“Has the impersonality of our cyber world won?”
For 18 years, our family lived in a part of North Carolina dominated by engineers. On occasion, I preached to those zealous folks about the impersonal form emails took – no salutation – no personal greeting – no “Dear Sam” or “Dear Jessica” – just a headlong jump into insistent business. The updraft of that speed of life was compelling. I felt like acquiescing.
But, the “normal Christian life” is to resist the “world, the flesh, and the devil” – even in the impersonal way we email! Really?
Consider – during Lent, we remember Jesus’ temptation. “In the brutality of the wilderness we see that the heart of temptation is to convince us that life is better without God” (Steven Dilla). So join the resistance – showing that life is better with God – even in emails.
The Salutation, a Gift of God
In writing an email, some resist our detached way of life, knowingly or unknowingly, by writing a name before they get to business – a bow to one of our great gifts in life – our names. God named and gave Adam the gift of naming. What an inheritance. Let’s rise up against a culture that strips us of our name – and the privilege of naming.
But, even when we salute the name of the person receiving the email, we often skip “Dear.” To my sensibilities, that seems naked. Let’s not do away with kindness in our zealous pursuit of efficiency. My friend, with a mere four letters – “Dear” – you rekindle respect and care for another fascinating being God made in his image.
The Valediction, Another Gift of God
Bear with me just a bit longer. Do you conclude an email by typing your name? Many do not. Only the business of the communication counts. Friend, you and I need our names connected with our words. Agreed?
If you disagree, why subtract your name? Why not allow the reader to recall – even for a nanosecond – the distinction of who you are – not just your words.
If you agree about the importance of our names, here’s another challenge: What do you write before your name – after you have concluded your business? This complimentary close we call the “valediction.” It sounds exalted. It is. “Vale” is from Latin “valere” (see: “valiant”) – “be well, be strong” + “dicere” – “to say.” Aha.
The valediction often gives me pause. Why make the effort? Simply put, I remind myself: “Here is another opportunity to express a connection with – or a hope for – the person to whom I am writing.” The valediction stirs my soul into activity.
As a result, if you have ever received a note from me where I sign off with: “Sincerely,” that’s as distant as I want to be. More often, I conclude with: “Gratefully,” or “Curiously” (after a question), or “Neighborly,” or “Brotherly,” or, with those who are close: “Love” or “Love Always.” One friend closes with: “Strength and Courage!” One co-conspirator routinely concludes with “Love.” He wants to rattle the chains of those bound up in impersonality. Another friend I admire closes with: “Humbly.” What subversives!
All this recalls the lives of Edith (1914-2013) and Francis (1912 – 1984) Schaeffer. In college, my wife, Via, inhaled their L’Abri seminars. The way they related to others imbued others with a profound sense of human dignity. In-person, the Schaeffers gave a palpable sense they were dealing with incomparable creatures made in the image of God.
If we have forgotten that worth, if our speed of life prevents us from drawing near one another, if we concede such possibility of relationship to an impersonal culture, God have mercy. We simply cannot let such depersonalization pass – even though we feel its “pulling” power. Let’s re-dignify.
God at Work
How grateful I am that there is another power at work in those of us who believe the Word made flesh – the One who engaged us in his very Personal universe – forever. Christian, and those who will believe, he calls you, “Beloved.” His disciples, in their letters, salute one another with “Grace and peace” and conclude with “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Cor 13:14). What salutations and valedictions!
Eugene Peterson (1932 -) describes some of that power as he portrays – not the way we write emails – but the way we read. “Reading today is mostly a consumer activity-people devour books, magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers for information that will fuel their ambition or careers or competence. The faster, the better. The more to the point, the better. It is analytical, figuring things out. Or it is frivolous, killing time.
“Spiritual reading is mostly a lover’s activity, a dalliance with words, reading as much between the lines as in the lines themselves. It is leisurely, as ready to reread an old book as open a new one. It is playful, anticipating the pleasures of friendship. It is prayerful, convinced that all honest words can involve us somehow or other, if we read with our hearts as well as our heads, in an eternal conversation that got its start in the Word that “became flesh.” It is a way of reading that changes the heart at the same time that it informs the intellect, sucking out the marrow-nourishment from the bone-words.” (Eugene Peterson – “Take and Read: Spiritual Reading – An Annotated List”)
Friends, did you catch that last phrase – “sucking out the marrow-nourishment from the bone-words?” Earlier, Peterson had seen his dog relishing a bone. So, as we read and write, may God help us be like Peterson’s dog. Let’s get creative as we savor God and one another with the bone words of life.
