Face to Face

I hope that you can catch the irony of my use of technology to share this quote. I read The Presence of the Kingdom by Jacques Ellul today. A book that was recommended by an adjunct in the theology department whom I affectionately refer to as Dr. T (no longer at DTS). In a chapter titled The Problem With Communication we read:

"There never was a time when people have talked so much about man: there never was a time when so little has been said to man. The reason for this is that people know that it is futile to speak to him. Conditions are such that "man" has disappeared. He remains in the form of the consumer, the workman, the citizen, the reader, the partisan, the producer, or the bourgeois. Some people wave the flag and others are internationalists, but in all this, man as man has disappeared-- yet it is to him alone that one can really speak, it is with him alone that one can communicate.

Finally, we can no longer communicate with man, because the only intellectual method of expression is a technical one. The fact that the intelligence is obliged to use the technical channel breaks personal relations, because there is no possibility of contact between two human beings along this line. Communication transcends technics because it can only take place where to human beings are fully engaged in a real conversation. Now this is precisely what the intellectual technique of the present day both avoids and prevents...

It is impossible to rediscover man artificially and in the exceptional elements of life. Our whole civilization needs to be examined, and by each person, on the plane of his individual destiny, which may not be heroic, but which is certainly a human destiny, and cannot exist without genuine communication with the human beings that surround him...

The form of non-communication is particularly pernicious, particularly invisible: for the men of our day, when they want to meet one another, put their trust in the post office, the railway, or the newspaper (written 1967) that is to say, precisely in that which breaks and kills the very power of finding each other as human beings, in the reality of flesh and blood."
(Ellul, 96)

In a class with Dr. Barry Jones that I took this Spring we talked a lot about technology and communication. In particular the ways in which the use of technology in communication is not neutral but inherently evil (I was particularly vocal in this regard). In his book Ellul associates the dehumanizing influence of technology in communication with, "the 'will-to-death', one of the forms of universal suicide toward which Satan is gradually leading man." (Ibid.)

No use of any technological medium can ever improve communication between human beings. The highest form of communication will always be one human speaking (or signing) to another, face to face. Once technology is introduced, whether it be a pen, a qwerty keyboard, a phone call, or a skype session, the potential power in our communication has been irrevocably compromised.

That's why trends like this are troubling. In fact I would suggest (and you can disagree) that the church must reject the use of technology in communication. Particularly in worship, but also in its common life. Sermons should be spoken without amplification (no mics), video projection, digital recording, or hologramification. Our worship spaces, if they are to be power filled, should be technology free. The electrification of our worship is a poor substitute for dependence upon the Holy Spirit who alone can empower a sermon and communicate truth between persons. Pastors should visit their flock not email them. I'm not advocating technophobia. Our society is so thoroughly saturated by it that it is impossible/stupid to avoid it all together. I am just suggesting that we consider carefully when an where we allow technology to be used.