Next-Wave Ezine > church & culture

Review: Shane Hipps' Flickering Pixels
By John La Grou

(4)

I've been a fan of technology all my life. In fact, I’m an unapologetic techno-ecclesio geek – convinced that technology can be a helpful tool for community enhancement and effectiveness. I’m always looking for ideas which encourage a healthy mix of technology and humanity. I was hoping for this kind of instructive balance in the book Flickering Pixels, but I’m having a hard time finding it.

Before I share my concerns, I want to express an affinity with this book’s heart-felt presentation of Spirit. Pixels’ author, Shane Hipps, reminds us that “the Bible is not primarily a collection of objective propositions… by acknowledging and owning the limits of our own subjectivity, our soul remains open and limber, available for growth, development, and discovery.” Shane helps us to celebrate an inclusive, thoughtful, balanced theology.

Pixels echoes what I think many of us are sensing – that while Jesus remains at the center of our heart and faith, we are recognizing and abandoning many forms of inherited religious pretense. It’s a theology that favors the essential qualities of love and inclusion based on principles of organic community, a lavish view of Spirit, and faith that reflects a “daring humility” always ready to admit “I might be wrong.”

Shane writes, “Daring humility shuns boredom, complacency, and endless arguments. Daring humility is honest enough to admit that we see things in a mirror dimly, and bold enough to live a life of deep conviction anyway.”

Pixels questions the virtuality of writing itself – describing how the textual can be confused with the spiritual. I resonate with Shane here. Spirit can be eclipsed by our tendency to elevate rationalization and reductionism – a church built with hands – a God built with logic. Spirit propels our senses towards the unseen realities which live beyond the text, and Pixels does a good job pointing us in that direction (2Cor4:18).

As a thoughtful work of practical theology, Flickering Pixels is a treasure and worth the price of admission alone. But where Pixels shines in a generous spirituality, I believe it suffers in objectivity and balance towards technology.

Shane is an Anabaptist pastor – a Mennonite. In our views of Spirit, we share much in common. But with respect to technology, we seem to be polar opposites. For example, I’ve employed five generations of mobile communication since my original 1993 Motorola MicroTAC. By contrast, Shane has never owned a cell phone – until just a few weeks ago (link).

Pixels is sub-titled “how technology shapes your faith.” But does the author have sufficient technology experience to make an authoritative analysis? More importantly, does Pixels offer a balanced analysis of the way technology can negatively and positively shape faith and spiritual community? On both counts, I feel that Pixels misses its target.

Throughout the book are weakly supported intellectual shortcuts that deliver generalities in place of thorough analysis. Many of the book’s most important points read far more like subjective bias than objective inquiry. Shane’s criticism of technology too often reduces to grand conclusions with little or no qualification – lacking even obligatory auxiliary verbs (such as “may, might, could,” etc.)

A few examples…

“Our digital diet sedates the left brain, leaving it in a state of hypnotic stupor”

“The technology of writing, regardless of context, weakens and destroys tribal bonds and profoundly amplifies the value of the individual”

“Digital social networking inoculates people against the desire to be physically present with others in real social networks”

‘The Internet encourages knowledge gathering without considering meaningful connections’ [pp]

“Blogs are ill-suited for deep-level analysis and thoughtful reasoning”

“Electronic culture disembodies and separates us from those closest to us”

“The Internet makes a flat stone of the mind and skips it across the surface of the world’s information ocean”

“Digital space is the most anemic form of social interaction available”

“You cannot separate the medium from the message”

… and many more.

Let’s briefly explore three of these claims.

1.) Does the Internet really “encourage knowledge gathering without considering meaningful connections?” Is this universal truth, partial truth, bromide, or simply author opinion? Shane doesn’t say, so the reader is left to assume that this statement (and many others like it) is authoritative, perhaps unequivocal.

In reality, Shane wrote his book (a form of virtual technology) with the intention of making “meaningful connections” into the lives of his readers. Likewise, anyone reading this Internet-based book review is intentionally seeking deeper connection and understanding into the interplay of humanity and technology. And I would suggest that any good-willed participation in on-line spiritual conversation shows an intentionality to contribute, learn, and be an active part of the global body.

Recently, Shane has been promoting his book all over the Internet (link, link, link, link, link, Shane’s Blog). But this is contradictory: using the Internet to make meaningful connections with people to explain how the Internet hinders meaningful connections.

Meaningful human connection is primarily about healthy intentionality and only peripherally about the technology which enables it. Virtual networks can facilitate sustained, meaningful, two-way (interpersonal) and multi-way (communal / missional) connections in ways that are beneficial to faith and physical community in general – in ways that books cannot approach.

2.) Is digital space really the “most anemic form of social interaction available?” I guess it depends on one’s definition of “social interaction.” I would think that two-thousand people staring at a giant TV screen in a multi-site video mega church is a better example of anemic social interaction. By contrast, on-line communication engages people globally via intentional one-on-one / one-on-many / many-on-one / many-on-many interaction.

Alas, physical religious gathering is often little more than a venue for podium lectures or stage-focused entertainment.

Moreover, both virtual and physical ecclesia can exhibit a wide range of “anemia” – or worse. Dozens of books have been written for and about victims of toxic religious community. Let’s be fair: no form of community is immune from social imbalances.

3.) Does digital social networking really “inoculate people against the desire to be physically present with others in real social networks?” First, Shane presumes (via Informal Fallacy) that a “real” social network is defined exclusively by physical presence – an awkward assumption in light of today’s virtual-physical youth culture. Second, I know a great many adults whose experience flatly contradicts Shane’s assertion. For interested readers, I share a personal story of how physical and virtual presence compliment and synergize: link. Moreover, I see in my son’s teenage tribe (digital natives, all of them) an emerging integration – a generally healthy interplay – of physical and virtual.

Six of the book’s seventeen chapters (8, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17) are said to focus on a “constructive way forward” or an “appreciation of the gifts gained by our electronic age.” But, hard as I’ve tried, I don’t see it. With the exception of a single sentence encouraging intentionality, I perceive the overall tone in chapter 14 as one of apprehensiveness and suspicion towards technology, while the other five chapters are generally non-technology focused. Many, if not most, of the remaining eleven chapters take a decidedly anti-technology posture.

I would remind Shane that the urge to invent and create is woven into our DNA. Technological achievement reflects a natural and unstoppable God-given creativity. Think Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Leibniz, Linnaeus, Newton, Pascal, Faraday, Babbage, Mendel, Pasteur, Kelvin, Fleming, Planck, Millikan, Lemaitre, Peacocke, Smalley…

Shane has been speaking recently at clergy-oriented conferences. His story has clearly tapped into apprehensiveness towards technology. And no wonder. Virtual technologies are facilitating a healthy subversion of traditional religious leadership roles. These technologies are driving a revolutionary emancipation of individual and communal engagement outside of long-established institutional models. Pixels may indeed represent a kind of “shibboleth” of collective religious technophobia.

Think about it. Of what value is physically proximate information (e.g., stage-centric pastor) when the average person can now access the best sermons, preaching, teaching, and cross-referenced commentary on-line – at their convenience, 24 - 7 - 365?

Instead of assembling ourselves together to sit through a religious lecture (which we now find on-line), physical gatherings are transformed into truly interactive events. Our chairs are no longer fixed facing forward towards a central clergy figure. We all have something to contribute, together. “Church” is redefined from a place of centralized information transfer to a distributed gathering which fosters authentic collaboration – in many ways mirroring the multi-way virtual experience.

Virtuality is becoming as much a part of humanity as books, newspapers, and water-cooler banter. Its global reach will continue to grow exponentially. The question is not “should I use technology?” The question is “how do I integrate technology in a healthy, balanced manner that positively augments personal and communal experience?” If you can’t find an answer to that question, perhaps the virtual world is not for you. And that’s perfectly healthy, as well. I’m the first to encourage a break with technology if causes us to lose our personal or communal equilibrium.

Gutenberg-meets-Luther was about the emancipation of religious knowledge. Religion-meets-microprocessor is about the emancipation of spiritual community: the virtual-ecclesia. Virtual tools are making us more connected, not less – more aware of our place in the global church, not less. Used wisely, these tools strengthen physical relationship rather than detract from it. In my experience, and the experiences of many in this rapidly expanding global-virtual tribe, the synergy of combined virtual and face-to-face community is far more generative than one without the other.

Flickering Pixels reminds us that physically embodied relationship is the core expression of ecclesia. And this is vitally important. Yet Pixels all but fails to recognize the rich potential of combined face-to-face and virtual interaction. All well-intentioned connection fosters community. Healthy physical and virtual community works together as one seamless, continuous idea. In much the same way that Gutenberg’s press added profound new dimensions to our shared understanding, so virtual tools are opening up profound new opportunities for shared social access.

Vineyard founder John Wimber once said, “I do not care how you structure your churches, as long as you do not impose those structures on your grandchildren.”

If we try to understand virtual-ecclesiae through the lens of inherited proximity models (religious buildings, podium lectures, attractional entertainment, stage-centricity, etc.), the spiritual vigor of emerging on-line communities will elude us.

We should also recognize that virtual communication tools will continue to evolve and proliferate at a mind-boggling pace. Shared notions of “human presence” are being re-defined by each new digital generation. And these generations will wrestle with the same intensity of questions we are now facing, but at a far deeper level than we can imagine.

The conversation is just getting started.

A husband, father, and lifelong technology enthusiast, John built crystal radios at 7 years old and by the end of high school had created most of the electronics for a professional audio recording studio. In his 20’s he helped start what is today the world’s third largest computer company. His Silicon Valley offices added virtual networking in 1986 and never looked back. John co-edited volume one the award-winning Wikiklesia Project and gave a 2009 TEDTalk on a new life-saving technology developed by one of the companies he co-founded. John also chairs a software consortium whose licensed algorithms are used on over 100 million audio CDs produced each year, while his audio hardware is found throughout the world in leading recording studios and concert halls. He currently serves on college and university technical advisory boards and is a student of life, energy, and sustainability (JL at JPS dot NET, Twitter @johnlagrou).

(4)