You can imagine it, can't you, when some company releases a new calendar app. There in some downtown design studio (probably in a loft), where a few attractive people sit, flooded with natural light and shallow depth of field filming. All of a sudden one of them gets a message from 'Tim' saying "hey, want to get coffee at Mecca at 3pm tomorrow?" In comes the incredible functionality of this calendar app to immediately input that data from your phone and save an event for you.
Simple. Beautiful. Superfluous.
Because, in reality, the one thing I've never had is an influx of messages from friends, clearly outlining details of an upcoming event. Nor a schedule that is so empty that my biggest hassle is inputting that data into my calendar.
If my week was that free, why would it be difficult to remember those things? And if I'm getting such clear and straight-forward messages from friends, why do I need that technology in the first place?
The issue I really need solved is a synthesizing of data from Facebook events, conversations, and wall posts; text messages; multiple email accounts; not to mention conversations with friends and events in the mail. And all of it is data buried deep down amidst jokes and conversations, sometimes no more than a passing comment, or a tentative plan. Life is much more three dimensional than the simple world the advertising portrays.
And on top of that, I don't need to just know if I have space in my calendar to see someone, I need to somehow balance my time across a myriad of relationships that exist in all sorts of different worlds. Not to mention that the person who has asked to see me is most likely a Gen Y friend who knows as much about committing to plans as they do about fax machines.
But we want an organized life, so we buy the app and cross our fingers that it will cause everything else to fall into place.
Frank Chimero has written in a similar vein in an article titled 'No New Tools'. He says "My world is laden with bad tools, because my culture is simultaneously obsessed with productivity and novelty. It is a perfect vector for fixation, because the failure of a tool only feeds the desire for new tools. Meaning, I get to feel honorable in my vigilant search for productivity while scratching my itch for novelty."
The Christian world (perhaps especially the Christian bookshop) plays a song in the same key. It's easy to separate the realities of discipleship into simple rhetoric.
I'm very willing to agree to the concepts of fighting sin and pursuing holiness as long as they stay in abstracts and generalized applications. I will nod along and sing along and write pithy phrases on my hand. But unless I trace the truths to real, three dimensional scenarios I won't be changed at all. I'll be waiting for a man dressed in black to come up to me in an alleyway and say "choose sin over Jesus", when in reality, the spiritual battle is much more subtle than that. I'll be entirely defenseless when temptations slither up to me, dressed in some delight to my eyes, talking a jagged talk about how "when you think about it, sin is a kind of holiness", or that it's natural, or I need it, or deserve it.
We can agree to any number of Christian virtues as long as they live in a world where evangelism is an exciting story, not an awkward social experience. Where supporting ministries doesn't actually mean depriving myself of anything I wanted to buy, and suffering is a broad term that means just not being the absolute coolest person people have met, not where it requires pain, sadness, or sacrifice.
Even this can become part of the problem. Any elucidation of the truth can stop short of its goal to change us and express itself in our lives. We have an obligation to vigilance that we won't let triumphant songs, compelling sermons, and quotable sections of books terminate on themselves as if they were the end.
Because none of us lives in a commercial or a book, but your gritty three-dimensional world is where you'll have to live the Christian life. Your unsatisfying job and limited funds, your awkward church family and your group of friends, where mentioning Jesus never feels natural. Your particular vices and embarrassing failings, your specific preferences, your commute, your energy levels. It'll all take place as you wear that clothes you own, and walk on those familiar streets and talk to people you know in varying degrees.
But unlike the app, the gospel has limitless 'functionality' beyond the simplistic scenarios we imagine it. It goes long and deep in the realities of your life, speaking to every corner of your experience and wonderfully illuminating and transforming the real substance of our existence. It's that straight talking friend and the realistic counselor.
The call to us is to take a good look at our lives, to realise that this is the stage upon which we trust the promises of God, and then to get on with doing just that.
Sam Manchester is currently a theology student with an inescapable sociology degree behind him. In an attempt to reconcile the two, he reflects and writes about their coalescence in everyday life.
Sam's archive of articles may be viewed at www.pressserviceinternational.org/sam-manchester.html