Have you ever wondered why teenage girls spend so long on the phone—even to friends that they last saw at school only 5 minutes ago? Or why when they get in from school they need to get on to Facebook or MSN in order to ‘chat’ to the friends that they’re talking to on their mobiles, even though they last saw them 5 minutes ago at school.? Have you ever watched an episode of Big Brother and wondered why on earth any sensible person would watch a bunch of people living in a house, night after night after night?
The answer, I think, is the Trinity.
God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is love. And by understanding God as three in one we can understand that within God there is relationship. We have been created in the image of God and therefore we are created for relationship. There is a sense in which we crave relationships—because we have been made that way. But the society in which we live, here in London in 2008, seems to be pulling us away from meaningful relationships.
Families spend less and less time together as parents are forced into a situation where both parents work shifts in order to pay the bills as the cost of living continues to rise. Others choose to work long hours in pursuit of the ideal job, car, house... We live next to people who we don't know. We don't get involved with them and they don't get involved with us - and they'll have moved on within a few months anyway. It is a sad reflection on our society that we have to teach our children not to talk to strangers. We have created a society in which people are too afraid to care: last week a young child was seen crawling out of a Mothercare store and towards their car park - this was seen by a passerby whose response was not to pick up the child but to alert a member of staff - to pick up the child could have led to all kinds of repercussions - we conclude that it's best just not to get involved.
And yet we are created to be in relationships, to have friends, to be part of a community. What is our culture's answer? Not to reflect critically on itself but to create virtual friends and communities. To give us reality TV so each summer we can spend weeks 'getting to know' and sharing a house with a bunch of Big Brother hopefuls.
But are virtual relationships and communities a bad thing? Does it matter whether I talk to someone face to face or over the Internet? What do you think?
