Email Christianity

Not long ago I happened to be invited to an upper class wedding in the depths of rural Hampshire. At the lavish reception in a grand marquee in the grounds of a lovely house, I found myself separated from my wife and seated at a table opposite a man — one of the great and good — who used to be a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet back in the 1980s.

His conversation moved over many topics but in particular he spoke on the way the advent of email had made a Parliamentarian’s job more burdensome. ‘In former days, to contact your MP, you had to sit down with pen and paper. You had to find an envelope and a stamp. Then a walk to the post box was required. All this slowed the process. It meant that there was plenty of time for reflection before the note was sent. But with email all that has gone.’

The implication was not only that MPs receive far more communications to deal with but that the electorate these days fire off the most hot-headed and ill-thought-out messages to their MPs to which he or she is obliged to respond. Admittedly, there is much in contemporary society to make even a saint’s blood boil. But questions like, ‘Is the MP the most appropriate person to contact about this matter?’ or ‘Does this subject actually merit such a vitriolic use of language?’ seem never to have been considered amid the lightning speed of the modern electronic process. A brief rustle of fingers across the computer keyboard and the click of a mouse and the undigested missive (missile?) is gone, never to be retrieved.

By contrast, we are reminded of the words of James, ‘Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, for a man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life God desires’ (1.19).

Age of rage

Christian, I wonder how you use email? Because emotion rules our culture there are many currents in 21st century society which encourage people to be assertive, furious and even offensive. Life is tough and it is a way of saying ‘don’t mess with me’ in a hostile environment. I wonder if email has made offices, businesses and even churches more aggressive places?

I also wonder if there is quite a lot of cowardice involved in this angry use of emails. Certainly, things sometimes seem to be said via the safe distance of the internet which the communicator would never have the guts to say to someone face to face. If you can’t say it man to man, then don’t use the craven route of the internet.

But the way we use words as Christians should be different from that of the world. Words can really hurt people as the lip-reading experts watching the World Cup Final in July seemed to have discerned. Nasty words about his family seem to have provoked the normally calm Zinedene Zidan into head-butting an opponent and so got him sent off. ‘Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your modem’, said the apostle Paul, ‘but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs’ (Ephesians 4.29 manquŽ). And here is the great potential positive of email. How good it is to receive words of encouragement from Christian friends — and email provides a great opportunity.

Returning from holiday

Holidays can also be a problem. You return from a few days away to relax, to find that your email inbox is stuffed with literally hundreds of messages. Many are totally trivial but you cannot simply delete them all. There may be something of vital importance among that glut of messages on the screen. So you have to sift through carefully, and by the time you have done that, you are behind with your normal work-load, so that the holiday can turn out to be simply another source of stress for many people.

Sometimes it is pure thoughtlessness. Does this person really need to be sent this trivia? It is not always great to be included in the loop. Have we become obsessed with sending information? James writes of being ‘slow to speak’.

But one cannot help thinking sometimes that the quantity of emails sent betrays a less-than-benign motive in the hearts of some of the senders. ‘She’s on holiday enjoying herself, while I’m still here slaving away. I’ll take the smile off her face when she walks back into the office and logs on. Let’s heap all these emails onto her.’ Is that a Christian attitude? Do we try to make it easy or hard for colleagues as they return from their summer’s break?

Niche in the market?

With this in mind I wonder if there is a niche in the market for a new piece of software — when we are away on holiday our computers would automatically delete all new emails. The computer would also send a reply to any email explaining that you were away on holiday until whatever date, and that until that time all emails would be deleted automatically, but if something is important please send the message again after the date of return. At least this would build in the period of reflection concerning the communication (the lack of which our wedding guest Parliamentarian was lamenting).

I don’t know, but perhaps such a software product already exists. If not, IT entrepreneur, remember you first got the idea from EN!

Has the technology affected the way you communicate?

Age of rage

Returning from holiday

Niche in the market?

John Benton

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