Preach Magazine Issue 4 - Preaching in the digital age | Page 11

FEATURE

BIBLICAL WISDOM FOR
TODAY
Once we recognise that questions of
technology are caught up with bigger
questions about how we live our lives,
love one another, and take part in
community, it becomes obvious that,
actually, the Bible is full of resources
for thinking about the digital age.
Here are a few passages I find
particularly rich when preaching on
these themes:

John 1:1–16
If Jesus became flesh in order to
dwell among us, then our bodies are
important not only to our individual
identities, but to our relationships
with one another. When we talk about
the internet, it’s easy to fall into what
the sociologist Nathan Jurgenson
calls ‘digital dualism’, the idea that
the online and the offline are totally
different types of reality. That’s partly
the result of an older kind of dualism,
the idea that our bodies and our
minds are totally separate from one
another. But what happens on the

internet is not only real, it’s bodily. We
use our fingers to type, and we rely
on complicated systems of cables,
satellites and electrical signalling to
carry our words around the world.
We might not always see the faces of
the people we talk to online, but the
things they say can make us feel very
visceral emotions: joy, anger, desire.
We rely, more often than we realise,
on the hard physical work of people
fixing the physical components of the
internet, assembling our devices in
sweatshops, and scrolling through
images that have been reported for
sex, violence or abuse to keep our
internet experience (relatively) clean.
If we separate out word and flesh
in the person of Jesus, we fall into
heresy; but we do the same thing
all the time when we talk about
the digital. What would a properly
incarnational theology of the internet
look like? What does it mean for us as
Christians to embody Christ online?

Acts 8:26–40
Where Philip needed an act of God
to be transported suddenly from the
south road to Azotus, the internet
makes it easier than ever for us to

WHAT WOULD A PROPERLY
INCARNATIONAL THEOLOGY
OF THE INTERNET LOOK LIKE?
WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR US
AS CHRISTIANS TO EMBODY
CHRIST ONLINE?

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communicate with people all over the
world, whether that’s by email, Skype
or Twitter. Without Philip, perhaps the
eunuch would never have understood
the good news about Jesus. Technology
opens up opportunities for us to
learn from people who understand
more than we do: from people who
have dedicated their lives to studying
theology and the Bible, from people
who have been formed by different
Christian traditions than us, and
from people who have a lot to teach
us because their life experience is so
different from ours. Are we taking
advantage of those opportunities to
have our understanding of God and of
the scriptures deepened and enriched?
The eunuch struggled to understand
the scriptures because he was outside
of the community of the church.
Perhaps we should also be asking
how technology allows us to reach
out to people who are cut off from our
Christian communities, including the
preaching and teaching that happens
in church. How can we use digital tools
to include people who can’t come to
church because of physical or mental
illness, or because they haven’t felt
welcomed by Christians in the past?