Looking for Love in a Few Wrong Places
The first time I heard the word "blog" was about seven years ago, when a student told me about hers. I had suspected that she had been in an abusive situation, and there was evidence of a damaged heart. That she might freely open her heart on the Internet for anyone to read, like one might open their diary to a trusted friend, astonished me.
Since then, this sort of vulnerability has come to define much of the Internet. "Web 2.0," as it has been called, marks a reinvention of the Internet, and one of the prevailing themes is the social aspect. Social networking venues like Facebook are popular tools for connecting with others. Online games and communities designed to connect strangers with one another are growing as well, offering networks for shared interests, business deals, and dating.
All of these social tools have good, useful purposes. It is wonderful to have open lines of communication like email and instant messaging. Yet, there is much more to this story. It's helpful to understand the benefits these tools can bring us, but imperative that we recognize the complications inherent in them.
Seeking Community
The writer of Hebrews makes it clear that nothing about biblical Christianity is solitary. In Hebrews 10:25 says: "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” So the human desire for community is biblical, and healthy.
As our culture has become more individualized, our need for relational connectedness hasn't changed. If anything, the lack of relational outlets has increased that need, and many have sought to replace them through Internet tools, which can increase connectedness in ways previously impossible.
Since then, this sort of vulnerability has come to define much of the Internet. "Web 2.0," as it has been called, marks a reinvention of the Internet, and one of the prevailing themes is the social aspect. Social networking venues like Facebook are popular tools for connecting with others. Online games and communities designed to connect strangers with one another are growing as well, offering networks for shared interests, business deals, and dating.
All of these social tools have good, useful purposes. It is wonderful to have open lines of communication like email and instant messaging. Yet, there is much more to this story. It's helpful to understand the benefits these tools can bring us, but imperative that we recognize the complications inherent in them.
Seeking Community
The writer of Hebrews makes it clear that nothing about biblical Christianity is solitary. In Hebrews 10:25 says: "Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” So the human desire for community is biblical, and healthy.
As our culture has become more individualized, our need for relational connectedness hasn't changed. If anything, the lack of relational outlets has increased that need, and many have sought to replace them through Internet tools, which can increase connectedness in ways previously impossible.
It is perhaps the last frontier of hope of community for a rising generation. Writer and teacher Jeremy Huggins wrote in a recent essay: "A fellow blogger asked me why I started a blog. After saying something about wanting to keep my friends and family updated on my life, I paused, looked at her, and smiled: ‘Of course, there’s also the issue of finding my wife. The way I figure it, here’s one last resource, one last way to expand my quickly evaporating pool of potential soul mates, so I might as well take advantage of it.’ I laughed after I said that, the way you would if you got caught watching a TV show you condemn in public, as if to indicate that I were just kidding, that I’d never do something so silly, but we both recognized the truth in my statement."
When our friends move away, we follow their blogs. When we want to keep everyone informed of what we are doing, we update our Facebook pages. If we want to recreate with others, we might just as well do so online
But have we fulfilled our obligations as friends by reading each other's blogs? Can we really have conversations through posting on Facebook pages? Or have we mistaken these highly effective means of distributing information as something much more than this?
People exhibit several tendencies when they immerse themselves in the social tools of the Internet that can fool them into believing they have deeper community than they really do.
False Intimacy
How well must you know someone to consider them a friend? Once you've answered that, consider this question: Is knowledge of your friend based solely on information?
Those who turn to the Internet for community often place too much confidence in their knowledge of their online friends. Usually, they don't even realize it.
The Scriptures give us a clear picture of friendship. Exodus describes the intimacy of Moses with the Lord, saying, "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend" (33:11). Proverbs describes the intimacy of friendship as being vulnerable enough to be called to the carpet: "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses" (27:6). Biblical friendship includes more than information exchange, and extends to knowledge of one another in true, lived detail.
Here's the fundamental point of concern: Face-to-face, people see the real me. Eventually, you'll see every side. Online, however, this doesn't happen. I get to choose what is on display. And the thing is, I do—without even realizing it. I can't help but highlight and even embellish aspects of my life that I like, and mask those I find distasteful. Friendship based only on this leans more toward Jeremiah's warning: "Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver ... " (Jeremiah 9:4).
Yet this is not an apparent facet of the social Internet, and it is easy to forget. Reading my friend's blog, I assume that she is telling me the whole story about her reaction to her husband, not just her perspective. When I meet someone in the online game Second Life, my default perception is that they are exactly as they really are, though I know that even my own portrayal of myself isn't the full reality.
Using Internet tools in relationships can bring a false sense of security. While sitting behind a computer it seems to many that they are invulnerable to others online. Yet through the social tools of the Internet we reveal more details about ourselves than we would in face-to-face involvement, feeling safe all the while.
One user of an online dating service shared with me what a huge step it was to move from voice-based instant messaging to real phone calls. Technologically there is no difference; yet, this person perceived one, because she felt protected by her computer.
Tenuous Relationships
All of this false intimacy has one direct result: relationships that are extremely tenuous. When "knowing me" is as simple as a few mouse clicks, how real can the relationship be?
It turns out, not so real. A combination of information overload with a built-in sense of familiarity allows relationships to move at a brisk pace. And though the relationships may move quickly in a virtual world, their depth is questionable.
Many of my Second Life friends have entered into dating relationships with other Second Lifers, often after just a virtual date or two. They may choose to "partner" with their companions after a couple of weeks, only to split up a few weeks later. Similarly, after interacting online with a new Second Life acquaintance for less than an hour, I was invited to join her "Second Life family" as her brother. (I didn't sign up.)
Though Second Life is an extreme example, tenuous relationships are not limited to it. They show up in all of the Web 2.0 venues. Online daters may find their virtual social life racing, only to see things screech to a crawl when it eases into real life. Bloggers may feel a sense of over-familiarity in the responses to their posts. Thus, one new blogger chose to write on his first post, "reading this blog does not make you my friend."
This isn't a new problem. Nick Eicher of God's World Publications (publisher of World magazine) commented that readers have written to Marvin Olasky for years as if he was their good friend, only because they read his columns in every issue. Many of us have had a new acquaintance who was over-eager in the budding friendship. But the new problem is that this fragility isn't one-sided: both blogger and reader may assume that the relationship is deeper than it is.
Living Web-Savvy
Internet tools are intended to facilitate a more efficient living of real life. Ironically, most people seem to find them as much a distraction as a help in that effort. They almost redefine our concept of relationships, giving us new ways of thinking about how we communicate with others.
These new ways are sometimes helpful—a blog can be a wonderful way to keep friends and family updated on news. And social networking sites offer connections, or re-connections, with people we would otherwise lose touch with forever. There are dozens of people I happily keep tabs on, who wouldn’t be a part of my life if it weren't for blogs and Facebook. In this sense, I am able to fulfill the writer of Hebrews' mandate to "continue to meet together" (10:25) in a virtual way.
But sometimes these new concepts are as much hindrance as help. One friend confessed that she struggled with face-to-face intimacy with friends because she had become so accustomed to spilling her life onto her blog that she almost believed that was enough. Another person described how she had such a messed-up "real life" that Second Life was her only alternative.
These examples point to key advice: Christians who blog, who join Facebook, and who play games online must go in with their eyes open and their awareness heightened to the proper functions of these tools, and carefully maintain appropriate boundaries.
All of the Web 2.0 tools have good, useful purposes that Christians can freely employ. I love what these services offer to the Church and Kingdom. In fact, more churches and individual Christians ought to explore how they may deepen their communities through judicious use of the Internet. This article is not intended to be, in any way, an invective against the wonderful tools of the Web.
But the key is the judicious use. Use these tools. Enjoy them. Benefit from them. And take care to remember that there are real, live people on the other side of that virtual interaction. It is those people you really want to know.
Ed Eubanks, Jr. is minister of Hickory Withe Presbyterian Church in Tennessee. Ed is also a writer and occasional contributor to byFaith; find his other writing on the web at: writing.eubankshouse.org. He would be glad for you to connect with him via Facebook or LinkedIn.
What Is a Blog?
The term Web-log eventually became simply "blog," which is a Web page that is something like a diary, with the option for readers to respond without overshadowing the original thought. They are usually based on entries that are time-stamped, and the newest ones are listed first so that readers can easily find new content.
Business writer and cultural thinker Seth Godin humorously defined three different types of blogs. A Cat Blog is both by and for the person blogging, so called because it is about your cat, and your dating life, and other things you're willing to put out in public. Boss Blogs are tools for communicating projects and ideas to a defined circle of people. Viral Blogs have the goal of spreading ideas to new people, expanding the number of those influenced.
Something like 80,000 new blogs appear every day. Blogs are great tools for distributing information to fixed groups, or to the masses. Many use them as writing tools and testing grounds for ideas. Blogs have also become firmly rooted as a serious means of journalistically-styled reporting (though bloggers are not necessarily journalists).
What is Facebook?
A number of Web sites have emerged in the past several years as "social networking" services, and the current leader among these is Facebook. Social networking services allow people to connect with one another through aspects of common ground. You might expand your business connections for new endeavors (www.linkedin.com); connect with former college classmates and other friends (www.facebook.com); "hang out" online with your fellow high-school and middle-school students (www.bebo.com); or discover new artistic talent or promote your own (www.myspace.com).
Recently I did all of the following via social networking services: advised an old friend about whether he should pursue graduate study, played Scrabble with a friend in another state, recommended some names to a fellow pastor looking for a staff member, touched base with a friend from high school for the first time in nearly 20 years, and organized a party, complete with invitations.
Like blogs, social networking services are becoming a part of our mainstream lifestyle. Over the coming years, most may find that they "need" a membership in one or more of these services to maintain their activities and their network of friends.
When our friends move away, we follow their blogs. When we want to keep everyone informed of what we are doing, we update our Facebook pages. If we want to recreate with others, we might just as well do so online
But have we fulfilled our obligations as friends by reading each other's blogs? Can we really have conversations through posting on Facebook pages? Or have we mistaken these highly effective means of distributing information as something much more than this?
People exhibit several tendencies when they immerse themselves in the social tools of the Internet that can fool them into believing they have deeper community than they really do.
False Intimacy
How well must you know someone to consider them a friend? Once you've answered that, consider this question: Is knowledge of your friend based solely on information?
Those who turn to the Internet for community often place too much confidence in their knowledge of their online friends. Usually, they don't even realize it.
The Scriptures give us a clear picture of friendship. Exodus describes the intimacy of Moses with the Lord, saying, "The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend" (33:11). Proverbs describes the intimacy of friendship as being vulnerable enough to be called to the carpet: "Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses" (27:6). Biblical friendship includes more than information exchange, and extends to knowledge of one another in true, lived detail.
Here's the fundamental point of concern: Face-to-face, people see the real me. Eventually, you'll see every side. Online, however, this doesn't happen. I get to choose what is on display. And the thing is, I do—without even realizing it. I can't help but highlight and even embellish aspects of my life that I like, and mask those I find distasteful. Friendship based only on this leans more toward Jeremiah's warning: "Beware of your friends; do not trust your brothers. For every brother is a deceiver ... " (Jeremiah 9:4).
Yet this is not an apparent facet of the social Internet, and it is easy to forget. Reading my friend's blog, I assume that she is telling me the whole story about her reaction to her husband, not just her perspective. When I meet someone in the online game Second Life, my default perception is that they are exactly as they really are, though I know that even my own portrayal of myself isn't the full reality.
Using Internet tools in relationships can bring a false sense of security. While sitting behind a computer it seems to many that they are invulnerable to others online. Yet through the social tools of the Internet we reveal more details about ourselves than we would in face-to-face involvement, feeling safe all the while.
One user of an online dating service shared with me what a huge step it was to move from voice-based instant messaging to real phone calls. Technologically there is no difference; yet, this person perceived one, because she felt protected by her computer.
Tenuous Relationships
All of this false intimacy has one direct result: relationships that are extremely tenuous. When "knowing me" is as simple as a few mouse clicks, how real can the relationship be?
It turns out, not so real. A combination of information overload with a built-in sense of familiarity allows relationships to move at a brisk pace. And though the relationships may move quickly in a virtual world, their depth is questionable.
Many of my Second Life friends have entered into dating relationships with other Second Lifers, often after just a virtual date or two. They may choose to "partner" with their companions after a couple of weeks, only to split up a few weeks later. Similarly, after interacting online with a new Second Life acquaintance for less than an hour, I was invited to join her "Second Life family" as her brother. (I didn't sign up.)
Though Second Life is an extreme example, tenuous relationships are not limited to it. They show up in all of the Web 2.0 venues. Online daters may find their virtual social life racing, only to see things screech to a crawl when it eases into real life. Bloggers may feel a sense of over-familiarity in the responses to their posts. Thus, one new blogger chose to write on his first post, "reading this blog does not make you my friend."
This isn't a new problem. Nick Eicher of God's World Publications (publisher of World magazine) commented that readers have written to Marvin Olasky for years as if he was their good friend, only because they read his columns in every issue. Many of us have had a new acquaintance who was over-eager in the budding friendship. But the new problem is that this fragility isn't one-sided: both blogger and reader may assume that the relationship is deeper than it is.
Living Web-Savvy
Internet tools are intended to facilitate a more efficient living of real life. Ironically, most people seem to find them as much a distraction as a help in that effort. They almost redefine our concept of relationships, giving us new ways of thinking about how we communicate with others.
These new ways are sometimes helpful—a blog can be a wonderful way to keep friends and family updated on news. And social networking sites offer connections, or re-connections, with people we would otherwise lose touch with forever. There are dozens of people I happily keep tabs on, who wouldn’t be a part of my life if it weren't for blogs and Facebook. In this sense, I am able to fulfill the writer of Hebrews' mandate to "continue to meet together" (10:25) in a virtual way.
But sometimes these new concepts are as much hindrance as help. One friend confessed that she struggled with face-to-face intimacy with friends because she had become so accustomed to spilling her life onto her blog that she almost believed that was enough. Another person described how she had such a messed-up "real life" that Second Life was her only alternative.
These examples point to key advice: Christians who blog, who join Facebook, and who play games online must go in with their eyes open and their awareness heightened to the proper functions of these tools, and carefully maintain appropriate boundaries.
All of the Web 2.0 tools have good, useful purposes that Christians can freely employ. I love what these services offer to the Church and Kingdom. In fact, more churches and individual Christians ought to explore how they may deepen their communities through judicious use of the Internet. This article is not intended to be, in any way, an invective against the wonderful tools of the Web.
But the key is the judicious use. Use these tools. Enjoy them. Benefit from them. And take care to remember that there are real, live people on the other side of that virtual interaction. It is those people you really want to know.
Ed Eubanks, Jr. is minister of Hickory Withe Presbyterian Church in Tennessee. Ed is also a writer and occasional contributor to byFaith; find his other writing on the web at: writing.eubankshouse.org. He would be glad for you to connect with him via Facebook or LinkedIn.
What Is a Blog?
The term Web-log eventually became simply "blog," which is a Web page that is something like a diary, with the option for readers to respond without overshadowing the original thought. They are usually based on entries that are time-stamped, and the newest ones are listed first so that readers can easily find new content.
Business writer and cultural thinker Seth Godin humorously defined three different types of blogs. A Cat Blog is both by and for the person blogging, so called because it is about your cat, and your dating life, and other things you're willing to put out in public. Boss Blogs are tools for communicating projects and ideas to a defined circle of people. Viral Blogs have the goal of spreading ideas to new people, expanding the number of those influenced.
Something like 80,000 new blogs appear every day. Blogs are great tools for distributing information to fixed groups, or to the masses. Many use them as writing tools and testing grounds for ideas. Blogs have also become firmly rooted as a serious means of journalistically-styled reporting (though bloggers are not necessarily journalists).
What is Facebook?
A number of Web sites have emerged in the past several years as "social networking" services, and the current leader among these is Facebook. Social networking services allow people to connect with one another through aspects of common ground. You might expand your business connections for new endeavors (www.linkedin.com); connect with former college classmates and other friends (www.facebook.com); "hang out" online with your fellow high-school and middle-school students (www.bebo.com); or discover new artistic talent or promote your own (www.myspace.com).
Recently I did all of the following via social networking services: advised an old friend about whether he should pursue graduate study, played Scrabble with a friend in another state, recommended some names to a fellow pastor looking for a staff member, touched base with a friend from high school for the first time in nearly 20 years, and organized a party, complete with invitations.
Like blogs, social networking services are becoming a part of our mainstream lifestyle. Over the coming years, most may find that they "need" a membership in one or more of these services to maintain their activities and their network of friends.
Comments
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Jenny Griebenow
Taylorsville KY
I'd like to share an anecdote that I think is encouraging, about the value of online forums and what can develop out of them. It's very true that we have to pay attention that we're not experiencing all our most intimate moments online. :-) I do think something would be out of balance there. But...here's my experience. I've been part of a Yahoogroup for ten years now. Over that time, I have met literally thousands of great and wonderful women. This particular organization has conferences every two years. So, I have had the opportunity to meet many of these women in person. We have shared very important parts of our lives with other women who really "get" our concerns. What I've seen develop is more than would probably be expected. When a mother in the group unexpectedly lost her baby at full term, the group raised money and sent two group members to the mother's home. They helped out. They hugged her. They cried with her. They attended her baby's funeral with her. The rest of the group sent funds to help. Then later the group made a quilt for her. And what's amazing....is this was not the only time the group came together for one individual woman. I've seen it happen over and over again -- it actually brings us together to support each other. It's been really incredible, and I thank God for this group of women every day. God has used the internet, in this case, to foster true friendship and practical support and help for others...in the real world.
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Gus Espino
Florida
A word of caution needs to be said about the danger to minors in the use of the Web where predators are trolling for victims. Parents need to supervise the use of the internet.
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Alice
Stone Mountain, Georgia
There is a Reformed site online (SovereignGraceSingles.com) which has been the avenue for many friendships as well as the foundational meeting place for a number of Christian homes. It's been exciting to see how Reformed believers from around the world have shared, prayed, admonished, encouraged, wept, laughed and. . .sometimes even fallen in love and gotten married!!
While I totally agree with San-Diego-Katherine's observations on the local body of believers, sometimes that body is very small and has limits in certain areas of interest or age or male/female peers. The internet can widen the circle within the same denomination, allowing Christian fellowship and communication in cyberspace until a face-to-face meeting is possible.
One of my dearest women friends is someone my age whom I met online. We have corresponded for the four years of our friendship and only met for lunch one time. We communicate deeply and share struggles, family matters for prayer, and new things we're learning from and about our great God. The internet has added this richness to my life.
There is also a (much younger) brother in Christ (met online) now serving in the military in the Asian country where I grew up. It's been fun to share observations about my former homeland as he works there on behalf of the United States and that country. He has Reformed cyberfriends who uphold him in prayer and who rejoice in hearing of how his church in the States is supporting him.
Long before the internet, my grandfather fell in love with a picture of my grandmother. They wrote, met, became engaged and were very happily married for over 50 years! The internet is just a faster means of communication. It can even link members of a local congregation through the "instant messaging" of a prayer chain through critical events in the life of the church.
While I totally agree with San-Diego-Katherine's observations on the local body of believers, sometimes that body is very small and has limits in certain areas of interest or age or male/female peers. The internet can widen the circle within the same denomination, allowing Christian fellowship and communication in cyberspace until a face-to-face meeting is possible.
One of my dearest women friends is someone my age whom I met online. We have corresponded for the four years of our friendship and only met for lunch one time. We communicate deeply and share struggles, family matters for prayer, and new things we're learning from and about our great God. The internet has added this richness to my life.
There is also a (much younger) brother in Christ (met online) now serving in the military in the Asian country where I grew up. It's been fun to share observations about my former homeland as he works there on behalf of the United States and that country. He has Reformed cyberfriends who uphold him in prayer and who rejoice in hearing of how his church in the States is supporting him.
Long before the internet, my grandfather fell in love with a picture of my grandmother. They wrote, met, became engaged and were very happily married for over 50 years! The internet is just a faster means of communication. It can even link members of a local congregation through the "instant messaging" of a prayer chain through critical events in the life of the church.
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Katherine
San Diego
Thanks for the perspective, it helped me not to be so "opinionated". There are extenuating circumstances in many situations and yet the Lord does provide even through the internet!
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Bill
Arizona
I will on the onset admit my cynicism for the internet’s saving persona. Yes, there are many who have been helped in some form or another by blogging (ie Weight Watchers), however, the propensity for our culture to recreate ones personal image, I believe, far out weighs this positive. Daniel Boorstin has certainly pointed out our culture’s fixation on creating “image.” This fixation on image tears at the very fabric of community. It exchanges what is “real” for that which is “created.” Several have suggested that postmodernity should actually be seen as hypermodernity (Keys, Guinness and others) and the idea of blogging as community is a good indicator of this. We all know there is a deceptive illusion that is inherent within internet technology. Let us realize that “truth claims” in this form of communication carries with it no burden of proof. Granted face to face communication can maintain a falsity, but it is far more difficult. May I suggest that we leave blogging as what it is – play and not try to substitute it to real community.
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KATHERINE
SAN dIEGO