Recently Pope Francis
spoke about the digital media world that we live in today and how it has
changed communication as we have known it in the past. He encourages the Church
to “boldly
become citizens of the digital world… to be concerned for, and present in, the
world of communication, in order to dialogue with people today and to help them
encounter Christ.” (for a summary of what the Catholic Register says about this
click here.) In his talk, he coins a phrase that grabbed my attention…
“CULTURE OF ENCOUNTER!”
This phrase got me thinking and I wanted to throw some thoughts
out for y’all to chew on… Just a warning, if you get offended easily, exit now
because you might not like some of the things that I’m gonna say…
Jesus
knew at the depth of the human heart is a desire to encounter and to be
encountered. I think this is seen in our first parents when Adam looks at
everything that God created and just didn’t find true satisfaction. Nothing
that God had created could allow Adam to be encountered by another. Think about
it, when Adam saw the tree he didn’t cry out, “This one at last is flesh of my
flesh and bone of my bones…” No! He only spoke those words when he saw someone
like himself, his helpmate, someone able to receive him and encounter him!
Adam’s deepest desire to encounter another and to be encountered is the cry
that has echoed through the heart of every human being regardless of their age…
We all want to be seen, noticed, recognized, appreciated, affirmed, liked,
loved, congratulated, and rewarded. We want to be an expert at something and
fail at nothing… this is the human desires that our social media has picked up
on… Today’s social media allows us to Tweet every minute of our day. We plaster
ourselves all over YouTube and Facebook and to get infatuated with taking Selfies… And just incase you want to be even more connected to people you've never meet, just throw a little #signupandyouwillmeetallkindsofnewfriends.
To
go a bit further, lets just look at the names of these popular means of modern
communication:
YouTube:
Many people want their 30 seconds of fame… well now you got it! Anyone can
video themselves and plaster it out there for the whole world to see! You're famous now… and if people really ‘like’ you, you’ll even go viral (when I was
growing up, to be viral was to be sick as a dog!) Your video doesn’t have to be
tasteful, creative, or show any form of talent, actually, in most cases, the
more distasteful and vulgar, the more ‘likes’ a person will get… They think,
“Ahh someone finally likes me! I want to put a part of my life out there so that
someone can encounter a piece of me… Please, just click the little hand with
his thumb up and ‘like’ me! Will somebody please ‘like’ me so I can become
Viral!”
Facebook:
This has been a great way for people to stay in touch, but it also has a dark
side to it… But let's just look at the name “Face – Book”… “I can publish a book
and it’s all about MY FACE!! How many pictures of my face can I put up there
for people to see how much fun I’m having, how beautiful I am, and what a great
life I live!” Please don’t get me wrong, I think that Facebook has some good
benefits, but as with anything, it's when we take it too far that things go
wrong. I had a Facebook account for three days… and when I didn’t accept a
“friend” they got offended… that was the end of my Facebooking life. I thought
to myself, “I’m really not that important… nor that interesting. If you want to
encounter me, then just call me or come to my house!” But some people are
totally wrapped up in this world of Facebook and have somehow exchanged a world
of real encounter for a counterfeit world of cyber-counter (I think I just made
that word up??) Next time you are in public, notice how many people have real
people right there in front of them, eating with them, walking with them… and
they are on the phone updating their Facebook account! Amazing!!
Selfie Pics: This is terrible… It sounds something like this, “Since no one else wants
to take a picture of me, I’ll take a picture of myself and send it to everyone
of my ‘friends!!’ Look who I’m with… Look where I’m at… Look how much fun I’m
having…” Really?? For some occasions, I can understand it. But to think that
where we are at, what we are doing, and who we are with is really that
important to the rest of the world is a bit egotistical, don’t ca think?? But
there we see the heart cry out… “Someone see me… notice me… tell me that my
face is important to you! Please ‘like’ me!” A friend of mine was telling me
about a girl he knew. She started working at Twin Peaks (don’t get me started
on this place) and she posted a picture of herself in her new “work uniform”
(which to me looks more like the kind of uniform that a prostitute would wear
and not the uniform of a dignified waitress…) Anyway… when she posted it, she
got hundreds of “likes” and all kinds of affirming comments. A few days later,
she posted a picture of herself, dressed up in a nice dress and guess how many
“likes” she got?? Yep, less then twenty! So what kind of message does that send
out to this 19 year old? It might sound like this, “People like me more when I
dress immodestly. I get more attention dressed that way so that must be when
I’m most beautiful!” Again, here is the cry of the human heart that longs to be
encountered and seen as beautiful and desirable!
 |
| Pope Francis getting into a Selfie with some youth! |
We
could go on and on but I think we get the picture… I’m not bashing multimedia
means of communication (obviously, because I use them,) and neither is Pope. He
is encouraging us to truly enter into this age of communication, to be active
evangelizers in and through the media… this means of communication is at the
heart of the New Evangelization! We must enter into this world if we are going
to win souls for Christ BUT we can’t let our desire for encounter stop at ourselves!
Our Holy Father challenges us to be active builders of a Culture of Encounter
because that is exactly what Jesus did… He took on our human flesh so as to
truly encounter us!! He didn’t just sit back and observe us… he became one of
us! He understands the deepest desire of the human heart, which is to be
encountered, so much so that He invites us to “Abide in Me!” He doesn’t just
say “read about Me” or “talk about Me” or “draw pictures of Me” but He truly
wants us to Encounter Him! That’s how great His love is for us! Think about this,
as a child I loved my dog a lot! But never once did I ever want to become a
dog! I didn’t want to encounter my dog that much! But Jesus desires to
encounter us that much… He became one of us and then placed His Spirit in us
that cry’s out, “ABBA… FATHER!!” At the heart of the Culture of Encounter is
the longing to Encounter the Living God, in and through one another, in and
through His Church!
