Andrew Steele

Senior Associate with International Christian Media Commission.

As much as I enjoy reading, I do not seem to get much done. In part that is because I often find it hard going since the books I choose are sometimes rather beyond me! But also I simply do not seem to have the time. At the end of a long day I find myself tired and with little time to pick up a book. So, travelling on a trip is often when I get reading done. Last week I grabbed a book from the pile in my study to read on the plane as I made a trip.

Called the Power of Acceptance (Shadel & Thatcher, 1997, Newcastle Publishing Co), the book is a study of the need we all have to be accepted. It explores the problems we face when acceptance has conditions placed upon it.

In the conclusions at the end of the book was a short paragraph which highlights the dangers of the technological world in which we live.

"More than ever before, people are living alone and having relationships through machines: television, computers, the Internet, VCRs, e-mail ... This is not exactly a ringing endorsement about the state of human relationships in modern society."

I know elderly folk who live on their own and have televisions in each living room - often tuned to different channels. They do not really watch television that much but it is company. Men and women settle down of an evening to spend a couple of minutes at their home computer and emerge hours later while the spouse or partner are left on their own. The current flirtation of some sections of industry with so-called 'tele-working' brings many benefits but often leaves the workers themselves struggling without the interaction with colleagues in the coffee room or wherever.

The problem, of course, is that human beings are essentially social creatures. Isolation from human contact is for most of us rather more than we can bear. Yet science and technology seem to be dragging us relentlessly towards rugged individualism and away from community.

It would be easy to make great claims for the quality of the relationship that can be found amongst members of churches or other faith communities. Sadly, they would not always be true. But whether we like it or not we will each, soon or later, have to espouse the selfless commitment to others that Jesus Christ calls for or face an increasing breakdown in our communities.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.