Are you 'Friends' with God?

Last week as I took a break from some schoolwork and decided to check out few of blogs saved in my bookmark bar. One of my favourite blogs is from the University of Toronto Center for the Study of the Religion called The Religion Beat. Each week bloggers post a ‘Link Roundup’ of interesting articles, pictures, videos and journals that they find on the web. The journal primarily focus’ on the relation between religion and pop culture with links leading readers to articles about Priests rescheduling masses around football schedules, graphic novels depicting the end of days and most interestingly the Vatican on Facebook.

            Last week (January 25-January 31), ‘Link Roundup’ led me to an article on Canada.com addressing the Pope’s warning of social networks. He gave a ‘qualified blessing’ of social networks and spoke of their benefits but also warned of solely relying upon them for human interaction. He urged users to keep in mind that virtual relationships must and cannot replace real friendships.

            In this electronic world, we are constantly getting caught up on the internet, Facebook, YouTube, Google, iPhones and BlackBerrys (the list goes on and on). We are constantly connected. Upon reading Pope Benedict’s address, I thought of my younger brother (a child of the late 90s) who is always ‘connected’ with the world outside our home. In the middle of the night I hear his phone tinging with text messages, Skype calls and Facebook chat bleeps. I remember last year my grandfather said that he remembers when his family didn’t even have a telephone. My brother of course looked at him like he had seven heads. “But how did you talk to your friends Papa? And make plans?” my brother asked. “Well, we saw each other at school, played in the park, met at the corner store… we just talked when I say them face to face,” my grandfather responded. My brother still couldn’t grasp this idea.This begs me to ask the questions, what will our relationships with each other turn into? Will our children of the future be totally electronically dependent? More importantly, what will our relationship with God become?

            When I was very ill a few years ago in the hospital, a friend of my mother’s brought me a book called Emails from God. It was an entertaining read, with ‘God’ providing insight into almost any problem (‘Dealing with a break up? Turn to page 64’), but there was just a feeling that I couldn’t shake of this being wrong. I understand that the writers were attempting to create a ‘hip’ religious read for teens, but is the relationship one has with the Lord really supposed to come down to humanity looking for salvation in emails and text messages? Or are we, in our modern era, meant to find it on the Vatican's YouTube Channel, iPhone App and Facebook? Only God knows.

- K

ps. here are a few interesting articles from the Globe and Mail about social networking, the internet and friendships

The Great Disconnect: Using Facebook for Social Distance

In the age of social media, can we have some discourse?

Stop the internet, I want to get off!