“INSTANT INFORMATION”

                                                 Sermon by Pastor Dan Wilkie

                                                            June 13, 2010

                                    First Congregational United Church of Christ

                                                   Grand Junction, Colorado

                                                  Scripture:  Mark 12:28-34

            I want to start by asking how many of you have computers?  Cell Phones? Smart Phones?  How many of you use Face Book?  My Space?  How many of you Twitter?  Text?  Email?

            All you have to do is look around the room here, or drive down the highway, or walk into almost any house and you will see many of the above ways of accessing information.  In an instant you can know about news events anywhere in the world.  You can find out what your friends are doing or receive photographs downloaded from a smart phone almost as they happen. 

            Need a travel or road report?  Go to the browser on your Blackberry, Droid, or I-phone and log in to the “Weather Channel” or almost any state’s department of transportation and you can have that information in seconds; information, which is updated sometimes every five minutes if conditions are severe. 

            Want to know what a friend is wearing or not wearing school?  Text them.  Want to know how class was, or what is happening after school?  Text them.  Going to be late coming home from school, or your plans with friends have changed and need to let your parents know.  Text them. 

            Texting in fact is one of the most popular ways right now of sharing information in the world.  National government statistics show that the average teenager sends between 2000 and 6000 texts per month.  Since texting began just a few short years ago it has created its own acronyms and code language to make the messages easy to understand and short to send. 

            For instance, if a friend sends you more information about bodily functions than you would like to know, you might type back TMI or 411; which means “too much information”.  Don’t want a friend to send those explicit photos or share information about the date last night because your parents are around?  Text back POS “Parent Over Shoulder."  Your parents leave the room, you might type back PG or 99, which means parents Gone.  Receive something really funny you might text back LOL or “laugh out loud”. 

            While all this instant information can be very valuable to have, there are some downsides.  Many schools are finding that young peoples writing and spelling skills are suffering.  In fact professors at MIT have been instructed to do lectures in only eight word sentences because that is what most students are now able to grasp.  They have found that if professors use twelve to twenty word sentences they are losing the students ability to grasp what they are teaching.  One professor did note; however, that he prefers the more terse writing style as compared to some of the wordier writings that some of his students have given him in previous years. 

            The American Psychiatric Association has released several studies questioning the affects this manner of communication may have on youth in their later years citing several issues. 

            One of the issues is the constant communication; at a time when young people should be developing their own autonomy and abilities to think and act on their own without the influence of parents or peers, they are constantly checking in with peers or parents before they make decisions. 

            Another concern is the ability to feel and express emotion.  The study cited a young couple; who fought and apologized totally by text messaging; how can you know the apology is true without face-to-face contact?  It is very easy to say the words but without seeing the eye contact and body language; which are the traditional ways of know someone is truly repentant does it mean the same things?  They also cited the example of Text Bullying where students are often bullied through information; true or not, which is put out about them; which casts a negative light about them.  Many of you may have read about the young girl who shared the story of her first sexual encounter with a friend, who in turn shared it with others who were not so friendly; totally embarrassed and unable to face her friends, the young woman committed suicide. Another concern is that some young people find themselves feeling pressured to have technology they often would rather not have due to peer pressure – if they don’t have it they are not cool, or part of the in group. 

            The American Medical Association has also raised concerns about serious sleep deprivation in young people who text at all hours causing serious risks to their over all health; let alone the risks to them while driving. 

            In all fairness texting is not the only problem, there are adult predators surfing places like my space, or face book looking for vulnerable young people they can take advantage of.  In a story I watch on 48 hours hard evidence, a young man was murdered, and a young woman psychologically scarred because of such an event.  It seems that this older man, having problems relating to his wife of many years, began surfing my space looking for conversation.  Being insecure of himself, he posed as a much younger man, a marine serving in Iraq and started corresponding with a young woman many states away from his own.  Overtime casual on line chats became an inappropriate on line sexual relationship.  She began sending this man rather revealing pictures of herself, realizing that this relationship had gone too far, he confessed that he had not been telling her the truth and did eventually send pictures of himself as he really was to her.  Of course she was devastated and began to say horrible things about him.  Eventually a coworker of his and one of his friends found out about the issue and he also started corresponding with the young woman (he was much closer to her age).  Jealousy intervened, along with some cruel and harassing emails and he snapped killing the other man he worked with. He went on trial for murder, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Everyone involved, a victim of information that was manipulated and misused.

            Information can be a good thing, but improperly used, or used without integrity and respect it can sometimes be a dangerous thing as well.  

            By now as I look around the room at each of you, I am guessing that most of you are wondering what exactly all this talk about technology and information and its upsides and downsides has to do with faith or any kind of relationship to God. 

            The answer is that in our secular lives this kind of information is important to help us live our daily lives by helping us do those things we need to do like appointments, or traveling or caring for tasks that need to be taken care of.  This kind of information also helps us to be aware of harm and helps us evaluate risk.  But depending too much on technology and instant information to build a life of faith probably doesn’t serve us well. You see faith is different; faith is just not a task we schedule and set an appointment for like church on Sunday.  It is not a job we try to do as part of a to do list; rather faith is a certain kind of relationship with God, and that makes the information and what we need different.  Just like a relationship with a spouse or friend, we learn so that we can live with them, understand them, be part of life with them and they us.  This isn’t information you look up, you gain this information face to face, day by day, moment by moment through emotional intimacy in the sharing of life’s moments.  In this way we are like the Scribe who asked Jesus the question about the “First Commandment”.  He didn’t just look up the information somewhere; he looked Jesus in the eye, face to face and asked the questions.  As Jesus answered him “The first commandment is to love God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength and the second is that you love your neighbor as you love yourself.”  I am sure the Scribe could see and feel all of Jesus passion and love as he replied “Teacher you have truly taught that there is no other but God, and that Loving God with one’s heart, mind, soul, body and spirit and loving one’s neighbor as one’s self are more important than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices”.  In understanding all these things Jesus confirmed his relationship by telling him “You are close to the Kingdom of God”.  This understanding of passion and love is not something one can get through a text message or an email, to fully understand it, one must experience it, feel it, see it.

            Now we don’t know what the Scribe did with this information, or how his life was changed for sure, but what we do know is that he had a new relationship with Jesus, and that he had a definite understanding of what was expected of him in order to be close to the Kingdom of God. 

            Perhaps; what really matters to God in the long term, are the things we do with all the information that surrounds us everyday.  Do we use it carefully to build up, to enhance relationship and life, to build community, or do we use it to take advantage of, to destroy?  Isn’t this after all the lesson in Mark’s Gospel, loving God and our Neighbor? 

            The answers lie in each of our hearts and spirits, and each of us must answer these questions ourselves. 

            Just exactly what are we going to do?

Amen!