How Steve Jobs (and my messed up heart) Helps Me Avoid My Neighbor

Hello Friends!

I realize it has been quite some time since I wrote on the blog! But no news means you’ve been busy, right? In my case, I have been extremely busy and it has been such a wonderful second year.

What is leading me to write now is a series of thoughts on relationships I have had while working in college ministry for the past year and seven months. Although I am not the first to process these thoughts they are still worth sharing. I am also speaking to myself in all of these things. As much as I have observed what I am sharing in the environment around me, I see it in my own life as well. And for the record, I am not knocking social media in it’s entirety or technology, but I think we can all admit there is a connectivity epidemic among us.

One of the many reasons I love working for RUF is that RUF believes that God works through ordinary means. Ordinary, small, mundane. I would say that 50% of my job is doing everyday things with college students. There’s not much glamour present, but there’s a lot of life. To put it in perspective, let me expand.

We (I am including myself and my generation as well as the college age generation) are the generations of the “upgrade.” We do not commit to anyone or anything unless we believe it to be, in that moment, at it’s peak and in that peak it must be worthy of associating with. We have relationships that are pending, constantly in the “ability of being replaced” zone. We know this because it is hard for us to eat lunch with our friend when we could eat lunch with our iPhone while our friend across the table eats lunch with their iPhone. Both being delusional about their ability to connect with the world, or each other for that matter, considering connectivity feels more real when you get “notifications” instead of hugs.

Connecting is hard for us.

Committing to people is hard for us.

Heck, even committing to moments is hard.

I watch movies while I scroll through Instagram while I text my friend who is not in the room while I sit next to my friend who is in the room who is doing the exact same thing. It is hard to say in that moment that we have anything close to a shared experience.

I realize that we are conditioning ourselves to function mentally at a much faster pace than real life. Our ability to multitask while doing mindless tasks is amazing. Because, of this, simply walking down a street or standing in a line seems far too slow paced for my now conditioned hamster wheel of a mind so I literally don’t know what to do with my hands apart from my phone. We live vicariously through technology, broadcasting the groomed profile of “who we think we should be” and the version of ourselves “who appears to have it together.” Now standing in that very line, the one that was unbearable before, can become a picture on Facebook with a flattering filter with a quote that can be affirmed for the next couple of hours as others scroll through their social media feeds as they stand in similar lines and walk down streets. We live through technology. And when technology finally betrays us, which it will, and leaves us feeling emptier than before, which it will, there are a couple of responses that seem to be more prevalent in my generation. One response is to become cynical and to use social media as an ironic device to mock people who believe it to have any ability to connect authentically. Another response is to write off social media completely and to return to the in-person interactions where you feel more lost than before. In both of these scenarios, we are lost when it comes to connecting with people.

We are unhappy where we are because we think our life is going to receive an upgrade. “Why invest in this person/these people/this experience when I could meet/have new/better one(s)?” We are afraid to put down roots because roots mean you’re staying. And staying, to us: the real movers and shakers of our time, sounds like death. And it is. Let me explain.

Jesus ensures us when we pick up our cross and follow him into the mundane business of loving people, it will feel like death.

It will feel slow; so slow that you have no idea if there has been any movement at all.

People are unpredictable and are not available on demand. You can’t scroll through people’s past, burdens, pain or trust. You have to actually be in that moment. Stay in that moment. Commit to the person your attention and your time.

As Christians, it is imperative that we know the difference between living in the moment and living for the moment. The world tells us to live for the now. There is actually a current campaign running by Pepsi that literally contains those words as its slogan: live for the now. We know this is foolish. I honestly believe that even those who are not Christians could attest that “today” is not a good enough reason to get out of bed, if it is an end in and of itself.

But the key in all of this, I think, is being in the moment.

As our social media and technology take us out of the moment, they provide escape mechanisms. While this can be useful for avoiding pain (even though that will come back to bite in the end) it is also avoiding the real life that is happening a few feet around the screen that we are so devoted to and the life we have groomed into existence. So the problem isn’t really social media or technology. It is our hearts. Our hearts are so afraid of pain or loss or vulnerability that we have no idea how to even comprehend eating a sandwich across the table from our roommate without “escaping” regularly throughout the conversation to ensure the talk maintains surface depth.

Jesus ate a lot of meals. In fact, I would say almost 50% of his time on earth was spent eating across from really messed up people. But I think he was on to something. Because when we sit down to share a meal with someone, or a drink or ice cream or whatever, we are committing to them. We are committing to them for the remainder of the time that it takes to consume whatever it is we have ordered. We are telling them that we chose to spend time looking them in the eye, sharing a moment that is so mundane; it literally happens every day three times a day. Or maybe it’s going to the grocery store or doing laundry or waiting for a class in a common area--But in those moments, those small ordinary moments, if we can stay with people, stay with someone long enough to build trust and long enough to really hear…we might connect and we might see that this is what it looks like to love your neighbor.

Thank you for supporting me as I share really mundane moments with college kids. It’s where Jesus meets us.

Mark 12:28-31

²⁸ And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” ²⁹ Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. ³⁰ And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ ³¹ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”