Next up on the yorocko tour of Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, “Program or Be Programmed: 10 Commands for Life in A Digital Age,” command number three: You May Always Choose None of the Above. This follows the commands to Live in Person and Do Not Be Always On. See all the posts on Program . . .  here.

I’ve long loved G.K. Chesterton, and two of my favorite Chesterton quotes are scribbled in blue ballpoint on the inside flap of my hardbound copy of Heretics and Orthodoxy:

“The admire mere choice is to refuse to choose.”

And

“Every act of will is an act of self-limitation.”

Both are from an essay entitled “The Suicide of Thought” that extols the necessity of limitation in any conception of freedom, either of action or thought.

Douglas Rushkoff has realized, though, that as important as the irrevocable choice may be for philosophy and democracy, we need to know who or what is setting the parameters of our choices. In a digital realm, everything must be pitched as a choice presented by a programmer as code. The classic example is the cd, in which a sound engineer records sounds as a series of digits that can be copied. This is a technological advance over cassettes and records, where an actual physical event disturbs a needle or cellophane strip thus leaving a real record of that sound event that is released when played back.

The record and tape are capsules that captured something that actually happened. The cd (and thus the mp3) are symbolic representations rendered in a series of digits in order to be copied. The difference has to do with much more than sound quality. It reaches into the nature of sound and music itself. For example, the custom of inviting friends over to listen to records gave way not to a custom of inviting friends over to listen to cd’s, but rather to a trade of cd’s and then a sharing of files, because the music itself became something different when it became digital. It became a commodity to be traded among individuals instead of an event to be experienced in groups.

It’s what Rushkoff calls “digital technology’s pre-existing bias for yes-or-no decisions,” its bias “towards the discrete.” He gets at the problem of the bias like this:

All the messy stuff in between yes and no, on and off, just doesn’t travel down wires, through chips, or in packets.

All the messy stuff in between. That stuff is not of interest to the program. Whether it’s in sounds that don’t register on the cd or consumer preferences, if it can’t be pinned to a 1 or a 0 and stuffed into a program, it isn’t valuable. “There’s a value set attending all this choice,” Rushkoff says, “and the one choice we’re not getting to make is whether or not to deal with all this choice.”

In the next post, I’ll explore how ministry is captive to all this choice, and ways that ministry shows an alternative.

I’d love to hear your experience and thoughts on it.

 

 

 

 

 

Yesterday we kicked off our new Godly Play Sunday School with an open house for kids and parents in the Godly Play classroom. Then, during worship, we told The Great Family story as our scripture reading, using our teachers as human actors in place of wooden figures. The sermon was those actors’ responses to the four sacred story wondering questions:

1. I wonder which part of this story was your favorite?
2. I wonder which part of this story you think is the most important part?
3. I wonder where you are in this story, or which part of this story is about you?
4. I wonder if there is any part of this story we could take out and still have all the story we need?

It was powerful stuff. I had no idea what our teachers were going to say; none of it was rehearsed. But it was so obvious that the story and the actions prompted deep, personal, and critical reflection on the story for each of them.

It was an honor to be a part of it, and I’m so excited to be starting Godly Play at CPC.

If there is one drum I bang, it’s the need to see as many people using open source technologies as possible.  There are two reasons for this.

First, churches are broke.  I don’t know about you…yes, I do.  Your church doesn’t have any more money than mine does.  I bet those of you tasked with some form of leadership in your congregation sit around like our leaders do, and bemoan/worry/fret/blame/what-have-you about the state of finances.  You’re not exactly sure how it was you got in the mess your in, and wonder why you need to buy a new copy of Microsoft Office every other month.

Well, the first piece of good news I have for you is not actually from me, but from “Internet Evangelist” Steve Knight: You don’t need to worry about paying for your IT tools any longer.  Churches can move themselves into the internet age with an amazing lack of difficulty.

Check out Steve’s talk at last month’s Theology After Google event, “Just as I am Without One Fee” (which Rocky and I voted the best title of the entire event).

For those of us that grew up in the Charismatic/Evangelical world, his big tent revival speech cadence was a joy to behold.

So, that’s number one.  Here’s where it gets fun.

The second reason churches should invest themselves into open source technology is because the church is as the church does.  Here’s the claim: Our experience of being required to pay for/earn anything of beneficial value, affects our understanding of how we come to receive and benefit from the grace and peace of God in Christ.

Think about it.  We get inundated with messages all the time that if we haven’t paid for it (whatever “it” is), we don’t really have any right to enjoy it.  Organizations (corporations in particular) are set up on the notion that we will abide by this basic tenet of economic that when some don’t they are called “pirates” and accused of violating a particular ethical/moral code.

I have no interest in this post to debate piracy, but I want to point out how this is simply our reality.  Can you see, then, how this would infect (yes, infect) our understanding of the Gospel?  If you want to claim the benefit of the things of God then you need to prove that you have “paid” for them.  Somehow, we have perverted the things of God into economic transactions.

What if, however, we had as our standard an economy that claimed that items have value when given not bought?  What if our churches understood that we have “freely received” and so we should “freely give”?

To be sure, switching all churches over to open source software is a lofty dream.  There are many reasons people would give for why it can’t or shouldn’t be done.  But the church is as the church does, and when we subject ourselves to a world in which we are required to “pay for value” that can’t help but inform our proclamation of the Gospel.

Landon Whitsitt is a radio producer and author.  He is allergic to watermelon, and can make you the best scrambled eggs you’ve ever had in your life.