Like Every Reluctant Prophet

I gave up Facebook for Lent. I am probably not unique in this decision. I surmised as much from an offhanded reference in a recent New York Times article about a pastor using Lent to call big banks to repentance. As the pastor in the article suggested by lumping Facebook with caffeine, giving up Facebook for Lent is probably just a sign of the times for most Christians, a modernization of the standard list of soft addictions. For me, however, it is tied up in a whole web of spiritual meaning. If I had to summarize the larger issue that my abstinence from Facebook symbolizes, I would call it a "prophetic stance against endless technological progress."

In other words, giving up Facebook has everything to do with the sort of large-scale social repentance that the pastor in the article linked with boycotting Bank of America. Most people would not jump to this conclusion. My friends tend to see any spirituality-impeding or life-draining effects of technological gadgets as an individual failure of will power. They would not see it as the fault of a social atmosphere that normalizes and celebrates the use of technology to distract us from the more tactile, physically active, emotionally intimate and reflective aspects of life. And they would certainly not see it as any fault of the wondrous technology itself. But I propose that recent technological "tools" like cell phones, Facebook, iPods and iEverything (there is, after all, a program called "iLife") are real impediments to the flourishing of our souls and the growth of our spirits.

I have long complained like a cantankerous old lady about how these newfangled gadgets are taking the aesthetics out of life and distracting us from deeper relationships. But I venture to attach the word "prophetic" to my anti-technology stance because I have started to get the strange sense that God is calling me to assert it in a public and methodical way. This calling is not altogether welcome. I would much rather just keep jabbering in my rocking chair and smacking my imaginary dentures.

Over spring break, in the absence of "social networking" distractions, I have buried myself in stories about female leaders in the history of American Methodism. Many of them had dreams that called them to preach. Women living during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were considered to have little or no innate authority to preach, so such dreams were difficult to grapple with. Some had recurring dreams that they stood before great crowds at revivals. Others underwent life-threatening illnesses during which they dreamt of encountering an angel who told them that they could not die yet, for they must preach God's word to the world.

There was no denying these dreams, much as the women might have wished to do. They followed the typical pattern of Old Testament prophets who object at first to the impossibility of their commission, but eventually accept that they have no choice but to fulfill it. Sometimes God sends messengers in unpopular forms, as in the case of female preachers in the 18th and 19th centuries. At other times, the message itself is unpopular, as in the case of Jeremiah with his lonesome "one man band," singing of judgment for the sins of Israel and resignation to a long exile in Babylon. Whether the message or the medium—or both—are deemed inappropriate by worldly standards, it seems that prophets' very marginality serves as confirmation that they come from God. They are, indeed, not "of this world."

I have had my own dreams of preaching lately. In one, I was preaching in a traditional church setting for the first time. My sermon was about how modern technology was ruining our practice of Christianity. I was so nervous that I almost emerged from a backstage area without the traditional minister's vestments that I am so eager to wear someday. My mother stopped me and helped me get dressed. It felt like a cross between a big concert performance and my wedding day.

When I got to the pulpit, I immediately ruined any sense of liturgical drama by making a sheepish comment about being nervous. Then I sat down on an elevated seat behind the pulpit and folded my legs like a Buddhist lama, which I realized ruined the cool look of my vestments. But none of this mattered when I began my sermon, and everything came out clearly, concisely, and graciously. I knew exactly what I needed to say. I said that technological gadgets distract us from a more soulful engagement with life. I proclaimed the things that we are losing to technology: the tactile, focused experience of putting on albums or CDs and listening all the way through to an artist's vision, the physical process of going to the library to do research in books and print journals instead of zooming around cyberspace, the necessity of getting to know your neighbors so that you will have someone to chat with on the porch in the evening rather than chatting on Facebook, the habit of taking a walk in the nearby woods to clear your head instead of watching YouTube videos. The problem with the newest technology is precisely that it makes everything so convenient. It's so convenient to distract ourselves from those quiet moments in the day, from making a good slow-cooking meal, or better yet, growing our own slow-sprouting vegetables. We don't even have to work as hard for relationships. Who thinks anymore of putting a physical pen to paper to write their deepest feelings and quirkiest insights for a friend? And if we don't have the attention span or the devotion to make beautiful things for other people, how much less will we have to do the Beautiful for God?

To be sure, there is nothing wrong with human technology in itself—pens and papers are technology, as are pots and pans, as are domesticated crops. The human gift for inventing new ways of interacting with the world is surely God-given. But we have begun to build a new Tower of Babel with our lust for technological progress. We constantly pursue ever more perfect ways of dominating our world, and it seems we are finally succeeding: that is, we are forgetting how to move through the world as a gift from God, with humility, attentiveness and compassion. Instead, we move through the world as something that we fabricated and we control, as a set of conveniences, thrills and distractions. If we keep this up, God will have no choice but to topple the monument of technological progress that we are trying to build to the sky. We will run out of fossil fuels. We will realize we no longer have the option of causing any more destruction to the ozone layer or dumping any more pollutants in our soil and water. The freak tornados, torrential rains, droughts and tsunamis will make our iLives irrelevant as they destroy our homes, livelihoods and sources of sustenance.

That's what I preach in my dreams, more or less. But I always wake up before I finish. I don't know what the end should be, or whether it will find everyone glaring at me in disdain or weeping in repentance. Or could they even be singing praises? Will my sermon end with the hope of restoration?

One dream did portray my listeners' reactions. I was telling a group of people a story about a city boy's deep longing for the forest. I was describing his one glorious day of union with nature when he visited a female cousin in the country. And some of the people gathered around me were indeed weeping. As I told the story, I realized that I was telling the story of all the people in that room. A story about a forest we all longed for, but couldn't quite make it back to. We were, in fact, sitting in the bedroom of the house where I used to live in the middle of the forest in Oakland County. I explained that when the boy visited his cousin here, it was different—the house was like a part of the forest, an extension of it. Now, the windows had high-tech shades and we were sealed off from it. Our technology had become not a part of our communion with God's creation, but a way of insulating ourselves from it. Before I could actually begin describing the boy's adventure in the forest, everyone had fallen asleep.

I do not have to worry as much as earlier Methodist women about being seen as an acceptable messenger. Yet I certainly worry that the content of my message will seem altogether inappropriate to modern society. And if I come bearing an unpopular message, the questionable status of a female messenger is automatically reactivated. I run the risk of confirming that women are linked with irrationality, nature worship, and retrogressive attitudes. Which does not help to promote the idea that all humans, both women and men, need more imaginative, non-rational discourse, more closeness to nature, and a greater appreciation of traditional ways of life. Nonetheless, if indeed I am commissioned with a message—and Lord knows that dreams are the best way to get my attention!—I must speak it regardless of how people receive it. As I've sung in one of my favorite hymns from Bolivia, the Song of Jeremiah,

"Tengo que gritar / Tengo que arriesgar / Ay de mi si no lo hago!"

("I have to shout / I have to risk myself / Woe unto me if I do not!")