one.web

"People want networks to be even more personal, portable, and collaborative. Through partnerships with online giants like Yahoo! and Google, we envision one global, collaborative Web. Our users already have formed international communities around shared interests and experiences, which would have been impossible 10 years ago without physically meeting."

(MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe-more than 115 million users worldwide. Parade Magazine interview)

did you know every one of our american coins is conscripted "e pluribus unum," latin for "out of the many, one"? did you know that our educational system was built to unify all the sciences, arts etc. into one complete expression of knowledge? in fact, the word university means "unity in diversity". even the current elections have echoed the call of the panoramic past with politicians proposing unity, unity, unity. it's so clearly a hunger of the human soul, and yet ironically, it often takes something non-human to bring us together. have you noticed that for some people it is easier to text you than to call you? to e-mail you instead of write you a letter? to video conference with you rather than talk with you face-to-face? it's like we're desperate for community but something in us must put up a barrier before we're safe enough to reach out. have you ever met someone like that? like they need a mediator to communicate with you? 

for me these kinds of observations are fascinating because they seem so contradictory and simultaneously so illuminating. we pull away from the things we desperately want, we hide behind the things that we use to expose ourselves, we isolate ourselves in the largest community we can find--the internet. yet ultimately, the unity we find is the collaboration of lonely souls constantly searching and never finding the fulfillment of one-ness that forever propels us forward. and all this illuminates the reality that our human souls live within: we are built to move towards collective individuality, diverse unity, complex singularity. the question is not whether we will become unified . . . our souls will do this whether we choose them to or not. the question is always: what will we unify around? what will we bring our individual lives into, and become a part of? 

john donne wrote a beautiful meditation that you will know, even if you've never read it. from this writing has come famous song lyrics, movies, and literary works. ever heard "no man is an island" in a song, or seen "for whom the bell tolls" with ingrid bergman? me neither (i just looked them up on google, hehe), but they're phrases that are extremely familiar! and in john donne's meditation he writes that there is a bell that rings for everyone's life signaling a calling--connecting his or her individual life to the greater good. and by the greater good i do not only mean the wonderful and noble responsibility each of us have to serve each other, and especially those less fortunate than ourselves. by the greater good, i mean the Greater Good, i mean the only One who is completely good. what if our souls longed for unity because we are created this way. . . so that we would be gathered together. and what if the web that was meant to connect us wasn't impersonal, wasn't a technological mediator, but a living, breathing, always present human connector . . . a priest who collected all of our individual confessions and unified them around the vertical and horizontal beams of the scandalous cross? 

i admit that it is a strange idea that we are made to unify ourselves around any man, especially one who died on a piece of wood after claiming to be God, but before you write me off consider this: our lives are already unified by this man whether we like it or not. all of time is understood in relationship to the life of Jesus . . .that's why we denote time as B.C. (Before Christ) & A.D. (Anno Domini--which means 'in the year of our LORD Jesus Christ'). and take notice, A.D. is not a designation that means 'after Christ,' as it would seem would be appropriate. rather A.D. denotes in it's title that Jesus is LORD, a word that means 'master,' 'creator,' 'God.' in short, the A.D. designation has at it's core assumption that Jesus is The Beginning (the originator of time Himself) entering into human history . . . fully man and fully God, all at once. and Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is somehow so pivotal in history that we currently define our lives by the events of His life, whether we believe or reject His claim that by His death, He alone can forgive us of our sin. . .and by His re-life we can awaken spiritually to true reality. 

if something in us propels us towards unity around something, ironically then, that unity will ultimately be defined--in part--by whether individually we gather with those that accept the claims of Jesus, or instead personally choose to bond with those who reject Jesus (there are also people who write this choice off and decide 'not to choose,' but of course reason illuminates this as a choice in itself--to be ignorant of personal responsibility for how our ideologies define us). 

one thing is certain, here on this earth, whether we choose Jesus or reject Him, we must learn to walk humbly as we navigate whatever vehicles will unify us. whether it be a sporting team that revs our engine, a political party that gets us excited, a religious affiliation or the internet, we cannot forget to accept each other even when we disagree. though we may never see eye to eye, there can be no question we are already unified by the life of Jesus. i for one am excited to walk this earth and discover what that means for me.

"Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God."

--Romans 15:7