It’s not schizophrenia, it’s roles within differing contexts.
Online I am a pastor and prophet. It’s not as if I don’t do pastoral work in meat space, but it’s not the emphasis. The closest I come to that in the real world is my computer ministry, shepherding computers to a better performance. But I am quite certain of God’s calling and mission for me, and my pastoral mission is online. In meat space I’m just a regular guy who does other stuff, and looking for more work.
I don’t pretend to understand why the Spirit leads me this way. I have a working theory, which is precisely what almost all theology is in the first place — just a way of mentally organizing things that are far above the mental level. The way I figure it, this is preparing for future events. I’ve often written about the Networked Civilization I see rising from the collapse of Western Civilization. The protocols of human existence are radically different online than they are in meat space. You can carry all your humanity with you, but you can’t act the same. It’s a different world entirely.
It’s more than the small things we call Netiquette. There’s an entirely different mindset that’s no more obvious to the average Joe than is a different culture when he drops into another country. Human awareness makes a grand difference. The antics of people who refuse to see the difference in context can be quite annoying to those who are aware of it, often very embarrassing. But the differences are far greater than even fairly observant folks are likely to notice. People write books to explain the difference, the way others write travel guides for visiting foreign lands.
It’s almost like suiting up to visit outer space. It’s just barely possible to engage a little emotional content with your communications, but you lose an awful lot of flavor when your face and voice are obscured so completely. It strips communication down to the purity of language itself, and it surely helps if you understand the technology itself as a means of expression. It’s one thing if you know the person on the other end so well that their voice echoes in your head when you read what they type, but another thing entirely when you simply have no clue. That and a hundred other subtle shifts in how communications take place have yet to be seen, but that it will result in a radically different kind of society is not in doubt.
This is why I say so often that I am an arrow in the quiver. I may never be used as it seems intended, but if not, I am a prototype for others. The way in which I do ministry and how I communicate is already far different from what I might do if I had reason to believe current reality would continue as is much longer. Indeed, I’m discovering a whole range of elements in religion itself that have to change. But I’m not in charge; I’m responding to forces I can hardly understand, much less explain. My apprehension of divine calling carries demands that won’t fit current meat space reality. To obey the leading of the Spirit puts me out of place until I am online. There, things suddenly fit and I am free to chase that divine impulse in ways meat space will not permit. My calling awaits a change already underway, but not yet complete.
It no longer drives me nuts; I’m used to it now.
