In Order to Be Servers, We Have to Be Servers

I will inevitably misapply some technological terms in this post. I beg your indulgence.

We used to be servers (in the technology sense). We had built in capacity. We had memory–both working memory and storage. Arguably, we used a fairly significant portion of our brains actually holding onto data. We never reached capacity–and some stored more data than others–but we were servers. Our teachers asked us to remember stuff. The more we remembered, the better able we were to navigate–life, jobs, algebra, friendships, the world. We paid attention. We were intrigued by interesting ideas and, when we “looked something up,” it was to hold onto the information we acquired, not just briefly “fondle” it.

I know what you’re thinking: someone else piling onto the “we use technology too much” bandwagon.

But I am not–piling on–that is. At least not in the way you might think I am. I do bemoan my own readily acknowledged shortened attention span. I’ve noticed that I often don’t read articles all the way through any more. I skim them, pick up the information that made it into the first few paragraphs, and then discard the article  because I can “always look it up again later.” There is reputable research to suggest that we have become beholden to our devices (indeed, perhaps becoming one with those devices) and that our cognitive capacity is reduced as a result.

We used to be servers–holding onto data because we knew that acquisition and personal processing of information better prepared us to face the persons and ideas that came our way. But now we’re just peripheral devices. We go to the servers via our preferred search engines (Google, etc., those collections of ones and zeroes that someone else holds onto, out there, in the “cloud”) and acquire data for utility in the moment, and then we let it slip away–back to the cloud–which never forgets. Our Google search history will remind us, when go to look up the same data again, and again, and again.

Why does this matter for Christians? Because, in my view, we cannot be servers (in the biblical sense) if we’re not servers (data hosts) in the technological sense. Putting aside the cultural forces at play and generational transitions, the much researched and readily acknowledged decline in biblical worldview can, I think, be directly traced to a concomitant decline in personal storage of biblical information.

Accumulating Bible knowledge was (and is) never an end in itself. It is always information acquired for purposes: helping us recognize our need for Jesus; helping us better reflect His image; helping us better serve Him; helping us better serve the world around us; helping us better serve. The original languages of the Bible have words for acquiring knowledge. Both the Hebrew word and the Greek word imply knowledge gained with informed action in mind.

But we do not act on the truth from the Bible because we do not know it. When we run into a personal or cultural jam, we try to Google our way out of it–like lighting one match at a time to find our way out of a dark cave, finding just the right passage to support our idea of the moment. When we do that–find those passages, that is–we rip them from their context and apply them in foolish ways–handicapping our capacity to serve Jesus well.

We do not have a fully orbed Christian worldview because we do not have, in resident memory, the stuff from which that worldview is formed. We get trapped in conversations about particular issues–often finding ourselves at the end of a self-constructed mental cul-de-sac–because we do not know the larger context of the pertinent biblical teaching. We settle for ineptly crafted, fortune cookie “wisdom” when we could be offering full slices of the Bread of Life.

I believe that the steady accumulation of biblical data (returning to becoming “servers”) will incrementally and, perhaps even exponentially, enhance our capacity to serve this world in the ways that God would have us.

Exposure to the sweep of the Gospel will enable us to recognize injustice and respond with compassion. Ingesting and digesting the biblical data about love will make us better lovers of God and others and, yes, self. A steady diet of biblical truth will enable us to sort through the multi-channel waves of cultural and political upheaval to discern a way forward that honors God and lifts people up.

We must bask in the truth of the totality of God’s Word to discern the way forward with Him. Let’s become servers in order to be servers.

© 2018