C. S. Lewis enlightens his audience in his piece, “Membership,” about the problem with the modern world. Lewis says, ". . . the modern world says to us out loud, ‘You may be religious when you are alone,’ it adds under its breath, ‘and I will see to it that you are never alone.’ To make Christianity a private affair while banishing all privacy is to relegate it to the rainbow’s end or the Greek calends" (HUM 103 Reader 127).
“Greek calends,” is a time that will never arrive. It would seem that the world says that it is okay to practice our religion when we are not engaged with others, but the world never gives us a break from itself. Even now as I sit here writing this paper, my phone is next to me and for some odd reason, I feel compelled to check it for messages, even though I know there will be none for me to check. Our world, in my opinion, is overly connected. By this I mean that we can hop on social media, talk to someone who is half across the world and feel as though they are right next to us. While this can seem all well and good, we need to keep in mind that they are not actually right next to us. Our culture has become individualistic to the point where some believe that we do not need God because we have everything we need or we can make that which we do not yet have. When did we get so far off track? When we live in a society where we think we have no need God or refuse to even let His precious name touch our impish ears, how can we see His saving grace? What might we miss in this fallen world, rather, what might we miss when we leave our fallen world?
Both C. S. Lewis and Wendell Berry speak on the importance of membership. Membership is this idea that we are all one in the body of Christ and when one person is experiencing some form of impairment, the entire body of Christ is suffering. So if we are not actively engaging with those around us, what are we going to miss? Recently, I saw a commercial involving two different families in which the parents’ attention was not directed towards their children, but instead, their eyes were glued to the ever-beckoning tiny screen. They missed outon their son’s first steps and the opportunity to teach their daughter how to ride her bike. Why is it that our society has become obsessed with this so-called technological connectivity? Based on personal experience and Stephen Marche’s “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” I believe that having a society heavily rooted in technology is unhealthy.
The influence of technology reaches outside the screen. When working on my computer, I know that I can undo mistakes by holding down CTRL and Z. I constantly find myself trying to undo my mistakes by searching for the illusive CTRL + Z. Marche wrote, “We have never been more detached from one another or lonelier. In a world consumed by ever more novel modes of socializing, we have less and less actual society. We live in an accelerating contradiction: the more connected we become, the lonelier we are” (HUM 103 Reader 155). In addition, he remarks, “The price of self-determination and self-reliance has often been loneliness. But Americans have always been willing to pay that price” (HUM 103 Reader 156). In short, Marche is saying that we bring our loneliness upon ourselves and even though we know we will have to pay the price of loneliness, some may think, “What is a little loneliness compared to further advancement in technology?”
Back in the day, phones were only used for calling someone else’s landline, but now our phones have the ability to do just about anything including, but not limited to having access to the internet. We find it easier to send a text message than to talk to the person on the phone or even face-to-face. The same goes for e-mail -- we find it more convenient to send an email than to write a letter by hand, sending it into the world to find its recipient. I wanted to surprise my sister by sending her a letter, rather than wishing her a happy birthday through Facebook. When she called me last night, I could “hear” her smiling on the phone when she said got it in the mail that day. Reflecting on this, I realized that we value things such as a handwritten letter because it shows how much we care. We took the time to sit down and write; in doing so, we show that person that they stand out from others.
Marche later comments on the words of Jaron Lanier, “Facebook imprisons us in the business of self-presenting, and this, in his mind, is the site’s crucial and fatally unacceptable downside” (HUM 103 Reader 160). While reading this it made me think, “Whoa … that sounds like entombment…” Entombment it not ideal for membership. I wonder if several members of the body of Christ were experiencing entombment if it would cause the entire body to be in a state of entombment. Andy Crouch wrote in his article “Steve Jobs: The Secular Prophet,” "In January 2010, in the depths of the Great Recession, the very month when unemployment breached 10% for the first time in a generation, Apple introduced the iPad. Politically, militarily, economically, the decade was defined by disappointment after disappointment—but technologically, it was defined by a series of elegantly produced events in which Steve Jobs, commanding more attention and publicity each time, strode on stage with a miracle in his pocket" (HUM 103 Reader 162).
When we were in a state of despair, Steve Jobs gave us yet again another form of individualistic connectivity. Without realizing it, in a time where we needed to be with one another, Steve Jobs gave us a way to escape from reality and in a sense allowed us to push our responsibilities aside for a slice of some new technology. Technology gives us loneliness; Jesus gives us life. Marche quotes John Cacioppo, the director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago saying, “‘we found that loneliness somehow penetrated the deepest recesses of the cell to alter the way genes were being expressed. Loneliness affects not only the brain, then, but that basic process of DNA transcription. When you are lonely, your whole body is lonely” (HUM 103 Reader 158). Being lonely is not in the description of a healthy body.
Wendell Berry wrote “Health is Membership,” and in his writing he informs his readers that “the word ‘health,’ in fact, comes from the same Indo-European root as ‘heal,’ ‘whole,’ and ‘holy.’ To be healthy is literally to be whole; to heal is to make whole” (HUM 103 Reader 180). He also talks about how our healing can only happen between our spirit and God. He comments further and says “… health is not divided.” To be healthy in the body of Christ, it is crucial that we understand that we are all working together for one goal: to be one living, moving, breathing, body of Christ. Luke 11:17 says, “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: ‘Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against itself will fall….’” When we are in a constant state of individualism we being to divide the body that we are an essential part of.
Berry says, “I believe that health is wholeness.” If what he says true, that health is membership, then the only way to be healthy, whole and holy is to be as one in the body of Christ. If we do not acknowledge that membership is essential to living, we may wake up one day and realize that we missed out on life.
