Connectivity vs Community
Connectivity vs Community
Social media is making us less social, more flimsily connected and isolated from each other.
Guest Writer: my husband, Justin Bradbury
Email was born in 1971, and the origins of the Internet go back to the 1970s, too. Yet its full, worldwide, birth came in 1991. Today, communication comes thick and fast. Many answers and huge productivity are just a tap of the finger away.
Recently, Meg and I have been meditating on these words of Jesus,
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, NIV).
Connect. Stay connected. Bear fruit.
It is not radical for me to say — indeed, it’s an easy win for me to say it — that technology does not build human community, at least neither community nor connection of any real depth necessarily. Instead, it’s community and connection at arms’ length.
Such a virtual community cannot be a truly embracing, close-up, vulnerable place.
We speak of poor connectivity when our technology coverage is threatened. More patchy, still, can be our human relationships and our true-worth relationship with God and ourselves.
Instability and insecurity stalk us by our own consent. Technology is both a boon and a threat in our hands.
Social media is making us less social, more flimsily connected and isolated from each other.
Answers are indeed, at our fingertips. Yet we are more nervous, more uncertain, less rooted, and assured.
To remain, as Jesus invites, is to fix our hope and eyes firmly on the One who does not falter. The One who has proved His worth.
Jesus is our true image bearer. He shows us what it means, in action, to live displaying the image of God.
To become more like Him requires us to stay put.
It is a position of trust and rest. It is a place where lasting fruit is prepared and ripens. It is a place where we are loved and love.
As image bearers, in Jesus, we get to be connected to our lasting place of belonging. We get to receive our true self. Our God-given fullest image of what it means to be human.
This is to be known and accepted in the person and presence of Jesus. Such a constant union is God’s gift.
As image bearers, our part is to receive our identity as children of the living God. And I think we all know that sometimes our greatest effort is to stay put in the arms of the One who truly loves us. Not wriggling, squirming, resisting our true worth, Jesus-image.
At a time when artificial intelligence is offering much — and perhaps threatening much equally — the question as to proving our identity in a new age where the passport, drivers’ licence level of proof may well be questioned, surely identity as image bearers, being found in Jesus, has an even greater urgency.
So, be loved, receive, accept, connect, stay connected, and bear much lasting fruit.
