by Rob Culhane

“‘Bye and thanks for the ride”. It was my favourite expression I’d shoot as I closed the car door as a teenager hitch hiking down the east coast of Australia and around Tasmania in the late 1970’s. I wouldn’t let my kids do it now, but it’s time to drag my favourite expression out of the archives and use it again. “‘Bye, and thanks for the ride FB.” Why would I be leaving this social networking platform when millions have joined up?

Yes, I’ve met some wonderful people on FB and I’ve reconnected with others. I’ve joined some stimulating groups, looked at photos of the extended family who live interstate and been amused with video clips which I would not otherwise have seen. But then there is the sound of dishes clattering in the kitchen and the deeper metallic sound of pots being scrubbed which alerts me that my wife is cleaning up again while I sit starring at the computer screen. It would appear that I am busy, undertaking important business and I might be, but often its just browsing Facebook.

A major reason for leaving is the cacophony of voices which are thrown at me each time I log in. It seems like everyone has a voice these days; they are encouraged to SMS their thoughts and prognostications to the radio station talk back host. Occasionally they are read out. A television panel show invites their audience to SMS their views to the discussion. The ‘letters to the editor’ section in the newspaper continues to thrive in spite of falling newspaper sales. Politicians pride themselves on their availability to listen to the public. Everyone has a voice, particularly on FB. But blogs were not enough. Even FB was not enough. We have Twitter now. I’ve also noticed that most of what passes as information is merely another eruption of narcissism breaking out again. FB has too many voices, opinions, views, news, theological perspectives and they are all urgently promoted. Let’s let time and life wear these views and test them. Others use the site to market their business, books, conferences and anything else which will be seen to give them the edge over their Christian brothers and sisters. This ‘chatter’ is like the multi tracked voices on top of one another to suggest what madness felt like that Pink Floyd used on their monumental album, Dark Side of the Moon to introduce a song. (I think it was the song, ‘Brain Damage’.) I want to silence the FB chatter; withdrawal into the cyber wilderness and listen to silence. Those who know the associations attached to silence, withdrawal and deserts will understand what I’m driving at. Elijah was a slow learner and in this regard so am I.

It’s not as if I am going to give up using the internet and become a member of an Amish community or some counterpart in Australia. No, I’ll continue to surf the internet, use Wikipedia and get my emails and do the banking. I might even look at the occasional blog, but most I find are disappointing. In contrast to this age of hyper technology, the humble book continues to survive, almost like a protected species in a national park, the library. There are for people like me, they are my closest friends. Yes they betray their provenance by being a cultural and class package and are a relic of a bygone age, but they are both sensual and visual; scented with its own particular smell of glue and paper. They are little boxes of a parallel universe silenced by FB. Books require time to read. Some demand that they are studied; others that we memorise their contents. They shape our lives, our outlook and entertain us. They also take time to traverse, wandering thoughtfully through their pages with pencil in hand to mark and ruler to underline. In contrast, FB robs our time to do sustained reading. My fourteen old daughter cannot remember yesterday’s post by her best friend but she will remember for the rest of her days, Huxley’s Brave New World.

Many will be able to negate my arguments by saying I should be better disciplined with my time. And this leads quite naturally into another reason why I’m leaving FB. Discipline, or more precisely ‘spiritual discipline’. In ancient times it was normal for people to fast from something if they wanted to use that internalised discipline to sharpen their focus on looking intently for God in their life and to deepen their prayer life. I would like to do the same, seeking God in all things, in all one’s moment of the day, requires consistent discipline and the practice of a certain mindfulness where a person quite consciously sits back and takes the time to make the effort and observe what you are actually thinking and what awareness I might have of God in that particular situation. I noticed that to do this is not particularly easy if my mind is scattered by trivial thoughts or agitated by irrelevant concerns. FB feeds my thought life with often trivial things which lodge and then become a distraction. So its time to empty out my mind and set a sentry on the frontier looking for the first sign of God’s inbreaking into my suburban existence. If I’m busy peering at my computer screen on FB I might miss those moments. I’ve noticed on reflection that my sensitivity to such things is dulled; instead my head is full of other preoccupations.

Although I am a minister of religion this is not in itself, the reason I am leaving. Quite the opposite in fact. FB has helped to keep me in touch with many in my congregation. I’ve enjoyed the photos put up by a parishioner of a social event the day after it occurred. But life is too short to be diverted by certain things which are quite innocuous and amusing to someone else. St Benedict wrote in his Rule, ‘Keep death before you’ (ch 4). He was not trying to be morbid, but to highlight that an awareness of our mortality has a way of focusing our attention on what’s really important. For the Christian it is seeking the Kingdom of God. Facebook is the kingdom of the self and provideds a very crowded stage on which others rehearse their lines. I find that today’s culture is corrosive and ingeniously subtle in its ability to distract, shape and occasionally hold me hostage from my passion to love God with all my heart. A saying by a monk in a bygone era still retains a certain relevance. He said: ‘Guard your heart’. The heart is the place of our passion which is easily disturbed by false affection, allurement or issues. I read the words each week in the Prayer Book: “ . . . ‘cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you . . .’ (Prayer of Preparation, A Prayer Book for Australia, p. 101 & p. 119.) Not only will God’s Spirit be needing to work overtime with me, but I think that there are steps I can make to reduce the amount of material which pollutes my heart, whether it is in the form of glossy advertising material, alluring pictures of scantily dressed women promoting underwear, or Facebook and its advertisements on the side of the page offering ‘hot singles’. (I suspect that each FB user’s profile is analysed and then targetted with ads suitable to their demographic profile.)

My peers have a focus on the mastery of the mind with the development of correct doctrine; they deftly critique the world or the falsity of someone else’s teaching or doctrine. Yet while they are busy constructing a tidy theological system and identifying their enemies, I suspect that their hearts have become seduced by the technological powers of this age, its conveniences and the culture of the corporate world in which they work. Marketing methodologies are uncritically accepted by many in churches; the seduction that big is better and status more important than character is ignored. Style triumphs over substance and opinion is confused with fact. These incursions of culture into our lives are issues which should not for a moment be under estimated. FB feeds and extends to some extent, this culture. The ancient wisdom of earlier Christians in the fourth century was that this world was a shipwreck from which we had to swim from as its inhabitants drowned.

It’s not realistic to head up north (in any case, the more cynical would say the developers have got there first), or to the outback to escape our materialistic culture which pampers to the self, but it is possible to limit our contact with ‘the world’ and define the terms of engagement with it. Sometimes simply surviving as a Christian is the number one thing on my day’s agenda so that a certain quality is able to flow across into my various professional tasks and responsibilities each day. FB appears benign, but it is another cultural cancer I can live without. It is a billboard for the town which John Bunyan called, ‘Vanity’ in his book, The Pilgrim’s Progress. The chapter in which the hero of his story, Christian, enters into the town Vanity where a fair is running every day of the year is one which every thoughtful Christian should read at least once in their lives. (Chapter 6.)

Some questions to refect on: do you ever consider how much influence popular culture is having on your life with God?

Has the concept of holiness been jettisoned by the modern church and when it is raised, is it parodied or dismissed as being too ‘Puritan’? What is the loss to our church communities when a commitment to holiness is lost?

It is not as if this will mean the end of the world. There is email, and most of the world uses the telephone, or texting, or to be really counter cultural, the hand written letter.

See http://www.robculhane.com/

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