Image: Pexels.com

My wife is always amused by how quickly I accept to get added to Whatsapp groups, my argument is supposed to be, that I find a “sense of community” in many of them.

Truly so, and more I’ve benefited from many, some stir worthy conversations on matters eternal, discussions in others expose my pride and spiritual immaturity. Some just annoy, and I plan to exit at midnight. Then in one group, I recently discovered, I was made admin without my permission.

Anyway, generally of late, I’ve developed a certain suspicion about (not Whatsapp groups per se) but the digital promise most platforms make, a promise that you can be in “community” or family with people you last saw weeks, months and years ago, often at the expense of people doing life with you on now, here, on a day to day basis.

Whether it is your High School Whatsapp group, or your former workmates group, the trouble here seems to be that we can easily spend ourselves (primarily) investing our time, sacrifices, money, hopes of bonding, in communities that we only once were part of, (or hope to be part of) at the expense of those in front of us.

As I talked through this with my neighbour Eric recently, we seemed to agree that God actually gives us bodies for this same reason, the fact that our bodies neither live in the past, nor the future, is a reminder of where we should put our focus. God gave you those people at some point in your life. And “that point” was the season, no wonder you still try to sustain it. Today, he has also consistently put your body with others, don’t exchange it for people on the horizon. Internet may call you a “global citizen” but God does not.

The people you bump into on Saturday morning at the market, the people who share your roof, or use the same gate, the people who take your rubbish (or create it). These are the people God has called you to. Not some Google pins and pexels, whose owners you last talked to at length in high school, at some function, some workplace.

Of course technology means well to grant us opportunities to reconnect this way. I am not anti-“Re-unions and meet ups”, I am for prioritising them. Nevertheless, you will be hard pressed to find a New Testament emphasis that suggests remote life is deeper.

Rather, for all his remote letters, Paul longed to see others “face to face” ( 1 Thes 2:17). He longed to be there in person, so he could impart what he needed to (read, “do life with people”). Whereas remote supplemented Christian life, it was never the apostolic ideal.

Christians, among all men, should be known as proximal people, “flesh and blood” people, fond of setting dining tables for neighbours, next door and across the verandah. The redeemed should be known to set meal tables and face-to-conversations, more than they set notifications for people in their history, or potential future.

Why? because that’s how God has designed things, people who know you, need you most more than people who know “about you”, it’s wisdom to pursue community that way. It honours God who primarily calls us, not to borderless communities, but binding localities.

My other friend Denis Mugume, recently summed up it quite well, “you prefer to text other people when you are with us, and you prefer to text us when you are with other people.”

Ultimately, God becoming flesh (John 1:14) is the supreme example of what it means to do life with people rather than relate remotely.

So at what point did we start calling online pexels family? Fellow Pastors, how did the whole world become our parish? God has surely not called us to a disembodied existence. Whereas your internet may be omnipresent, you are not.

Liberate thyself today, log out and go sit on your neighbour’s verandah, push somebody home, practice that more than you practice joining Whatsapp groups (Eddie), greet the market lady, ask for the garbage guy’s name, offer your Saturday, show up unannounced, glance before you scroll, someone by your shoulder needs you more than someone on your Insta.

Focus on the people you are doing life with.