There are dangerous corners on the internet. I don’t mean the dark web or back-alley sites. No, these corners have millions visit them daily, including myself, and likely you. In between the mid-level marketing pitches from those whose friendships had otherwise gone cold, and videos “you won’t believe,” there is a place of curious familiarity. It is the place that speaks with such likeness that it feels almost as if this is the only group that really gets it. A group of those like me. They think like me. Vote like me. Live like me. The place is the echo chamber.
Facebook and Twitter have made fortunes by their ability to curate and customize the online experience. Don’t want to see something? You can hide, mute, and block your way to an algorithm which mirrors your assessment of vice and virtue. Want to hear what others like you have to say? There are affinity-based groups, pages, and accounts ready and willing to fill your feed with more information than you could digest in a lifetime. The best part? You don’t even have to leave your couch. The result is a new type of isolation. The echo chamber brings an isolation of self-infatuation and narcissism where the only voice we hear is one calling our same words back to us. We eventually become deaf to all else.
I have read Bonhoeffer’s Life Together at least once a year since I picked it up for the first time in seminary. It is a great comfort to step into the little seminary at Finkenwalde. Perhaps, it is comforting in part because it reveals a community untethered by technology. More than this, Bonhoeffer’s words encourage and challenge me to consider the community in which the Lord has placed me.
Beyond his descriptions of Christian community and prescriptions for the gathering, Bonhoeffer also takes time to describe the day alone—those moments when the believer moves into solitude for prayer and meditation. But this is not simply the time we find ourselves “out” of church. (Even his day together includes the spheres of work and life outside of the fellowship of other believers). The day alone is meant in many ways to bring us totally naked before God. Solitude has a way of tempering our time together. The problem is that many of us become too comfortable alone.
Our culture is one which often emphasizes a hyper-individualism, independence, and even isolation. Yet Bonhoeffer warns, “Let him who is not in community beware of being alone. … If you scorn the fellowship of the brethren, you reject the call of Jesus Christ, and thus your solitude can only be hurtful to you.”[1] Growing up in East Texas, I often heard from men that they could be closer to God in a deer stand or fishing boat than they could be in a pew on Sunday. Bonhoeffer’s words are an indictment of that type of thinking, but they are also an indictment of another type of solitude. At least in a deer stand or in a boat, we realize we are alone. The echo chamber isolates us in such a way that deceives us into believing that the screen before us is somehow community. And the deeper we find ourselves, the more alone we become.
I fear that many Christians have found themselves physically, mentally, or spiritually lingering in life alone and thereby neglecting to return to life together.[2] You see, there is in the Christian fellowship an innate and often unnoticed gift. The gift of the other. I do not mean simply to point to the other-oriented benefits and responsibilities of church membership or of the encouraging fellowship of believers. I mean to say that there is in the church an intentional and beautiful gift of diversity and distinction. It was not good for man to be alone, and so woman is a gift to man’s deficiency. Christ did not come to save the Jew only, but also the Greek, and so those outside of Abraham’s line have been adopted and grafted into God’s covenant promise.
God has blessed us in Christ to be able to gather with those that are different from us. Christ has united us in covenant together to bear his image in life and worship to those around us. When we sing the doxology alongside those of a different race, gender, occupation, political ideation, (or whatever other category is found lacking in the algorithms around us), we declare that the gospel which we have heard and believed is of a kingdom whose borders we do not set. When we take communion in the presence of other believers, we are reminded that our church’s location determines the demographic of our mission and care, not our preferences. To be sure, our theology is necessary, but it is also humble, lest our churches become echo chambers in themselves clinging to myopic definitions of orthodoxy.
The echo chamber offers a deceptive togetherness. It feigns unity by declaring all else to be dissent. It lacks genuine embodiment, for if it gathered it would be unmasked as one-dimensional. As believers in Christ, we must cast off the allure of echoes and pursue the genuine and diverse chorus of life together. Movement out of the echo chamber should force us to assess what areas of our life have served to build the walls of our trenches, to consider if our own churches further have been warped to echo our desires, and to seek the kingdom of God in all its richness, diversity, and beauty.
To be clear, I am not demanding that you delete your Instagram or Facebook. I am asking that you see them for what they are—tools. The same hammer can drive nails and shatter bones. The same rope can securely tie or hang from gallows. So too can Twitter be a tool for good or ill in your life,[3] but it can never replace a life lived well in the community of faith. Social media just isn’t that social.
This resource is part of the series Made Like Him: Reflections on Formation and Gathered Worship. Click Here to explore more resources from this series.
Notes:
[1]Dietrich Bonhoeffer and John W. Doberstein, Life Together, (New York, NY: HarperOne, 1954), 77.
[2]This is of course putting aside legitimate reasons not to gather physically such as health concerns during a global pandemic, or other situations which may prohibit gathering physically for one season or another.
[3]For practical ways to help social media be a tool for good, see Matt Ward, “Pastor, Your Church Needs a Social Media Policy,” August 28, 2020. https://www.pastortheologians.com/articles/2020/8/28/pastor-your-church-needs-a-social-media-policy.
Paul Morrison serves as lead pastor at the Church at West Creek in suburban Cleveland, OH. He is also a co-founder and director of the Ohio Theological Institute. Paul holds a Ph.D. in Christian Ethics from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a member of the St. Peter Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
