Taking every thought captive for obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10.5)

Vision
Human Life and the Internet
As with all creatures, human life is essentially embodied life; we can only live, express ourselves, and achieve or realize anything within the limits and potentialities of our bodies. By adding tools, we can extend our embodiment, but not indefinitely. The more we extend our embodiment, the weaker the influence of it becomes, as it  must necessarily encounter and contend with the embodiment of other human beings.

According to Justin Bailey, writing in the Spring 2016 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review, there is no danger the Internet will eliminate or even minimize our embodied nature. This, he explains, is a fear often expressed by critics of the Internet, that it tends to make our lives too abstract, intellectual, and merely pseudo-social.

Mr. Bailey insists that “our personhood is always grounded in and governed by certain norms of embodiment – corporeality, locality, visibility, and temporality.” For those who work with or use the Internet, it’s important to bear in mind “that even in online spaces, the body continues to act as an arbiter of meaning, and dreams of transcending the body turn out to be mere fantasies.”

Those who want to use the Internet to escape their bodies into some disembodied, anonymous, or reconstructed existence (as an avatar) will not find the satisfaction they seek as human beings. At the end of the day we always come back to the body and its exertions as the way we establish meaning in life. Thus, especially for Christians, “Living faithfully in cyberspace begins with discerning where the norms of embodiment are at work, as representative of where God’s Spirit may also be at work, orienting the human search for meaning in the direction of its embodied telos.”

It follows, therefore, that those who use the Internet – or any other tools or diversions – for anything other than achieving fuller expression of embodiment are wasting their time and defeating their reason for being. Human beings are creatures of purpose. We want to discover meaning for our lives, and this we do by putting our bodies in motion to express what we are within, in our minds. This means, as Mr. Bailey explains, “if our bodies are so central in meaning-making, the way we have organized the world is based on our embodied experience. Thus we should expect the body to continue to play a significant role when transported into online contexts.”

The Internet can be a valuable tool and resource for realizing the purpose of our embodiment, but this has implications for those who use the Internet, whether as creators or consumers of its ever-increasing store of information. These implications should particularly be borne in mind for Christians who use the Internet.

For those believers who create Internet content, it is important to do so in line with the Spirit’s project of bringing the Kingdom of God to earth as in heaven. Internet content providers should prepare their resources in such a way as to encourage embodiment in line with the Spirit’s work in individuals and the world. It’s not enough just to spoon out information; information providers must create and post with a view to bodily action in the world. Mr. Bailey puts it thus: “Part of ‘keeping in step with the Spirit’ is choosing practices that celebrate our fully embodied lives.” The more clearly information providers discern these practices, and the more careful they are in providing information and resources to shape those practices for Kingdom living in every area of life, the more effective Internet content will be as sails into the Spirit’s wind.

For Internet users, it behooves us to understand what kinds of embodiment best express the reality of the Kingdom of God, since this is what we are above all to seek at all times (Matt. 6.33). Here we must be concerned to make the most of the time allotted to us (Eph. 5.15-17), by investing it with the various disciplines – spiritual, relational, vocational, communal, and provisional – which the Spirit uses to fit us for Kingdom living. Where Internet resources can aid in defining and developing these forms of embodiment, they can render a valuable service to our Kingdom-and-glory calling in the Lord (1 Thess. 2.12).

Mr. Bailey concludes, “As created beings with finite bodies, we are not free to imagine and inhabit the world however we wish. This is a gift. Our bodies give a meaningful shape to our lives, including our lives online.”

So when it comes to the time you spend on the Internet, caveat emptor.

For reflection
1.  How much of what you read or view on the Internet translates to embodied action in your life? Can you give an example or two?

2.  Suggest some guidelines, in line with the Spirit’s work of bringing in the Kingdom, for making good use of the Internet.

3.  Now evaluate your use of the Internet in the light of those guidelines.

Next steps: Jot down three areas of your life – your “embodiment” in the world – that you would like to improve by making use of the Internet. Let these goals guide all your time online in the week to come.

Be sure to download all seven studies in our ReVision series, The Disciplined Life (available by clicking here). These free studies can help you not only in planning your use of the Internet, but in making better use of your time each day.

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