August 18

To join in conversation is to imagine another mind, to empathize, and to enjoy gesture, humor, and irony in the medium of talk.

in the past twenty years we’ve seen a 40 percent decline in the markers for empathy among college students, most of it within the past ten years. It is a trend that researchers link to the new presence of digital communications. The study’s authors suggested (the decline) was due to students having less direct face-to-face contact with each other.

Every time you check your phone in company, what you gain is a hit of stimulation, a neurochemical shot, and what you lose is what a friend, teacher, parent, lover, or co-worker just said, meant, felt.

It has always been hard to sit down and say you’re sorry when you’ve made a mistake. Now we have alternatives that we find less stressful: We can send a photo with an annotation, or we can send a text or an email. We don’t have to apologize to each other; we can type, “I’m sorry.” And hit send. But face-to-face, you get to see that you have hurt the other person. The other person gets to see that you are upset. It is this realization that triggers the beginning of forgiveness. None of this happens with “I’m sorry,” hit send.

At the moment of remorse, you export the feeling rather than allowing a moment of insight. You displace an inner conflict without processing it; you send the feeling off on its way. A face-to-face apology is an occasion to practice empathic skills. If you are the penitent, you are called upon to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. And if you are the person receiving the apology, you, too, are asked to see things from the other side so that you can move toward empathy. In a digital connection, you can sidestep all this.

Somehow, Facebook gave her (a person quoted in the book) a way to think about other people as objects that can’t be hurt. And a way to think about a kind of cruelty that doesn’t count. We have learned that people who would never allow themselves to be bullies in person feel free to be aggressive and vulgar online. The presence of a face and a voice reminds us that we are talking to a person. Rules of civility usually apply. But when we communicate on screens, we experience a kind of disinhibition. Research tells us that social media decrease self-control just as they cause a momentary spike in self-confidence. This means that online we are tempted to behave in ways that part of us knows will hurt others, but we seem to stop caring.

• What do you think?
• Do you think we’re more or less empathetic than we used to be? (Or has humanity always been the same?)
• What have we gained or lost?

1 Samuel 25
There was a very important man who owned three thousand sheep and one thousand goats. At that time, he was shearing his sheep in Carmel. The man’s name was Nabal, and his wife’s name was Abigail. She was an intelligent and attractive woman, but her husband was a hard man who did evil things.
While in the wilderness, David heard that Nabal was shearing his sheep. So David sent ten servants, telling them, “Go up to Carmel. When you get to Nabal, greet him for me. Say this to him: ‘Peace to you, your household, and all that is yours! I’ve heard that you are now shearing sheep. As you know, your shepherds were with us in the wilderness. We didn’t mistreat them. Moreover, the whole time they were at Carmel, nothing of theirs went missing. Ask your servants; they will tell you the same. So please receive these young men favorably, because we’ve come on a special day. Please give whatever you have on hand to your servants and to your son David.’”

When David’s young men arrived, they said all this to Nabal on David’s behalf. Then they waited. But Nabal answered David’s servants, “Who is David? Who is Jesse’s son? There are all sorts of slaves running away from their masters these days. Why should I take my bread, my water, and the meat I’ve butchered for my shearers and give it to people who came here from who knows where?” So David’s young servants turned around and went back the way they came. When they arrived, they reported every word of this to David. Then David said to his soldiers, “All of you, strap on your swords!” So each of them strapped on their swords, and David did the same. Nearly four hundred men went up with David. Two hundred men remained back with the supplies.

One of Nabal’s servants told his wife Abigail. . . . Abigail quickly took two hundred loaves of bread, two skins of wine, five sheep ready for cooking, five seahs of roasted grain, one hundred raisin cakes, and two hundred fig cakes. She loaded all this on donkeys and told her servants, “Go on ahead of me. I’ll be right behind you.” But she didn’t tell her husband Nabal.

As she was riding her donkey, going down a trail on the hillside, David and his soldiers appeared, descending toward her, and she met up with them. David had just been saying, “What a waste of time—guarding all this man’s stuff in the wilderness so that nothing of his went missing! He has repaid me evil instead of good! May God deal harshly with me, David, and worse still if I leave alive even one single one who urinates on a wall belonging to him come morning!”

When Abigail saw David, she quickly got off her donkey and fell facedown before him, bowing low to the ground. She fell at his feet and said, “Put the blame on me, my master! But please let me, your servant, speak to you directly. Please listen to what your servant has to say. Please, my master, pay no attention to this despicable man Nabal. But I myself, your servant, didn’t see the young men that you, my master, sent. I pledge, my master, as surely as the Lord lives and as you live, that the Lord has held you back from bloodshed and taking vengeance into your own hands! Here is a gift, which your servant has brought to my master. Please let it be given to the young men who follow you, my master. Please forgive any offense by your servant. When the Lord has done for my master all the good things he has promised you, and has installed you as Israel’s leader, don’t let this be a blot or burden on my master’s conscience, that you shed blood needlessly or that my master took vengeance into his own hands. When the Lord has done good things for my master, please remember your servant.”

David said to Abigail, “Bless the Lord God of Israel, who sent you to meet me today! And bless you and your good judgment for preventing me from shedding blood and taking vengeance into my own hands today! Otherwise, as surely as the Lord God of Israel lives—the one who kept me from hurting you—if you hadn’t come quickly and met up with me, there wouldn’t be one single one who urinates on a wall left come morning.” Then David accepted everything she had brought for him. “Return home in peace,” he told her. “Be assured that I’ve heard your request and have agreed to it.”

• Why did Abigail go to David in person?
• What do we learn about a face-to-face conversation from this story?
• What have we gained or lost when all our interactions are impersonal?
• What can the church do to move us closer toward empathy?

Reclaiming Conversation quotes:

From the beginning, teachers and parents worried that computers were too compelling. They watched, unhappy, as children became lost in games and forgot about the people around them, preferring, at long stretches, the worlds in the machine. One sixteen-year-old describes this refuge: “On computers, if things are unpredictable, it’s in a predictable way.” Programmable worlds can be made exciting, but they also offer new possibilities for a kind of experience that some began to call friction-free. Newton’s laws need not apply. Virtual objects can be made to simply glide along. And you, too, can glide along if that’s how things are programmed. In virtual worlds, you can face challenging encounters—with scoundrels and wizards and spells—that you know for sure will work out in the end. Or you can die and be reborn. Real people, with their unpredictable ways, can seem difficult to contend with after one has spent a stretch in simulation.

From the early days, I saw that computers offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship and then, as the programs got really good, the illusion of friendship without the demands of intimacy. Because, face-to-face, people ask for things that computers never do. With people, things go best if you pay close attention and know how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Real people demand responses to what they are feeling. And not just any response.

When these new generations consider the idea of a “flight from conversation,” they often ask, “Is that really a problem? If you text or iChat, isn’t that ‘talking’? And besides, you can get your message ‘right.’ What’s wrong with that?” When I talk with them about open-ended conversation, some ask me to specify its “value proposition.” Some tell me that conversation seems like “hard work,” with many invitations, often treacherous, to imperfection, loss of control, and boredom. Why are these worth fighting for?

“I feel that these kids have a sense that friendships are one-sided. It is a place for them to broadcast. It is not a place for them to listen. And there isn’t an emotional level. You just have to have someone there. There is no investment in another person. It’s like they can turn the friendship off.” She doesn’t say so, but the implied end to this thought is “the way you can turn off an online exchange.”

• What do you think?
  What do you think friction-free relationships means?
• Why is it attractive?
  What do you think we lose or gain with friction free as a value?

1 Corinthians 2.1-5
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I didn’t come preaching God’s secrets to you like I was an expert in speech or wisdom. I had made up my mind not to think about anything while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and to preach him as crucified. I stood in front of you with weakness, fear, and a lot of shaking. My message and my preaching weren’t presented with convincing wise words but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power. I did this so that your faith might not depend on the wisdom of people but on the power of God.

Philippians 1.3-8
I thank my God every time I mention you in my prayers. I’m thankful for all of you every time I pray, and it’s always a prayer full of joy. I’m glad because of the way you have been my partners in the ministry of the gospel from the time you first believed it until now. I’m sure about this: the one who started a good work in you will stay with you to complete the job by the day of Christ Jesus. I have good reason to think this way about all of you because I keep you in my heart. You are all my partners in God’s grace, both during my time in prison and in the defense and support of the gospel. God is my witness that I feel affection for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.

2 Corinthians 2.1-4
So I decided that, for my own sake, I wouldn’t visit you again while I was upset. If I make you sad, who will be there to make me glad when you are sad because of me?
That’s why I wrote this very thing to you, so that when I came I wouldn’t be made sad by the ones who ought to make me happy. I have confidence in you, that my happiness means your happiness. I wrote to you in tears, with a very troubled and anxious heart. I didn’t write to make you sad but so you would know the overwhelming love that I have for you.

• How do you think Paul feels about the idea of friction-free relationships?
• What do you think he thinks the loss would be?
• Are there caveats?

• What have we gained or lost when all our interactions are “safe”?What could the church’s response be to the appeal of friction-free?
• How can we lead the way in embracing the messiness of real, not premeditated, conversation?

Quotes from the book Reclaiming Conversation:
We’re talking all the time. We text and post and chat. We may even begin to feel more at home in the world of our screens. Among family and friends, among colleagues and lovers, we turn to our phones instead of each other. We readily admit we would rather send an electronic message or mail than commit to a face-to-face meeting or a telephone call. This new mediated life has gotten us into trouble.
Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do. Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy. It’s where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood. And conversation advances self-reflection, the conversations with ourselves that are the cornerstone of early development and continue throughout life.
But these days we find ways around conversation. We hide from each other even as we’re constantly connected to each other. Anything having to do with the voice feels like an interruption. Time in simulation gets children ready for more time in simulation. Time with people teaches children how to be in a relationship, beginning with the ability to have a conversation. Conversation is on the path toward the experience of intimacy, community, and communion. Reclaiming conversation is a step toward reclaiming our most fundamental human values.

• What’s a “mediated life”?
• Why is it appealing?
• How do you see it happening? How do you practice it?
• Sit with this sentence: “Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do.”
• What do you think?
• What is the purpose of face-to-face conversation?

Read 1 Samuel 18-20
As soon as David had finished talking with Saul, Jonathan’s life became bound up with David’s life, and Jonathan loved David as much as himself. From that point forward, Saul kept David in his service and wouldn’t allow him to return to his father’s household. And Jonathan and David made a covenant together because Jonathan loved David as much as himself. Jonathan took off the robe he was wearing and gave it to David, along with his armor, as well as his sword, his bow, and his belt. . . .


Saul ordered his son Jonathan and all his servants to kill David, but Jonathan, Saul’s son, liked David very much. So Jonathan warned David, “My father Saul is trying to kill you. Be on guard tomorrow morning. Stay somewhere safe and hide. I’ll go out and stand by my father in the field where you’ll be. I’ll talk to my father about you, and I’ll tell you whatever I find out.”

So Jonathan spoke highly about David to his father Saul, telling him, “The king shouldn’t do anything wrong to his servant David, because he hasn’t wronged you. In fact, his actions have helped you greatly. He risked his own life when he killed that Philistine, and the Lord won a great victory for all Israel. You saw it and were happy about it. Why then would you do something wrong to an innocent person by killing David for no reason?”
Saul listened to Jonathan and then swore, “As surely as the Lord lives, David won’t be executed.” So Jonathan summoned David and told him everything they had talked about. Then Jonathan brought David back to Saul, and David served Saul as he had previously.
. . . .David came to Jonathan and asked, “What have I done? What is my crime? How have I wronged your father that he wants me dead?”
Jonathan said to him, “No! You are not going to die! Listen: My father doesn’t do anything big or small without telling me first. Why would my father hide this from me? It isn’t true!”
But David solemnly promised in response, “Your father knows full well that you like me. He probably said, ‘Jonathan must not learn about this or he’ll be upset.’ But I promise you—on the Lord’s life and yours!—that I am this close to death!”
“What do you want me to do?” Jonathan said to David. “I’ll do it.”
. . . “Come on,” Jonathan said to David. “Let’s go into the field.” So both of them went out into the field. Then Jonathan told David, “I pledge by the Lord God of Israel that I will question my father by this time tomorrow or on the third day. If he seems favorable toward David, I will definitely send word and make sure you know. But if my father intends to harm you, then may the Lord deal harshly with me, Jonathan, and worse still if I don’t tell you right away so that you can escape safely. May the Lord be with you as he once was with my father. If I remain alive, be loyal to me. But if I die, don’t ever stop being loyal to my household.
So Jonathan again made a pledge to David because he loved David as much as himself. 
. . . David came out from behind the mound and fell down, face on the ground, bowing low three times. The friends kissed each other, and cried with each other, but David cried hardest. Then Jonathan said to David, “Go in peace because the two of us made a solemn pledge in the Lord’s name when we said, ‘The Lord is witness between us and between our descendants forever.’” Then David got up and left, but Jonathan went back to town.
Apply our conversation above to this relationship
What was the benefit of face to face conversations?

Judging by this story, how the relationships and consequences play out, what difference could face-to-face conversation make to the church?