Robotic Calls

Yes­ter­day a lady called me to fol­low up on some office sup­ply sales that had been made here a few days ago. She began the call with, “Hello Gary, do you have a minute to talk?” I responded with, “The police have sur­rounded the build­ing, and the shoot­ing has not started, so I guess I have a cou­ple of min­utes.” She con­tin­ued her call undaunted, asking the rote ques­tions that make up her job.

As the con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ued I tried to get her out of her robotic trance. I could tell she was fill­ing in the blanks on her com­puter screen, as she read each state­ment mind­lessly. I told her to be care­ful of my answers, because I have a com­pletely run­away imag­i­na­tion. She con­tin­ued on with her task. There was almost a gig­gle after my last state­ment. There is hope. A human being might actu­ally be at the other end of the line.

I know these peo­ple are not paid to shoot the breeze. I also know that we are becom­ing more and more objec­ti­fied. The shadow side of our dig­i­tal world is that we are exten­sions of our machines, instead of our machines being exten­sions of us. The loss of soul is becom­ing more and more appar­ent. What mat­ters is how we answer ques­tions through a piece of elec­tronic equip­ment. There are fewer actual peo­ple in our lives. Mil­lions make a liv­ing with a com­puter screen and a phone — sit­ting in semi-soundproof lit­tle cubi­cles. They then go home to small apart­ments and watch TV alone. What is hap­pen­ing to us?

When I look around my office, I notice the same thing. I work alone. It is won­der­fully effi­cient hav­ing all of these almost-magical elec­tronic tools, but the human ele­ment is becom­ing sec­ondary. Am I becom­ing one of the robots? Am I a reli­gious word proces­sor? Will this pul­pit be replaced with a screen (as it already has been in other churches)? How about hav­ing church online and skip all of the costs of hav­ing a building?

The answer is sim­ple: God is build­ing souls not robots. To do so requires messy face-to-face encoun­ters with peo­ple in the same room. Bread and wine, cry­ing babies, bap­tisms that soak my sleeves — imper­fec­tions all around… It isn’t neat like a com­puter screen, but it con­tin­ues to work per­fectly well — even when the elec­tric­ity goes off — forever.