In my slow return to blogging, there has been some thoughts running around my head and here is one that’s been cooking for a while. I love brilliant adverts, and with the amount of commercial that are rubbish we all remember even from our childhood the ones that stand out. As usual the John Lewis Christmas advert stood out because it’s visually brilliant and distinctively creative. However it also opened up a line of thinking I wanted to consider in how we see each other.
For example we come across people in our daily lives, people that perhaps we would not choose to be in contact, such as our family members and we all know we can’t choose our family. Some might even be those we work with as colleagues or clients, and again we have little choice in the matter. Others cross our path through out our daily lives. Sometimes even those we choose to call friends can at times really irritate or bother us, resulting in us considering how to avoid or de-compartment our relationships.
In comparison this got me thinking about grace and how this actually works in reality. For many of us the concept of grace is either alien or can appear an impossible concept to put into practice. There are many professional writers who explain grace as a type of compassion. But grace is really much more than showing mercy; and even if it was, do we as a society really understand compassion, never mind a deep concept of grace and how to apply it?
Take social media, there is no doubt it is a run away success in the sense of connecting people. It’s clearly a booming phenomenon within our modern culture and there is much to celebrate. Perhaps its fair to say that the rapid growth in social media has also been a result of us wanting to associate with those we consider liked minded or similar in our outlook on life. With the benefit of choosing to reject people as friends, and if they don’t meet our relational standard, we block people on sites like Twitter and Facebook because their comments are an annoyance to our daily walk through the digital world; and yet we get a sense of enjoyment from belonging to groups or forums that we feel a strong connection, simply because these are people we believe are just like us.
The down side is it also creates boxes to keep us only connected to those we want to be connected, isolating us from those who’s ideas might conflict with our own. We end up surrounded in a virtual way with people who are very much carbon copies of ourselves, well at least in how we think, believe or agree with us. Rarely do we allow ourselves to be challenged, interrupted with concepts or relationships that could be consider challenging or difficult, on less of course its beneficial to us.
Is this really how we believe we will develop – in cubes of individualism, boxed into a world of our own interests, or a virtual sphere populated by people who share in only our values, without the annoyance of difference! Wasn’t the internet community meant to be about collaboration, interacting and a sharing of ideas? A place where an idea could improve and develop alongside other ideas in spite of geographical location, regardless of background, and without corporate ownership or coercion!
My argument is that we are so captivated with being individual, that our real sense of community is jaded, even in terra forming the virtual world. This brings me back to the John Lewis advert and how it inspired me to think that although we might reject or wonder why we should bother with some people, especially when their ideas conflict or behaviour simply annoy.
While watching the advert a thought came to mind, don’t we all start out as wonderful, perfect, special children? I mean before life really begins to shape us and take it’s toll. Children simply know what matter, love without compromise, live life with expectancy, believe in the wonder of what might be possible tomorrow.
As I watched the Christmas advert of a variety of little kids excited about the presents they received. I realised, perhaps this is the way God sees all of us, even when we can’t see anything good and worthy in ourselves or others.
