It is spring 2020 so the living is indoors, and shelter-in-place is now shifting into a mild- mannered house-arrest.
Church goers like me have been forced out of the warm confines of our local house of worship. Ask me publicly, is that ok?
My answer is a sort of culturally preordained acceptance. “It is what it is,” is my secular answer.
“God is good,” is my put-on-my church clothes answer.
But be real. It is miserable to not see friends. It is particularly galling that my isolation is by government edict. Now, I have a little window on spiritual life through a television screen.
When church services and group Bible studies are disconnected from place and persons into a series of window screens and bad digital representations of my friends, I am disgruntled.
Be clear however, it is not the window screens I hate. This is not a technophobic screed.
When I go online to see my daughter in Istanbul, it is charming: almost as good as seeing her in person. Indeed, I see her a ton more via Facebook than I would if she lived nearby. There is value in cutting out the middleman of distance.
What I don’t like is the government forcing a behavior. I feel like I am giving into its dictate when I go to online church.
Should I use my fingers to ‘vote’ for a government- mandated church service on YouTube, Facebook or Zoom?
Have I just become a sycophant to the mores forced by mainstream media (MSM)? I don’t like MSM calling the shots, which they seem to be doing in this case. Besides, it is very self-interested of them to push more of us onto the “glue-tube” and big advertising counts.
The dictate is draining out my passions. Church, small groups, and community are my passions, but virtual church service as approved by national edict and reinforced by MSM is sour before I even tune-in. I feel like tune-in or drop-out.
But! Through clenched teeth, I admit that church of any kind is church by God’s grace. As Wikipedia tells me, a church is a local congregation of people in a Christian gathering that allows for gracious pleasures and observances.
So, I have a bitter foretaste before I tune in. I rue some of the things that I experience.
One example is the silliness of a small-group leader pointing from his Zoom screen-box in the upper-left portion of the screen to a participant in a box below him, or to his right.
It takes a bit of spatial deftness to anticipate which direction is which on the screen relative to yourself.
I sit there recalling the Brady Bunch and their maid Alice looking at each other with glances up, down, left & right from their 9 screen boxes during the 1-minute theme song.
Okay, I can see that the boxes of congregation is mildly cute in a small group meeting. We strain to look at the occasional child wandering into the field of vision, a pet barking and what is on the book shelf. There is some personal connection amidst the general disconnection.
One less than adequate moment in the online service for Redeemer Lincoln Square is its virtual passing-of-the-peace.
In regular times, this ritual entails eye contact, a handshake, kiss or hug, and verbal greeting. For most people in modern Manhattan, that is enough connecting.
But the online rendition is a 60-second free for all. It is a pell mell rush to connect to everyone you hope is there.
“Hello, everyone!” But this doesn’t really connect to anyone in particular.
I feel worse for the wear. I am reminded of how I feel at the regular service when no-one notices me, and I get no peace passed onto me. And I don’t pass it to anyone else.
The result online is that I am less peaceful than before. Mass peace is just mass society without the small groups.
I still have a few pleasures on Sunday morning.
It is good—if not that great—to at least see the names of my friends on a Sunday morning.
I admit that it is terrific to have live hymns to be sung together and good news preached in the comfort of my own living-room.
I can now see why a supply exists to match churches to the Sunday morning couch-potato market. Did you know that Joel Osteen’s biggest market is the New York City metropolitan area?
Still, the whole morning is like a drink of warm lemon-aid. How I wish for an app that would turn-off the virus and our governor-general in the State of New York.
