return to simplicity
Yesterday I was sitting in my office with the television on mute (VH1 classic was showing a re-run of a Rush concert), my Mac powerbook was playing music in the background from my iPod. My Razor cell phone was next to my Dell Laptop on which I was writing out my teaching for the weekend, having an IM conversation with my fellow pastor Britton about the teaching, and sorting through emails while I wrote and IM’ed. Then I called my wife on my cell phone (no dialing just telling it to call her). I then drove home listening to a podcast of Miroslav Volf, and had my cell phone headset on to receive phone calls in case they came in.
I am connected. I am wireless, HD, digital video … technology for me is what the toaster was for my parent's generation. Common. It is all around me, and nothing impresses me any more. It is even more so for the younger generation. I never used computers much until high school. Now my 10 year old nephew knows more about computers than I ever could. There is little that impresses the younger generation any more … we have seen it all. Flat screens, holographic images, cars that drive themselves, special effects … boring!
Technology is simply our underwear, a necessary part of the wardrobe.
In the midst of all of this a desire for simplicity is creeping up. With all of the technology that surrounded me yesterday the best part of my day was after I got home. No cell phone ringing, only the sound of my kids laughter ringing in my ears as we wrestled on the living room floor. No images of Rush in concert, rather grilling pork chops on the grill. No music from the iPod, just sweet conversation with my wife over dinner. No IM-ing, instead we went to the cone shop to get an ice cream cone. No email, just my kids splashing in the bathtub before bed. No podcast about theology, rather we sat with our close friends on the patio until 10:30 PM.
Simplicity.
I have noticed that in our world simplicity is a hard thing to get. You really have to work at it. Even more frightening is that most of us don’t want it anyway. It is something we run from. We want to stay connected. We have to be available. There are some people who I think clip the cell phones to their lips while they are in the shower to make sure they don’t miss a call (by the way if you are at lunch with someone, and your phone rings and you answer it only to tell the person calling you cannot talk … you are telling the person you are with and the person calling you that they are both in different ways unimportant). We need technology, we crave it desperately. It makes us feel secure … and without it comes the most dreaded of all things. Silence.
Someone said to me the other day about their faith community gatherings, “If we had silence in our gatherings for more than 20 seconds people would be running for the door.” Silence is scary. Simplicity is scary. Both force us to lower walls and allow ourselves and others to be seen without the cell phone surgically attached to the hip.
The interesting thing that I have seen is that in many ways the church has missed this desire for simplicity. We make things so complex. I was in a church gathering recently that rivaled the Pink Floyd Laser-Light show I once saw. It was riddled with technology and complexity ... there was so much noise in the end you could not hear anything. Simplicity was lost. Technology had won. The message of the gathering was on the disabled list.
Technology has it’s place. It has become the new dictator of our world. However, we need to be people who learn how to “cut the cord” and return to stillness, to quietness, to contemplation, and to simplicity. When we gather, maybe we should look much more like a group of friends sitting on a patio chatting with one another, than a pastor overloaded with sound, media, and technology in his office.
We need to rediscover silence. We need to return to simplicity.