© 2000 Merlyn Cox
© 2000 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
I sing the culture of high technology. For as long as I can remember, I have waited anxiously for virtually every new technology to arrive on the scene. As a child I dreamed of moon landings when the wisest of our scientists thought it no more than a pipe dream. I considered the success of the Hubble telescope a matter of religious significance for which I prayed. It’s initial problems I considered akin to the Fall in the garden. I’ve waited anxiously for the coming of high definition television since I first saw a demonstration more than 15 years ago. I’m close to being one of those high tech junkies who can never get enough of the latest and greatest technology has to offer.
At the same time, as the years have passed, I have come to appreciate the fact that virtual reality is, after all, virtual, and, no matter how good, still an imitation of the real thing. It’s educational and entertainment value is almost endless, but just as a cell with all the protoplasm intact is not necessarily alive, so high tech representations remain just that.
Over the years, I’d come to a new appreciation of the “low tech” methods of communication: word, gesture, and simple presence. I’ve come to appreciate the difference between story and signal that Harvey Cox makes in his book, The Seduction of the Spirit. [1] Cox writes that the primary means of communication in the religious community are stories — parables, allegories, and personal testimony. Parables and allegories are folk expressions of the community’s shared beliefs, while first person testimony is especially important and effective in disclosing the “interiority” of personal religious experience. Signals, in contrast, are the result of religion “coded, systematized, controlled and distributed.” “Stories reflect those forms of human associations, which blend emotion, value and history into a binding fabric. Signals, on the other hand, make possible large-scale and complex types of human association where such binding would not be possible… Stories enrich the fund of common recollection and stimulate shared imagination… Signals permit people to move around in systems that would grind to a halt if all communication had to be deep and personal.” Stories “convey multiple layers of information all at once and can be told and interpreted in several ways.” Signals are like traffic lights; “They transmit one unequivocal message and discourage all but one response.”
Cox points out that societies need both story and signal, but problems arise when signals begin to pose as stories. When a signaler poses as a storyteller, and the purpose is not to develop genuine intimacy but to control, it can lead to the “seduction of the spirit.”
It also happens when religion is reduced to dogma, or theology is substituted for religious experience. Theology and common affirmations of faith based on the reflection of religious experience may be.important for the larger community to communicate it’s beliefs and strengthen its bonds, but these “signals” should not be confused with the personal experiences that gave rise to them.
High technology is most adept at communicating signals. Information can be digitized, stored, and passed on for endless generations (copies) with no loss of detail. What can’t be so easily shared is the underlying experience. Master storytellers certainly can use high technology in the service of their art form. But a good story stills invites the viewer to share and interact with the event. This blending of high tech and low tech, at its best, is both honest and highly effective. It extends the range of testimony beyond the small group to the larger human community.
But “low tech” communication is still of the essence where sharing faith is concerned. There is no substitute for personal presence. The subtleties of human communication are almost infinite: facial, tonal and body expressions, the blending of speech and silence. The Incarnation is the ultimate gesture of divine communication. And the Spirit seems to be most real where two or three are gathered-literally, “in touch” with each other.
This is why personal testimony is still so important in sharing The Urantia Book, and why, I suspect, at least in part, the use of mass media was discouraged among its first commissioned evangelists.
I still celebrate high technology, the larger human body electric (Internet, etc.) and its role in sharing the news about The Urantia Book; but even more I value the realm of Spirit presence, where two or more are gathered, and the good news it bears witness to becomes most real.
The great hope of Urantia lies in the possibility of a new revelation of Jesus with a new and enlarged presentation of his saving message which would spiritually unite in loving service the numerous families of his present-day professed followers. (UB 195:10.16)
Harvey Cox, Seduction of the Spirit, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1973 ↩︎