Imagine if a small UFO were to crash land on earth. The crash site is on a hillside overlooking a fairly large, busy town. The people in this town are diligent, hard-working, successful, and generally happy. The town is in all respects just like any other town filled with normal people doing normal things. Soccer games, dentist appointments, coffee dates, business meetings, dog walking, etc. And yet there is something peculiar about this town...
Back at the crash site two aliens emerge from the steaming wreckage. They are funny creatures, these aliens. From the front they appear like some sort of boxy robot with random blue and green lights fading in and out rapidly. When turned sideways they nearly disappear completely as they are literally as thin as paper. They move about by some sort of fluttering motion in their lower appendages which causes them to hover a few inches above the ground.
Upon observing their foreign surroundings, the aliens find a rather normal hillside setting. Grass, a few bushes, lazy insects dancing in the air, several trees, and thousands of tree frogs. That’s right, tree frogs are everywhere. The aliens don’t know that excessive numbers of tree frogs are somewhat abnormal, so they merely emit a few curious electronic gurgling sounds and decide to visit the civilization below. They hover, slip through cracks in doorways, hide, and begin to observe the natives.
In the town, everyone is consumed with tree frogs. Large billboards with massive pictures of tree frogs advertise a variety of products. People gather at local eateries with large television sets and watch programs about tree frogs. There are signs throughout the town with information regarding the multiple tree frog festivals continually occurring. A large, beautiful building with impressive stained glass is located in the center of town. People visit this building to pay homage to tree frogs. And upon close observation it could be noted that almost everyone owns a personal, living tree frog. Some people carry their frog on their shoulder, while others gently hold them in their hand. Still others own very tiny tree frogs and place them just inside the opening of their ears. The townspeople are very attached to their tree frogs. In conversations, most people can be seen consulting their frog and then speaking to another person, who then consults their frog before responding. The very language that the people of this town use to communicate is intricately woven together with their relationship to, well, tree frogs. Having spent a day observing the townsfolk, the aliens determine that in order to figure out what exactly makes the people of the town tick, they probably need to educate themselves on one topic a little more thoroughly. Tree frogs. They head back up the hill to investigate.
What a ridiculous town! And what a ridiculous story. But bear with me.
Let’s suppose the aliens were to land in a real town. Maybe your town, and observe the language of communication that consumes our society. What would the tree frog be? What do we consult, rely on, worship--in order to interact with others? Perhaps our tree frogs are smartphones, Facebook, WiFi, texting, iPods, and our addiction to virtual community. The purpose of mentioning these forms of technology isn’t to suggest that we all immediately drop everything. We should be thankful for smart phones, right?
The point is that as thinking Christians we should be willing to recognize the language of our culture without being consumed by it. Jesus told us to make disciples, and in order to do that we need to build relationships. In order to build relationships with anyone we must learn the language of that environment. This must be done using caution and wisdom, lest we get swept away by the frequency of those high tech tree frogs all around us.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. - Romans 12:2
*picture borrowed from: http://allaboutfrogs.org/gallery/photos/redeyes/red1.gif
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