broken ground

8/23/12

From Steve Baarendse's "Why I'm Not on Facebook: An Open Letter to College Students":

Deincarnation

So much of human communication lies in the incarnational bond between word and body. Think about the volumes conveyed by a piercing glance, an eye moistened with tears, a tender hand on the shoulder. Pointed sarcasm or a tough word of confrontation can be tempered in person—the surgeon’s scalpel that cuts in order to heal—but these words are often blunt meat cleavers on Facebook.

Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son or Jewish Bride vividly depicts the power of human touch. Bonhoeffer talks about this in the wonderful last pages of Life Together. The ministry of bearing burdens, of holding one’s tongue and listening, of confessing and forgiving—these all involve real presence. If your friend is in extremis, you can text the family a “praying4U!” Or, you can drive to the hospital room and hold your dying friend’s hand. You can embrace the family members, cry with them, read Scripture and sing hymns with them.

In the 1980s, phone giant AT&T encouraged people to “reach out and touch someone.” And clearly, a personal phone call from a friend can be a touching thing. But whether by phone or Facebook, touch is still a metaphor. You can only really reach out and touch someone by being there. Our society is high-tech but low-touch, and growing more so every day. Jesus mixed his spit with mud and anointed a blind man’s eyes. He laid his hands on little children and blessed them. He touched people. The society that Jesus—and even our grandparents—lived in was lower-tech but higher-touch.