Cornerstone No. 193, page 7
Bursting bubbles
The Very Rev Dr John Chalmers urges readers to
travel with ‘an open and loving heart’, avoiding
‘bubble’ living.
PERHAPS you are familiar with the phrase – living in a
bubble. It’s a fairly recent expression which describes
our tendency to stay in our comfort zone rather than
explore the options beyond our horizons.
There’s the Westminster Bubble where those who populate the world of our
national politics can lose perspective because of the rarefied atmosphere in
which they live and work. Their bubble is
maintained by all of the industries that
support the apparatus of government and
in that space it’s easy to become divorced
from what is happening in the lives of real
people in the rest of the country. Holy-
rood, Washington, Brussels and every
seat of power has its bubble – the best
leaders find ways of seeing the world
beyond the bubble that would otherwise
imprison them.
Then there is what has become known as
the Google Bubble. Google knows what
you like and all the ‘pop-ups’ you receive
will play to your preferences. Your social media diet allows you to enjoy a place
where your world view and all of your likes and dislikes are confirmed or
affirmed by those who ‘like them’. Contrary views of the world are readily
rejected and, if necessary, you can ‘unfriend’ those who offer critical comment.
There are public figures and ordinary people living in their own parallel
universes, tweeting and sharing their undiluted wisdom, day by day confirming
their own pathology or massaging their own egos. In the world of ‘the bubble’
the message is amplified by the medium, critics are always wrong and the result
is the blinkered life. Bubbles can be harmful places to inhabit, harmful for the
individuals themselves and harmful for those who end up on the wrong side of
someone else’s parallel universe!
Sadly, the world of the church is a perfect environment for blowing bubbles!
With enough like-minded people around us and enough dogmas in our armoury,
our bubbles can become like fortresses built to defend our version of the truth
and exclude both the ideas and the people that might challenge our
assumptions. Church life was never meant to be like that; surely the life of faith
Life
& Work