The Dwelling Place of God

I like technology as much as the next person.  After all, those in my profession design technology for a living.  I'm thankful, especially right now that we can log onto our devices and computers and talk to one another, see each other's faces, and interact in ways that would have amazed those in past generations.  But as we are finding through our experience with social distancing, there is something not quite right with this way of doing life together.  

Our high tech world has been moving us in this direction for quite some time.  When someone asks about our friends, we need to clarify whether they are referring to our friends on Facebook or about the actual people with whom we hang out.  Technology has brought us "closer together" because in a world of lightspeed communications, distance means almost nothing.  Yet, while we are brought closer together by electronics and radio waves, people seem lonelier and more distant than ever before.  

What is actually going on here?  Why is it that though we can do almost anything using Zoom now, we feel so disconnected during COVID-19?  The reason can only be found in a right understanding of how God made us.  We are, quite simply, embodied beings, made of dust, confined in space and time, with a God-given need for the society of others.  "It is not good that the man should be alone..." (Genesis 2:18a).  Clearly in this passage, God's remedy for this was a woman made from the rib of  Adam, someone who was his very flesh and bone.  But marriage produces families and by implication, society at large...it was not good for the man to be alone.  We are designed for togetherness.  We are made for connection and shared experience, to walk together, talk together, work together, and play together.  

We must not assume with the gnostics that a mere disembodied connection is good enough.  Otherwise, a letter would be just as good as a talk on the front porch, a phone call would be just as good as dinner together, and streamed church would be just as good as gathering together in an auditorium.  We need to be able to put an arm around someone's shoulder, to lend a helping hand, and to lift the burden of a brother or sister.  So often we just need to be where they are, running the race of life with them.  Our life together in the church should be exemplary in this regard.  We are the body of Christ, united together in his blood.

But all of this points to the greater reality that not only do we need the physical presence of others, we need the presence of God himself.  God walked with Adam and Eve in the garden in the cool of the day, but we all know what happened with that.  Sin caused a rift that only God in his grace could mend.  What was lost in the Garden of Eden was restored when God sent his Son in the flesh to be with his people.  "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us..." (John 1:14a).  He was physically present with us so that we could, "see his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth," (John 1:14b).  Beyond this, we look forward to a time when we will see that, "the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God," (Revelation 21:3).  What a day that will be when we will be with him together as his people.

In the meantime, we wait. Right now our technological solutions are how we make due, but if you feel that something's not quite right, you are certainly correct.  What we're experiencing now is part of the disintegrating effects of the fall.  It's not the way things ought to be.  So, don't get used to it.  Let's look forward to a day when we will be reunited together in one place either here in Beavercreek or around his throne, reunited to worship and praise his great name.