forms the character that works itself out in the big things as well.
And so it matters what we do in the small things. So what does it look like to live out the gospel in and through your technology-saturated life?
- Maybe it means taking a step back and turning up your sensitivity to how you engage and interact with technology, even just for a week, at first.
- Maybe it means that when you get annoyed with somebody for not being present (because they're checking their phone constantly), you also ask yourself, “Do I do this to other people?”
- Maybe it means building structures or maybe even rules in your life for the ways and the places you utilize technology so that you can be more intentional—both in interpersonal relationships and in your relationship with God.
- Maybe it means that, like Sherry Turkle's friend, you choose not to check your email until after you’ve spent some time with God.
You can—you need to—figure out for yourself what it looks like for you to love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.
In the beginning, in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve were asked by a serpent, “Who is in control?” They answered, “Us,” and ate the forbidden fruit.
Three thousand years ago, in Babylon, three young men named Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were asked by a king on pain of death, “Who is in control?” They answered, “God,” and were thrown into the blazing furnace--in case you don't know the end of the story, God came through for them.
And two thousand years ago, a man in Palestine named Jesus hung on a cross and was asked, “Who is in control?” He answered, “God. Forever and always, God. Even when it doesn’t look like it, even when you don’t understand it, God.” And this Jesus gave his life to take the sin of the world on himself, so that we might be liberated from the cycle of brokenness and death, to right relationship with God and with others. And in case you don't know the end of the story, three days later, this man Jesus rose from the dead—that’s how you know God was in control. That’s how you know that God is still in control.
Here in 2012, you and I are asked the same question, “Who is in control?”
What’s your answer? And how are you going to back it up?
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You can check out the full sermon online here.
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UPDATE: Thanks to the Washington Post for picking this up in the local faith section.
In the beginning … rest
On New Year's Day, I preached at The District Church (and I did the same yesterday at Sojourners chapel) about sabbath and rest. Here are some excerpts:
This message is as much for me and a result of what God’s been doing in me as anyone. For much of 2011, when I saw something that needed doing, I did it; when I saw a need that needed to be met, I met it. There wasn’t a cohesive structure to it, and there wasn’t an intentionality to it. And so it shouldn’t have been a great surprise to me that by last month, having worked two at-least-30-hour-a-week jobs for 10 months and running from one need to the next, from one campaign to the next, from one person to the next, I was absolutely exhausted. I remember thinking that I’d actually never been more physically drained. Spiritually, I was ecstatic because I was in the place God wanted me to be and doing what I knew God had made me to do; but physically and mentally, I was exhausted because I wasn’t practicing sabbath. I wasn’t stopping, I wasn’t resting, I wasn’t recovering, and that led me to do those very things I felt called to do, poorly.
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Can you imagine what it would be like for your work, your activity, your productivity to be your identity, your worth, your value, and for you to know nothing else?
Well, yes, of course we can. It’s not hard. We see it all around us. Maybe we even see it in our own lives. For us here in Washington, DC, in the twenty-first century, this same commandment can be a freedom. Maybe not from a life of actual bricks and chains. But from the bricks and chains of perpetual activity, from feeling as if changing the world depends on us and us alone, from feeling as if you are the only one who cares about this cause, or the only one who can make a difference in this person’s life. It is the freedom of God’s world.
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If we’re to live lives of integrity in a world that tells us all sorts of messages that are contrary to the gospel and the kingdom of God, we need to be immersing ourselves, constantly and consistently, in what God says to us and about us: even before you did anything of value, even before you were ever productive in any sense of the word, even before you were born, I loved you, I accepted you, and I called you my own.
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Jesus, the Lord of the sabbath, said, in John 10:10, “I came that they might have life, and life to the full.” Living life to the full isn’t the same as filling life to the full. A fulfilled life is not the same as a filled life. A fulfilled life is not saying yes to everything. It’s learning what God has called us to, saying yes to that, and saying no to other things. Not because we don’t want to do them—they’re probably great and wonderful and attractive things, otherwise it’d be easy to say no—but because we can trust in what God has called us to, and trust that God has things in hand.
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And in living out the sabbath from one day into the rest of the week, we live out an alternative story for the world to see. It is the gospel story—the good news!—where our worth is not determined by our activity or our productivity, where we are not judged—by others or by ourselves—on the basis of what we do or how well we do it; but where the grace of God comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ and liberates us from being enslaved to the stressed out, high strung, anxious, reactionary, workaholic lives that we see all around us, and maybe even in ourselves.
You can listen to the full sermon here.
The gospel
As good and succinct an answer as I've found to the question, "What is the gospel?":
The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope. This is the only kind of relationship that will really transform us. Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us.
Tim Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, 48.
You + The District Church = #Winning
What a year! In the last twelve months at The District Church, I've:
preached the first seven sermons of my life;- continued to lead worship regularly; and
- led a small group that, over the course of three semesters, involved almost 50 people, and saw three new small groups start out of it this fall.
But perhaps more gratifying is what's happened in, through, around, and beyond myself, as the church itself has:
- welcomed over 500 people at our Sunday services;
- grown from a community of 50 to over 200 (and a second service);
- multiplied from two small groups to eight, involving the vast majority of our church community;
- combined with matching donors to raise over $100,000 for famine relief in the Horn of Africa;
- put on a Kids Festival in the spring and a Fall Festival just last month that each connected us with several hundred people in our community; and
- most recently, joined with other churches in our area to kick off an urban youth ministry program.
All of this comes down to your generosity--that helped me raise enough support to work part-time at the church--and your prayers--that, among other things, led me to my current part-time contract with ONE. I can't offer a precise "dollars invested : lives impacted" ratio, but know that you have been and continue to make a difference in Washington, DC.
This next year, I'm sensing that God is calling me to this work full-time. Because our church is still young (at almost 18 months, I'd say we're toddler-aged) and is reaching mostly young adults and unpaid interns, there's a need for all of us to continue raising support. This year, I'm trusting God to provide $40,000 and I'm asking you to be a shareholder in this vision.Will you pray about how much of this you can give to help change lives, communities, and neighborhoods here in DC?
My ordination is only a week away. This is such a confirmation and affirmation of the calling God has for me. I know many of you won't be able to make it to the actual ceremony, but one of the ways you can support me is by pledging your financial support for the next year.I also just want to issue an open invitation to you to come visit: come see the church that you (through me) have had a hand in planting here in the nation's capital; come see the work that we're engaging in; come see me in the place that God has called me to be, doing what I feel like I was always created to do. There's guest space a-plenty!
Thankful for your part in my life and journey,
Justin.
P.S. We were just featured in the latest edition of the Religious Herald! Check it out. (Photo credit to me, my iPhone, and my Hipstamatic app.)
You can give online via Auto-Tithe. Please make sure to select "For the Ministry of Justin Fung” in the drop-down menu. Or you can make checks payable to "The District Church," with "For the Ministry of Justin Fung" in the memo and send them to: The District Church, PO Box 3116, Washington, DC 20010.
All gifts are fully tax-deductible.
God at work: $100,000
This past year, I've had a front row seat--indeed, I've been fortunate to be in the thick of the action--as God's been at work: in my life, in the lives of those around me, and in The District Church. Here are some examples:
- God's been at work through prayer in my small group, where we've prayed for jobs for four guys (including myself)--each of them is now employed; and we've prayed for housing for four more (including myself)--each of them now has a place to live.
- God's been at work in my small group period, where today we commissioned three new small groups out of the one I'd been leading. I felt blessed to have so many servant leaders in my group, and am so excited to see all of them stepping into what God has for them.
- God's been at work in our church, growing our small community until we're now stretching the space we've been meeting in. We wanted to find a larger space but none of those options worked out, so starting on September 25, we'll begin having two services on Sunday morning! This is such an exciting time and we believe this is a time God is calling us, to use an analogy from 2 Kings 3, to build ditches in preparation for the rain.
And most exciting of all ...
Last Sunday, we commemorated the 10th anniversary of 9/11 at our church, and in his message, Aaron spoke about how "True Awakening Leads to Reform" (we're currently doing a sermon series drawn from Habakkuk and Acts, entitled "Awaken"). He expanded on the op-ed he'd written in the Washington Post to mark the occasion, in which he'd written to the Muslim community to apologize for the ways that we as Christians had allowed our pride and prejudices to cloud our witness. And so on Sunday, as a small act of reconciliation, we took up an offering for our Muslim brothers and sisters who are suffering from the famine in the Horn of Africa--Somalia, hardest hit, is 99% Muslim. Through various other movements of the Holy Spirit, we had offers to match whatever we raised by up to 7 times. Still, we were conscious of our size--we're only about 150--and so we were ready to be thrilled regardless of the amount raised.
I suppose I should have left this email untitled to maintain the surprise. But when all was said and done, we as a church raised almost $15,000, and with the matching donations, we were able to raise $100,000 for famine relief efforts.
This was such humbling and spine-tinglingly exciting news, such an encouragement for me as a leader of a community of such amazingly generous people, and such a reminder that God is at work, doing great things even in the face of great suffering and tragedy.
May we all (continue to) see God at work in all things.