I have begun to notice more and more how many people make quotes for their status updates on Facebook. On Twitter it has reached a level of almost total quotation mania. In my experience well over 90% of all tweets are links to some article on the web.
It’s almost like a new currency has sprung into existence. We love trying to impress others by the clothes we wear, the car we drive, the company we keep … Are we now trying to convince people we are well read and educated? Are we trying to make a show for the watching world that we are well connected and at the cutting edge of technology, intelligence, art, culture, politics?
Have we lost our ability to think for ourselves? Could this be the effects of social/cognitive/intellectual/moral consumerism setting in? Fast food ethics and morality? No mess, no fuss, just collect it off the shelf. And it’s all colour coded and wrapped in plastic rap for our hygienic convenience. God help us!
Yet still the increasing outcry is for individualism and personal significance. We all desire independence and self determination but could this be a self inflicted form of ‘group think’? Has the human race given up?
Group·think is the act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view. It is the tendency within organizations or society to promote or establish the view of the predominant group.
Our beloved democracy is the same only it is far more decisive and demonstratively unforgiving towards those who think independently. Democracy forces the opinion of the masses into modern doctrine and legislated culture.
Being a follower of Christ myself I have also noticed that Christians seem to spend a majority of time and much effort quoting often extensive passages of biblical text not only in their social networking status publications but also in their interpersonal communication. Whether offering personal advice or counsel or even simply commenting on a news article even in informal social settings. It also seems apparent to me that we seem to regard the accuracy of the literal quotation of any given text as weightier than any truth or sensibility that may be present in it in a given situation. This too appears to me like a form of social and political currency. Who might we be trying to impress? Are we really trying to help and engage or market ourselves? And who do we think we are fooling?
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” – this is what Jesus said as a key part in his teaching on prayer.
So I ask myself, is this what we are doing happening in heaven? Is this what heaven is going to be all about for ever and ever? quoting scriptural texts at each other? Will we reference everything we experience and participate with there? When we cross over into the heavenly spiritual realm will we hear God quoting back biblical text to every question we have? Is this the way God speaks? Does God even speak human language? Is what we are doing now the language and culture of heaven? I mean, when one travels to France they speak French and especially in France, … English doesn’t really cut it …
Will God’s communication to us be tagged with the topographical grid reference of each statement? Is God at all interested in what we have to say or think? Is this what we are created and even redeemed for? To be a silent audience without opinion? Is this more important that the people God created, redeemed? Yet in modern Christian culture it seems to me that the content of the passage of scriptural text quoted battles to hold any water unless it is tagged with a “John 3:16” or a “Matthew 28:19-20”. People are important, yes, but not nearly as important than the accuracy and fluency of the text quoted. Is this the Gospel? “Hand me my sledgehammer, .. I want to go tell someone how much God loves them.”
Does God want a mass of “believers” who chant the same thing over and over in unison? “Oooo, say that again … that part about me being great and almighty and magnificent … “ Is this a true reflection of the nature and character of God?
I was always under the impression that in Christ God was setting us free to be an extension of his presence and a free flow of his life in the present world and in the realm to come. Will heaven be filled to the ceiling with scrolls and books (now “Kindle’s and iPads too perhaps)? or will it be filled with liberated beings who have reached their full potential and optimum effectiveness not in word or deed, but in their full spiritual essence? … in who they are and not in what they managed to make the fig leaves look like in the setting sun.
My God, maybe Roger Waters was correct all along?
COME BACK, PINK FLOYD!!! ALL IS FORGIVEN!!!!!
