Yet another “pioneering” event has happened in the digital world. A Japanese man named SAL9000, married his longtime virtual girlfriend, Nene Anegasaki, a character from the digital dating simulator Love Plus. Yes, folks. This is a real person with a fake name, marrying a fake person with a real name.
Here is a video of the “ceremony”:
Unless you think this is a fluke event, it’s not. In fact this is a growing trend in Japan. Here’s a quote from a New York Times article that details this peculiar cultural phenomenon:
In Japan the fetishistic love for two-dimensional characters is enough of a phenomenon to have earned its own slang word, moe, homonymous with the Japanese words for “burning” or “budding.” In an ideal moe relationship, a man frees himself from the expectations of an ordinary human relationship and expresses his passion for a chosen character, without fear of being judged or rejected.
I think this is a prime example of emergence of digitalism and digitalist culture, which I wrote about here. The inherent narcism of the Internet and digital media is leading to men who are unable to love anything that requires a pouring out of self. Worst yet, they justify it by blaming society and other women for wronging them! And worst of all, the culture in Japan revolves around pre-pubescent anime depictions of girls, often in the nude – inanimate depictions of helpless girls.
As one Ken Okayama explains it:
“I was steps away from getting married,” he explained earnestly when prodded about his experience. “You have to make sure you don’t hurt a real person; you have to watch what you say, and you have to keep your room clean. In Japan, it’s not O.K. to like another person if you’re already with somebody else. With an anime character, you can like one character one day and a different character the next.”
Many might think that something like that wouldn’t happen here, but American advertisers are already setting up technology to replace relationships as the primary value providers in our life. In what I wish was intentional irony, this ad was prominently displayed at the top of the New York Times article.
There’s a lot of blogging advice out there that claim the short blog post is the best kind. And generally I agree. But I’ve also been rethinking the implications of why we like short blog posts. Here are some reasons I came up with.
The Nature of Screen Reading
I don’t know about you, but the nature of reading anything on a screen lends itself to shorter, scannable material. After a while, my eyes start to bug out when I read for too long on a computer screen.
The Nature of Internet Usage
People don’t generally use the Internet for deep study. The fact that it’s called surfing the web is indicative of our attitudes and approach to online activity. Rather than go deep, we skim along the surface, moving from blog to blog, or website to website.
The (Changing) Nature of Our Minds
There has been a lot of speculation out there as to how the Internet is rewiring the way our brain works. The famous article on this is Nicholas Carr’s, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I certainly can feel my ability to focus and sustain hard thinking is slipping away. It seems that the web is rewiring our brains to be predisposed to short, pithy statements rather than long, well-thought out arguments.
The Nature of Information
Because there is so much information to be processed in a day, we tend to move through it as quickly as possible. After all we are finite beings working with a finite amount of time. The amount of information that barrages us lends to a kind of schizophrenia. The goal is to move from one topic to the next, getting just as much information as we need for our own purposes rather than to explore the rabbit trails that information leads to. Always at the back of our mind is the thought that there may be a better and more relevant piece of information we should be focusing on.
The Nature of Humans
It is human nature to take the path of least resistance. Arguably, it is much easier to read a short, pithy blog post than to commit the time and effort it takes to process a long and involved one. And it’s takes much less effort to write shorter posts, as well.
The Long and Short of It
The question is not whether short posts are better in a consumeristic sense, but are they good for our soul. I posted this killer quote by J.I. Packer yesterday, but I’ll share it again:
“I’m amazed at the amount of time people spend on the internet. I’m not against technology, but all tools should be used to their best advantage. We should be spending our time on things that have staying power, instead of on the latest thought of the latest blogger—and then moving on quickly to the next blogger. That makes us more superficial, not more thoughtful.”
This morning I was talking with some fellow Praxis staff, and we knocked around this idea of superficiality that our culture seems to thrive on. Here was our question:
Is it the Churches job to create content that meets people where they are at (i.e. – short, pithy sound bites), or to try and redeem the culture of superficiality and help people rediscover deep thinking and contemplation?
At the end of the day, we know short blogs are better in a pragmatic sense…but are the better in a cosmic sense? Or are they major contributors to a fundamental change in our ability to think deeply?
There is tons of advice out there about how to make sure technology doesn’t get in the way of your responsibilities to your family…specifically to your spouse.
So, I’m going to go ahead and say that this is definitely not the way to start off on the right foot with your new bride.
Apprently this guy didn’t tell his bride that he was going to be so gosh, darn hilarious at the alter. As you can tell, she was thrilled. But the pastor’s face is priceless.
For the record, Tracy changed her Twitter name to @tracymariehanna since this event.
In case you missed it, I was privileged to do a series of guest posts on the topic of online church over at Rethinkmission.org, Jonathan McIntosh’s blog. If you don’t read Jon’s blog, you should. It’s an awesome blog filled with some great content.
My series was in response to Doug Estes recent blog tour to promote his new book, SimChurch: Being the Church in the Virtual World. In particular, I was responding to his post on Out of Ur. It’s probably no secret that I don’t support the notion of doing church purely online, though I do think the Internet is an invaluable tool for churches and ministry. I was disappointed that Doug seemed to be attacking straw men, rather than engaging in a fruitful debate on this topic. Thus, I wrote the following series linked below. Thanks again to Jonathan for letting me soap box on his digital lawn.
This is the third and final post in my series on ministry and the internet. You can catch up on the other posts here and here.
What is the Church?
Just what is the church? It seems to me that is the central question when we begin to think through the implications of digitalism. As Mark Driscoll stated in his talk at Advance 09, the digital age is forcing us to reexamine and redefine our ecclesiology.
In my study, I’ve come to believe that the church is defined by:
The preaching/teaching/proclamation of the word
The administration of the sacraments (in my view communion and baptism)
And the fellowship of the saints
As seen in Acts 2:42, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
I don’t think there are too many people who would argue with such a definition. The real debate comes when we start asking whether this type of community can be done in the digital world.
Can the sacraments, for instance, be rightly administered online? Some people think so, as evidenced by Flamingo Road’s internet baptism as posted on Church Crunch. How about communion? Can that be administered online and still embody the New Testament concept of “breaking bread together”?
The Purpose of the Church?
I’m not going to debate here the intricacies of the sacraments and their relevancy online (mostly because I haven’t studied much on it). I’ll save that for another time. But what I do know is that the sacraments are a sign of coming into Christ, and traditionally (and scripturally) a first-step in joining the body of Christ that is the Church. They are not the end-all.
In looking at the purpose of the Church, I believe that the it exists primarily to:
Equip the saints for the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:11-16)
To make disciples (Matthew 28:16-20)
These commissions are best accomplished by preaching, teaching, and proclaiming the word and by doing the word. As James says, you cannot do one without the other, “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” And while some are called expressly to do the teaching and preaching (Ephesians 4:11-12), we are all called to proclaim the gospel and to do it.
When thinking of the purpose of the church in the context of Internet ministry, it’s easy to see how it is useful for proclamation – the preaching of the gospel. In that sense it is an excellent tool. It becomes harder to think of its usefulness in discipleship and in being a catalyst for bringing people beyond hearing the word to doing the word. This is because the Internet is an uncarnate environment that, as I’ve discussed in previous posts, is inherently geared towards engendering a people who consume rather than pour out. Yet, as a community of believers, we are called to do just the opposite – we are called to incarnate the gospel to the world.
The biggest challenge I see in the future of ministry is the pervasive acceptance of digital interaction as true community, replacing, not supplementing, physical community. Yet, in a Christian context, it is the daily interactions between believers that leads to discipleship. As Tim Chester and Steve Timmis write in their book, Total Church, “In becoming a Christian I am a disciple, but that is an identity, not an event. I never stop being a disciple, and I never reach a point where I no longer require daily discipleship by the gospel word in the gospel community.”
Event Driven Church vs. Rhythm Living
Ministries that are diving full force into the Internet by forming Internet campuses, doing online administrations of the sacraments, and more, are indicative to me of the more American expression of Christianity and church, which is an event driven model. For many people, church is just one of a many obligations or events that must be attended, consumed, and completed – an X on the calendar. It’s easy to say you go to church and believe you are part of a church in an online forum if you believe that church is about the Sunday event where you sing some songs and hear a sermon.
But that is not church. If anything that is evangelism, which to be clear is very important. But it is not true Christian community. It provides no true venue for discipleship, or the rhythms of Christian life that are depicted in the New Testament (eating together, praying together, serving together, etc.).
When you approach church as an event, it is easy to leave that church if the pastor says something that pisses you off. It’s even easier when all it takes is a click of a mouse, where no actual physical connection is severed. A rhythm centered approach to church where people are eating together in homes, giving to and taking care of those with need, discussing the scriptures in late night gatherings over coffee or a pint, serving arm in arm in doing the word and incarnating the gospel, and more creates bonds that are not easily broken – and ensures that if a fellow believer is straying, you have a real, valid, and tangible means to confront him or her in love.
Conclusion
Steve Knight, who was kind enough to reference this series on his blog, has written about the importance of reverse incarnation in the digital age. In that sense, the Internet is useful. But in reality, reverse incarnation is simply a fancy word for what we’ve already discussed is part and parcel with being the church – proclamation. We are to preach the word and proclaim the gospel in the digital world. But the digital world cannot replace the incarnate body of believers gathering together in community. You must have both.
I find it hard to understand how we can theologically justify Internet campuses as autonomous and fully functioning churches. Many will speak to their practicality, but we must be cautious when we move to speaking pragmatically without undergirding our pragmatism with theology.
In the end, the Internet is useful, but it can also lead to a disembodiment of the church that is not biblical. It is my prayer that as we move forward we don’t wholesale dive into new technologies because our culture demands it, but that we carefully, prayerfully, and with measure engage new technology in a way that continues the Church’s long and grand tradition of being in the world but not of it.
I invite your thoughts, beat downs, and undying adulation.
This is the second post in a series on doing ministry in a post-Christian, digital society. In the first post, I explored what I perceive to be a cultural shift from post-modernism to what I defined as digitalism. Here I want to lay the foundation to explore some of the ecclesiological implications of the Internet.
You Have No Idea
Seems you can’t go anywhere today without running into some conversation, blog post, or story about how such and such church is integrating the Internet into their ministry. The rise of social media and the popularity of such platforms like Facebook and Twitter, have heightened the sense within the Church at large that we must figure out what our online strategy is. Some people doing great pioneering work in this realm are John Saddington and his site Church Crunch, Kem Meyers, Tony Steward, the good folks over at Church Marketing Sucks, Drew Goodmanson, Church Communications Pro, Tim Schraeder, and many more.
I say it’s pioneering work because, though it doesn’t seem like it, the Internet as a daily and vital component of our lives is really only about a decade old. And we really have NO IDEA what it’s doing to us, our society, our children, and our ministries. Yet, we’ve (society at large) embraced it wholeheartedly as not only a norm, but also as a great advancement in human society and interaction. Perhaps this is because, as I alluded to in my last post, it appeals to our ego in a way no other medium has.
I can think of no other major shift in human interaction and thought that has been so completely, quickly, and docilely embraced than the rise of the digital age.
I can think of no other major shift in human interaction and thought that has been so completely, quickly, and docilely embraced than the rise of the digital age.
I am Ego
As I sit in my office with my headphones on, having spent the last three hours staring at computer screen, I am completely isolated in my world and thoughts, yet I am also connected to more people than ever in my life through Twitter and Facebook – at the same time. But the important component is that I have the power to engage or not engage. I create the reality of my relationships and the context in which they are acceptable to me. And others do likewise.
Of course I don’t have this luxury when my fellow office mates tap me on the shoulder. In those moments I don’t have complete control – at least not without looking like a total jerk. The rules – the norms – of physical community dictate that I should interact with my community, even when I don’t feel like it. And it has been that way since the dawn of human society.
Not so anymore. As a digitalist, I can be a hermit and connected. Picking and choosing which interactions best suit my ego and my desires. It is pure, white-hot consumerism.
When Fools Rush In
My fear is that as the Church we are being swept up in this NEW cultural shift without engaging it correctly. Too often our online strategy is not a strategy at all but a blatant and often poor imitation of the way the world and businesses use the online medium – as a subjection of authority to the individual. Marketers often talk of this great shift from one-way interactions between businesses and corporations and their customers. A new day has dawned. Your customer is in charge, and you must engage them in conversation. The consumer has always dictated product in a sense, but only in so much as the producers made it available. Now it is the consumer that drives everything.
Our job as a church is to create disciples and equip the saints to do the work of the ministry. How do we do that effectively when we’ve never met our people face to face? Is it possible?
Consumerism is not a new problem for the church, especially in America. But I fear the rise of digitalism will make it much more so – and that we will gladly embrace it in the name of going where the people go, without ever actually going to them.
Here are hard and honest questions we should ask ourselves:
Are we doing online ministry and online campuses because they further the Gospel or because people want them?
Is our online strategy full of practical implications but lacking theological ones?
Have we critically examined what implications for the shift to online community are for Gospel formed community?
My inclination is that you have answers to these questions, and I’m not the first to ask them. I’m interested in the answers you’ve come up with.
My next and last post in this series will deal with my thoughts on how we balance the Biblical conception of Christian community with the prevailing culture of the digitalists. Until then, I’d value your feedback on my thoughts here – and your ideas for a path forward.
In case you missed it, here is a great video released last week on the rise of the Internet, called “Did You Know 4.0″.
The statistics in the video are startling for sure. But they confirm what we intuitively already know – as a culture, we’re completely overloaded with information, especially the younger up-and-coming generation.
As the communications director at a church that has a average age of 26 or so, I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the challenges that the Internet creates for us – and the Church at large – in terms of engaging people with the gospel. I’m going to be sharing here some of my thoughts on the subject over a few posts.
In this post I want to discuss why I think the Internet, and specifically social media, is ushering a fresh and new challenge for the church that I don’t think we’ve fully articulated, and that I’m not sure we are adequately prepared to engage. To be clear, I’m figuring out my thoughts on this as I go, and hope to open a healthy dialogue on this topic. Input from you will be much valued.
Post-Modernism is Dying
If you’re like me, much of your ministry training in terms of apologetics has been focused on contextualizing the Gospel for a post-modern mindset. And while this is important, I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that we’re fighting a battle that has already been lost in some respects. While we decry post-moderns, the reality is that the world has pretty much wholesale accepted this philosophy, which has been moving full force since the 1960’s. My concern is that as a church we may be fighting old battles and not seeing the new threats on the horizon.
I’ve been thinking that post-modernism is dying. It’s on it’s last legs. Taking its place is what I’ll call Digitalism. Whereas Post-Modernism (in simplified terms) was the subjection of truth to cultural context, Digitalism is the subjection of truth to personal context.
In a post-modern world, there was still some semblance of universal truth, granted it was solely within the realm of culture. But the reality was that you were still held accountable to the truth by those whom you interacted with within your culture. The reality of day-to-day interactions necessitated that people would call you on your crap and bring you in line with cultural truth. Why? Because whether you liked it or not, you were forced to be exposed to people of varying opinions, and more often than not, the majority opinion – public truth – was still upheld, and you were expected to adhere to it.
Whereas Post-Modernism was the subjection of truth to cultural context, Digitalism is the subjection of truth to personal context.
In the world of Digitalism, we are no longer forced to interact with those who disagree with us. Through our various Internet interactions, especially our social media platforms, we can easily delete friends from our lives who would dare to question our version of reality – our personal truth. For the Digitalists, the ego is supreme. Truth is derived completely from within, all reality is subjectified to personal taste, preference, and experience – and most importantly, only those who carry the same truth, or who are willing to not question that truth, are sought out to become part of community. Digitalists are creating worlds within worlds. Worlds that are not bounded geographically, but instead ideologically.
So my question is: How Does the Church Engage the Digitalists?
Part two of this series will explore some of my thoughts on what we are doing right and what I think we might do better to engage this cultural shift in its early stages. But in the meantime, I’d be very curious to hear your thoughts.
1. Do you believe that post-modernism is dying? If so, what are your thoughts on the concept of digitalism I’ve presented here?
2. What do you see as the important strategies we need to employ as the church to engage the Digitalists?
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thejakers.
There’s a lot of blogging advice out there that claim the short blog post is the best kind. And generally I agree. But I’ve also been rethinking the implications of why we like short blog posts. Here are some reasons I came up with.
In case you missed it, I was privileged to do a series of guest posts on the topic of online church over at 
. In particular, I was responding to his post on 
This is the third and final post in my series on ministry and the internet. You can catch up on the other posts 
This is the second post in a series on doing ministry in a post-Christian, digital society. In the first 
Post-Modernism is Dying