Currently Listening: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? by The Cranberries
Currently reading: Becoming a True Spiritual Community by Larry Crabb 📚
Karl Barth, with important words for preachers on this Easter Sunday:
In our preaching on Easter Day, we say something about the rejuvenation of nature, or the romantic reappearing of the blossoms, or the revival of the frozen torpid meadows. We interpret the message that Jesus is victor, not in its literal sense, but we interpreter it as a symbol or a human idea. In that case the message tells us that the world is not so bad off. After each and all evils there naturally follows something good. One must hope, and not lose courage!
We may be satisfied with this sort of resurrection. We may get along very well for some time with the comfort that death is not so terrible: “One must just not lose one’s courage!” We may be satisfied for a long time with the romantic reappearing of the blossoms and the rejuvenation of spring, and thus forget the bitterness of present reality. It may be that, even as we stand beside the graves of loved ones, we find contentment in the thought of a spiritual continuation of this life. But the remarkable thing about it is that the real truth of the resurrection seems to be too strong for us, because it will not suffer itself to be hidden or concealed in these harmless clothes. It always breaks forth; it rises up and shouts at us, asking: “Do you really think that is all I have to say to you? Do you really believe that is why Jesus came to earth, why he agonized and suffered, why he was crucified and rose again on the third day, to become merely a symbol for the truth—which really is no truth—that eventually everything will be all right?”
No cultural education, no art, no evolutionary development helps us beyond our sins. We must receive assistance from the ground up. Then the steep walls of our security are broken to bits, and we are forced to become humble, poor, pleading. Thus we are driven more and more to surrender and give up all that we have, surrender and give up those things which we formerly used to protect and defend and hold to ourselves against the voice of the resurrection’s truth.
Nothing, absolutely nothing, can one do who is fated to this life of sin and death, with its thousand-fold festering needs; nothing can one do to amend it; nothing fills up this vacuum. Admit it; there is no way out! Unless it is the possibility of a miracle happening—no, not a miracle, but the miracle, the miracle of God—God’s incomprehensible, saving intervention and mercy, the all-inclusive renewal that leads from death to life that comes from him, God’s life-word, resurrection from the dead!
Resurrection—not progress, not evolution, not enlightenment, but a call from heaven to us: “Rise up! You are dead, but I will give you life.” That is what is proclaimed here, and it is the only way that the world can be saved. Take away this summons, and make something else of it, something smaller, less than the absolute ultimate, or less than the absolutely powerful, and you have taken away all, the unique, the last hope there is for us on earth.
Currently Listening: The Joshua Tree by U2
The rise of public digital surveillance is both a symptom of and an attempt to address a larger problem: that our own neighbors may be strangers to us. According to a Pew survey in 2018, 57 percent of Americans say they know only some of their neighbors. But among people aged 18 to 29, almost a quarter say they know none, compared to only 4 percent among people over 65. As residents turn to digitized forms of monitoring and surveillance for peace of mind, the root cause — weak neighborhood bonds — is left unaddressed.
Our new tools also habituate us to expect a level of control over others that might undermine the possibility of trust. They can encourage us to engage in new forms of ethical distancing: Viewing the behavior of members of our communities through a Ring camera feed rather than in face-to-face interactions in public space degrades not only our physical interactions but our sense of obligation to others. Healthy communities rely on the people within them to maintain order and offer help when needed. Outsourcing that to machines is an acknowledgement that we have given up on that expectation, even as the convenience of being able to see a package delivered to our doorstep while we’re away brings a sense of control and convenience.
Personal surveillance also poses new challenges to our most intimate relationships. It is not a coincidence that so many of the new domestic interpersonal surveillance technologies are marketed as tools to watch the very young and the very old, populations that require more hands-on human support, who are less autonomous and more vulnerable. Amazon markets its Astro household robot in conjunction with its Alexa Together “remote caregiving service” as “a new way to remotely care for aging loved ones.” Outsourcing the responsibility to keep an eye on others to surveillance-enabled machines brings practical benefits, but also exacts moral costs regarding our duty to care. These surveillance tools often start as surrogates, but quickly become seen as necessary to our busy lifestyles and allow us to justify not taking the time to be with those who need us most.
Christine Rosen, on how private surveillance technologies (e.g., Ring cameras, neighborhood-watch platforms, etc.) might be undermining the trust that makes real community possible:
We like to look at ourselves and to monitor others, and there are an increasing number of new technologies encouraging us to do just that. This prompts some slightly different questions [than questions re: privacy and big tech] about the benefits and dangers of surveillance technologies: What kind of people are being formed in a world of everyday surveillance? What assumptions do they make about their neighbors and communities? What expectations do they have for privacy and visibility in their own homes and in their interactions with family members? How can they build relationships of trust without the reassurance surveillance offers of the behavior of others? […]
Interpersonal surveillance technologies offer something…compelling: A sense of control at a time when many people feel that institutions and systems meant to protect them have broken down. Inside the home, among loved ones, technology-enabled surveillance is becoming the normative form of care: I track you because I love you; I watch you to make sure you are safe. Outside the home, personal surveillance technologies are becoming the unblinking eyes on the street and the neighborhood watch that dispenses with fallible human neighbors in favor of the camera’s unrelenting digital feed.
Beyond their use as practical tools for watching, however, the normalization of these technologies is changing the way we think about ourselves and others as individuals and as members of communities. As much as the ability to monitor each other brings a sense of security, it can also provoke anxiety at being the object of ubiquitous surveillance. Alternatively, becoming comfortable with constant surveillance risks eroding the possibility of trust that has always been, and remains, a pillar of healthy relationships and communities.
She concludes the piece with these sobering final thoughts:
Today we have new tools and new habits of minds around surveillance that take people out of the equation and replace them with technologies. The short-term rewards are evident — convenience, peace of mind, a feeling of security and control — but the potential long-term dangers are also worth considering. As our neighborhoods and communities become more heavily surveilled, they risk becoming more atomized. When it comes to strangers, who may increasingly include our own neighbors, we change the dictum “trust, but verify” to “record and post to Nextdoor.” Fear and vigilance are not the bedrock of healthy communities.
A world of ubiquitous interpersonal surveillance is one where our homes and families might begin to resemble not the “little platoon we belong to in society,” to borrow from Edmund Burke, but rather the atomized spawn of Jeremy Bentham, who once wrote that “it were to be wished that no such thing as secrecy existed — that every man’s house were made of glass” since “the more men live in public, the more amenable they are to the moral sanction.”
Our houses are not yet made of glass, but our use of interpersonal and private domestic surveillance technologies is slowly rendering them as visible as if they were — at least to the increasing number of people, corporations, and government entities who know how to watch what we so eagerly broadcast. Interpersonal surveillance technologies have rendered us far more visible to each other and given people a sense of security and safety when it comes to protecting their homes and loved ones. But they have not helped rebuild the one thing that human beings need to live together in peace: trust.
Holy Week is a disguised coronation, a masked victory, glorification masquerading as humiliation. This is how God becomes king, the comic reversal at the center of the world.
Photo cred goes to my wife, Kristyn
