30 Apr
Facebook and the Incarnation
I have a twenty-something friend who recently declared that a single event signaled Facebook’s imminent demise: his mother friended him.
Bizarre annoyances are nothing new for Facebook. How many times must I hit ignore in response to a barrage of loony requests? No, thank you, I don’t want to be a pirate or join in a snowball fight or poke anyone with a broccoli stalk or plant a geranium in someone’s (virtual) garden. However, this motherly intrusion unnerved my friend on quite a different level - his virtual reality collided with real life in disturbing ways.
These collisions and the dilemmas that accompany are everyday occurrences now. How much personal information do I reveal in my blog? What kind of online persona do I take on? Who exactly is my friend? The more our life develops on the virtual plane, the more we will struggle to stay deeply entrenched in fundamental human realities: our true self, flesh-and-blood relationships, particular people and places.
Unfortunately, even with all our “connections” and social networking and even with the glut of self-revealing blog posts, we are a generation often lacking deep roots. It is too easy to resist friendships that require us to show (or give) our unmasked self. It is too easy to live on the surface, rarely sinking into a specific neighborhood or a particular community long enough to truly know or love it. We transition so fast. We have so many options. If one site or person doesn’t suit us, well, we just hop to another.
Against this trend, we have the way of Jesus. Jesus came into this world, taking on all the beauty and limitations of a human body (“The Word became flesh…” John 1:14a), choosing to inhabit a particular space and a particular culture (“…and lived among us.” John 1:14b). Our old Christian word for this truth is incarnation, being “embodied in the flesh.”
For thirty-some years, Jesus worked his craft and traveled the land. He served his clan and learned in the synagogue. When it was time for his voice to go public, Jesus’ first mission was narrow. Jesus first came for the people of Israel (Matt. 15:24). Certainly, the mission grew from there, but Jesus intentionally began with the people He knew.
Jesus’ incarnation calls us to get specific: to know a city, to know its ills and idols, its joys and glory; to know the names on a street; to know a friend’s full story. Jesus instructed us to go into His world in His way. What place are we to inhabit? What people are we to live among? Even if our time in a spot is short, we can give our full self, engaged and present for whatever time we have. Virtual reality, good as it might be, is not the same as incarnational reality.
If we wish to understand [a place] it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. G.K. Chesterton
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Filed in: Journey, Purpose, Relationship
About the Author
Winn is a pastor and the author of Restless Faith, Let God: The Transforming Wisdom of Francois Fenelon and the upcoming Holy Curiosity: Facing Jesus’ Provocative Questions. Winn enjoys the music of Amos Lee and Josh Rouse, the literary work of Eugene Peterson and John Steinbeck, hiking, and independent coffee shops serving fair-trade roasts. Winn’s greatest joy, however, is good conversations with his wife Miska and wrestling with their two boys Wyatt and Seth. You can connect with Winn online at winncollier.com.
