the noise destroying our souls

This article below is great.

This is something that absolutely will not let me go so I’ll probably be writing about it and talking about it a lot more even though everyone around me is probably tired of hearing it. I think there is so much more God wants to show us in this. I feel we are on the brink of something we as Christians will be wrestling with for years.

I’m caught in the tensions. Yet again.
Part of me wants to reject technology, the other part can't live without it.
I feel like either an old person or someone on their way to becoming a hermit.

I’m finding within me a growing dissatisfaction with the internet and technology, yet to be able to function in any job or keep up some level of a social life in order to get to face to face, we can’t live without it. But why? I try rejecting where society's seemingly pulling me and find I'm online less and less and only for the bare necessities for my job, and I'm more okay with that. I've wanted to quit facebook or not have to do email for months now but would not be able to keep my job unfortunately it is the most efficient and effective way to get in touch with people in order to sit down face to face; for ministry or support appointments.

But this growing distaste within began when my computer crashed July 2007 and I didn’t own a computer until this last December, December 2008. This was event I thought would kill me and I wasn't about to buy a new laptop at that point, yet this was an event that ended up having a profound impact on my spiritual life.

Something A.W. Tozer calls, "the joy of possessing nothing" where we are released from some of the things we possess that really end up possessing us, and we find our lives become increasingly more free and full of joy.

I went about a year and a half without owning one and this brought a tremendous amount of freedom in my life and order. I was blessed and able to do all of my responsibilities as my roommates were gracious to let me use their computers at night if I ever needed them, as we kept our laptops in the common areas, and then in December 2007, I got an office job at the Med. School to save up money before starting support raising that next summer. Working 8 to 5 in front of a computer every day gave me ample time to get work and extra non work related work completed. It can be done.

I learned a lot about managing my time online and even how much time was necessary for me to spend online. This is different for every person and my personal convictions are not to be imposed on others, yet I found the less preoccupation I had with online and even the shift in my life in checking my email fewer times a day, the more I felt connected and more in tune with my soul.

This taught me several things, mostly what I’ve seen in this process, and even when I got a computer again, was I didn’t feel a need to be on there as much. Sure, I couldn’t neglect responsibilities and a lot of my job requires me to be online to schedule appointments with people, and once I’m on campus, that’s a lot of how we schedule times with students, yet it serves a very specific purpose in my life and has its limits.

This was taken to a deeper level when I was placed in a Mother Teresa book study this last year at Woodcrest. The first chapter was on prayer, silence and solitude and the first few pages nailed me dead on. I realized silence was something I was desperate for and something God desperately wanted me to experience.

I cannot describe what happens in solitude. Only God knows. But I find more and more wanting to escape the noise as I’m seeing what a profound difference this makes in my life, the quality of my soul and our effect on people around us.

As Mother Teresa says, "We need silence to touch souls."

Not only that. We need silence to hear God.

I’ve made a lot of adjustments since I started the Mother Teresa class that ultimately are changing my life. Now, I’m experiencing more liberation as I feel God is giving me a deeper desire to seek Him in solitude in ways I never knew were possible. And waiting for Him to speak. Waiting for His presence. Waiting just to experience Him, Himself. In the fullness of His beauty… something we can’t find when we’re surrounded by noise.

Noise for us today is the constant bombardment we have with unanswered emails, the unchecked facebook messages, the text messages, the sound of another voicemail, the phone ringing, someone else’s phone ringing, the constant pulling and tugging… it’s destroying our souls.

But the thing is our souls are dying a slow death.

All of these things seem so natural to us now. We don't even see their effect. I now keep my phone on silent 95% of the time and it is amazing. This idea came to me when I was reading the chapter on prayer and solitude and I went the rest of my day with it on silent, (checking here and there as my phone is like my right hand for support raising), yet just the quieter it was without hearing every little interruption of a phone call or a text, is astounding.

Or even, walking. We can’t even walk without having noise in our ears. Someone the other day was shocked when she asked where my ipod was. I don’t have one. What? How do you sit here in coffee shops and work all day? how are you always outside working on stuff outside of Starbucks. She seriously could not fathom how I could “make” it. This is not to say ipods are wrong or listening to music is wrong, I do put my headphones in to listen to music depending on what I’m working on. I love having music on in the car, I love having it on in the house. But I’m finding when it’s off... The difference is incredible. I love my day off when I can turn my phone off completely. Free of obligations and able to be fully present to the here and now.

This is not to say all the ways we communicate and stay in touch are wrong or bad. They serve a purpose. We are relational beings. We have more and more ways to stay connected these days and those are a blessing. They are great. They are amazing. I love them just as much too. I just find them continually coming up dry.

I spend a lot of time meeting with people all day and I love it. I love meeting people for support appointments. I love meeting with students. I’m finding that face-to-face time is even rare for some of our students these days. The fact that I want to sit down and have coffee with them and take interest in their life is almost alarming. They’re used to living their whole lives on facebook. A deep conversation takes place chatting online. They share their deepest thoughts on a blog or note on facebook but wouldn’t dare share them with someone in person.

This isn’t meant as an indictment, it’s just the reality I’m experiencing. And am trying to come to terms with.

It kills community.

Authentic community is so rich. Which is why I find myself so dissatisfied by anything online and what it has to offer. And deeply grieving the deteriorating quality of relationships I'm witnessing for those in this next generation, who as Willard says below, shy away from skin to skin, face to face raw encounters with people. Why? Because it is way more of a risk. And it takes time. Work. Energy. They write it off as not worth it. It only leaves them more and more lonely. Less loved. And less known.

Online communication is not bad. It just has to be put in its place, but it can’t replace having community and people intimately involved in your life because as Dallas Willard says below, it only fosters a false sense of self and we’re left wondering who we are.

A friend and I coined many terms for facebook, one of them being "the facebook mask." The facebook mask is why we are so preoccupied with our profile picture. It feeds what image we want to project to the world by what we post, what we say, what we share and how we say it. it’s not real. Even our best attempts at authenticity will always be tainted online. We're all guilty of this, myself included. The issue here is much deeper than we realize. Why does all this matter? Why is this so?

What is the solution?

I feel this is a journey we all must take. For it is a journey in reclaiming our souls amidst all the ways our world is destroying our souls. This is going to look different for every person, yet I feel one of the beautiful mysteries about God is how He relates and speaks to us each uniquely and specifically. I’m finding for me personally, the more time I spend in solitude away from the world and the pressures and distractions, the more I know who I really am and am able to operate out of that self in all of my relationships. This includes online. We all have the choice. I can choose how I will operate there. Out of a false self. Or out of who I really am.

Yet a lot of things online or other technology only leave us with an illusion. That we are on the throne of our own lives.

We choose when to respond. We choose how we want to look. We manufacture and reproduce and edit and change what self may be socially acceptable and call it good. I have a lot of convictions about this mostly because I’m finding more and more the people around me who have an incredible impact and are some of the most beautiful godly people I know, are people who have been transformed in the presence of God, and find ways to get away with Him in ways that the world and even the Christian society would say is “taking it too far” or “taking this whole God thing too seriously.”

Being a follower of Christ means we are called to live radically different. This does not mean we're not online. I will counter a lot of what I have said and say it is important for us as Christ followers to engage our society and where we are at. 80% of why I text or facebook is because it is the most relevant way to reach the generation I desire to reach. The generation I apparently am a part of but find myself wanting to disassociate from at times lol. So, it is important for us to blog, text, twitter, whatever so we are not some Christian bubble that doesn't communicate or engage our culture. We just need to make sure these do not come at the detriment of our intimacy and connection with God and our intimacy and connection with other people.

And I mean, I love the internet. Hear me on this one. I just have less of a desire to be on here now, and now it's more like once a day for a couple hours at night and even that I dread sometimes. Ask anyone, I'm an avid emailer and obviously love to blog. But I have limits even on those. With my blog, I have this set up specifically to share things God is teaching me and how they intersect with my life, but I made a guideline for myself a few years ago that I would not post anything personal that I had not already talked about with at least one other person face to face so that I wouldn't be tempted to use this as my only way to process things without human interaction. It may sound strict but it has afforded me well because it forces me to not place anything on here I wouldn't talk about with those in my life, thus potentially damaging authentic relationship.

I've always spent time alone with God, but there is such a profound difference between "being alone" and "solitude and silence." They are worlds apart. I feel more and more a stranger here. As my soul is awakening to the God I never knew, a God I have just come to known by tender experiences of the soul, but cannot describe. A God we find not in the noise, but in the silence. Along with our deep need for the presence of God in our lives to simply enjoy and commune there, we also are filled with a deep need for our lives to be transformed there...

The only way to know our true selves is in the presence of God…
There, as Brennan Manning says, every other identity becomes an illusion…

Ironically, after this long rant, and my seemingly going back to the 1920s ways, I was glad to find something of this nature on facebook, a friend posted this recently:

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In an interview with Relevant magazine, Dallas Willard talks about the connection between technology, sabbath, spiritual disciplines and authentic community.

"We live in a world where technology… creates a false sense of intimacy and a false sense of sense of self. People today are being constantly pulled by things that they submit themselves to. That’s the great temptation and the great problem for many people today. Most don’t even notice the temptation, but their lives are being pulled apart by it. And when it comes to issues of exercising character and will, it simply isn’t there for them. They can only respond to things that are pulling at them.

We have a generation of young people now who are living in a constant state of “dropped out-ness” from the real world and from its history and from community and from the integrity of themselves. …And they don’t even know that …Most of them don’t know what community means because community means assuming responsibility for other people and that means paying attention and not following your own will but submitting your will and giving up the world of intimacy and power you have in the little consumer world that you have created… When they look community in the face and realize that it means raw, skin to skin contact with other people for whom you have become responsible…that’s when they back away.

[Interviewer: what recommendations do you have for someone who is struggling with this?] You have to think in terms of radical disciplines that will return them out of this world of distraction they’re living in and help them find the center, and those are solitude and silence. You have to take yourself out of the place of running your world. And there is nothing that I know of that can do that other than the practice of lengthy solitude and silence. That will allow you to begin to understand what Sabbath means. But most people can’t approach Sabbath because they’re so revved up and so distracted by so many things that they couldn’t even begin to think about it… once you have begun to experience solitude and silence, you discover that you actually have a soul and that there is a God. Then you can begin to practice Sabbath and that will enable you to re-enter community. You can’t have community without Sabbath."

Thoughts?