He Called Us Friends
Ps Mark laments how technology is "thinning" relationships and exhorts us to build relationships with God and one another.
When I was a junior in college, I moved “off campus” to live with some Christian friends. It was the only year I did so, and it was somewhat exhilarating to rent an apartment for the first time in my life, and as a new Christian it was a great year of fellowship and camaraderie. We did everything together—sports and studies, late night conversations about girls and life and politics and the future.
But as that year came to a close I realise that we had created a bit of a Christian bubble, I missed the evangelistic opportunities that came from living in the dormitory. So I decided to move back. I had to put my name into the system to be selected for a random roommate. They assigned me a room in Gifford Hall and a roommate named Youssef from Iran.
Our relationship started off well, I remember the first night laying in our bunks, I was on top he was on bottom. We laid down on our beds, turned off the lights but just started talking about life. We probably talked for about 2 hours, we talked about faith—he was a Muslim and I told him my whole Christian testimony. I remember thinking that things were going great, that Youssef and I were going to be friends.
What I didn’t know, was that night would be the last conversation of more than 5 minutes that Youssef and I ever had that year. You see Youssef, as I found out the next night, was part of an online gaming community. I don’t know what the game was, this was 1994, I think the internet had just started. It was just words scrolling on the computer screen in different colours. But he would start playing it at night, and he would play it all night, every night, until about 7am, which is when I would get up for class. So almost literally every day, my alarm would go off and I would get up for class—and then he would head to bed. Somehow he would then occasionally wake up for his classes about 10 minutes before they started, go to class, then come back and continue sleeping.
Remembering it now, I’ve got questions I want to ask Youssef—what is it about the game that draws you in? Why not break out of it every once in a while? Wouldn’t it be better to talk to a live person (like me!!), than whatever you are typing to the people through the computer?
We are living in a day and age where relationships have become increasingly minimal. A good adjective for modern relationships is “thin”. A lot of that has to do with technology. Technology was supposed to bring the world together, instead it often tries to turn us into zombies.
MIT Professor Sherry Turkle has spent her career studying human-machine interaction. She began in the 1980’s studying kids and the “Speak-n-spell” which was just a game where it would speak a word, and then you see if you can type in the letters. In 2011 she published her magnum opus, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other. She writes about the effect of the new culture of technological connectivity on relationships:
The ties we form through the Internet are not, in the end, the ties that bind. But they are the ties that preoccupy. We text each other at family dinners, while we jog, while we drive, as we push our children on swings in the park. We don't want to intrude on each other, so instead we constantly intrude on each other, but not in “real time.” … [we] are alone together… We go online because we are busy but end up spending more time with technology and less with each other. We defend connectivity as a way to be close, even as we effectively hide from each other. At the limit, we will settle for the inanimate, if that's what it takes. (Pg 281)
Preoccupied. Hiding through technology. Alone together. During that senior year of college, Youssef and I were definitely “Alone Together” most of the time. What makes me sad as I look back isn’t mainly that I think Youssef missed out on a relationship with me while staring at the computer screen. Much more importantly, that all-consuming game was keeping him from knowing more about Jesus. Maybe he has come to know Him since then, I pray so.
A Christian is a person who should see what is happening in the modern world and think “wait, I have the answer!” The Bible says that we are created in the image of God, and that God himself is a relational God. He exists eternally as Father, Son and Spirit, and thus His triune-ness speaks of eternal relationship. You and I were made for relationship.
Though that relationship is lost in the fall, it is restored in the work of Jesus Christ. In John 15:13–15 Jesus says:
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
When He speaks of someone laying down his life for his friends, He was speaking about the sacrifice He had come to make for them. That is why we sing the songs “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and “Jesus, Friend of Sinners”. Through faith in Christ we are restored to a relationship with God.
Then, in a powerful way, we are ready to turn that relationship outward in friendship with others. Friendship becomes a powerful way to think about relationships in the church. We should be a community of friends, extending friendship to each other because of what Christ has done for us. Friendship is also a powerful way to think about evangelism. We extend friendship to lost sinners because we were lost sinners ourselves.
I wonder if you are tempted to downplay the importance of friendship in your life. Be reminded this week of the amazing truth that Jesus has called us friends, and cultivate that relationship with Him. Remember too that the people around you represent opportunities for relationship. The last thing we want to be is “alone together”.