Its a beautiful day in the neighborhood. . .

I supposed it was predictable that Facebook would rebrand -- that is what you do when your old brand is tied to an identity you are trying to transcend or when your old identity becomes tainted in some way.  Facebook began as a means of connecting neighborhoods and has turned into its own neighborhood -- albeit an imaginary one.  Across the ages the platform moved from being largely young people to largely old people.  While it was heralded as a technological tool to bridge the gaps between us and engage in civil discourse it became a cause of division, a great divider in its own right, marked by the most uncivil of conversations.  Liberals, progressives, libertines, and conservatives all have a beef with Facebook.  So maybe it will all go away with the Meta universe being envisioned by Zuckerberg and his lot. 

He is itching for a new digital reality that blurs the real with the digital.  In this world, posts would not be in words but in video, in images, whereby the person speaking and the person listening have some sort of visual connection without being in person.  Maybe so.  Of course, we have had Zoom and Google Meeting for a long time and these have not exactly raised the bar for our social experience so what can Meta do that Facebook cannot?  I wish I knew and I have no way of predicting what that would look like.  What I do know is that however fancy and seamless the digital realities become, they are not in person.  What I also know is that too many of us do not seem to know the difference or care.  In particular, my concern is how this more visual form of digital connection would impact the Church.

The cause of the Gospel is not being furthered by new and more profound digital realities to replace in person worship, study, or fellowship.  What might work to introduce or access those who do not know the Kingdom will not work at all to grow, sustain, or bring to fruition the faith that might be planted by digital seeds of the Word of the Lord.   It is high time that we all confronted this elephant in the room and debunked the myth of the digital church.  But that will probably not happen.  On the one hand you have Rome which is not sure that you actually need to be there or to receive in your mouth the Holy Supper of our Lord in order to benefit from the Mass.  On the other hand you have those who think that there is enough of the Mass sent through a fiber optic cable or screen to replace what is given and received from the hand at the rail -- Protestants of all flavors and, increasingly, Lutherans as well.

The kind of universe envisioned by Zuckerberg and his religious counterparts is a threat in so many ways.  It is the ultimate lie and deception.  First of all, it begs the question of reality -- or at least what kind of reality we are willing to settle for.  Second, it presumes that the reality of the personal is either not real itself or unsubstantial in a way that threatens the substantial confession of creed and doctrine about God and the means of His presence.  Third, it deceives the people with a blend of digital and personal that detracts from both because it promises a seamless way to interact between the personal or real and the virtual.  Fourth, it raises all sorts of questions about privacy and control that affect us as people but also affect our ability to access and use platforms that we borrow from others.  Finally, it allows the people watching the screen the comfortable myth of belonging and confessing and fellowshiping -- quite literally to their possible damnation!

It is a sad day in the life of the Church when voices actually have to be raised against putting your hermetically sealed bit of cracker and juice up to the screen and then calling it a Sacrament.  But it is even a sadder day in the life of the Church when voices are raised to encourage us to accept and adopt the inevitable -- a personal reality which has been fully integrated into and replaced by a digital one.  It took us 18 months before we began to say "no" to online Sacraments.  How many years will it take us to say no to the fool's gold being offered to us by Zuckerberg and his ilk as a version of Church and an alternative suitable for the Gospel and worthy of Christ.