Friday 19 July 2024

The Name Calling Of Goods and Services


When you challenge the zeitgeist of churches using technology, a fairly predictable script emerges.

"If we can't use (X) that means that (Y) must also be forbidden."

"Y", is often a bombastic or hyperbolic example. Used to add absurdity to what I promise is a valid line of concern and questioning regarding tech use in the church. Question the use of something like the internet, and often, the response is that then we have to question the use of the Bible itself since it too is a form of technology. The apples and oranges wiggle together and we have ourselves a nice fruit salad of theological mush. Not formed enough to be spiritual meat but not reformed enough to be soul food and casserole.

What's happened here is a certain type of pastor has midwitted his way past an honest layman making trouble by asking questions. He did so because he doesn't see or hear the difference between any kind of technology. To him, his theology of a brick is his theology of a laptop. It's neat and tidy and all-encompassing. Allowing him to do what literally everyone else is doing with his tech but to feel like that is what tech does all by itself.

But for the sake of argument, let's pick up a guitar and try to worship our way out of this false dichotomy.

I've said before, that tech is not neutral because it's not made or used by neutral people. So, what is the difference between an acoustic guitar playing amazing grace and an electric one? Surely we can't pick a technological fight with one without embroiling the other in the brawl. They are both pieces of technology that we are using for worship music. We can't get mad at one without getting mad at the other. Right?

Well, yes we can. Because one is a musical instrument and the other is a service styled like a musical instrument.

This difference between goods (the guitar) and a service (the electric guitar) is hard to see at first because they are both real-life things. The electric guitar looks like the acoustic guitar in enough ways that you can tell their cousins, and likely cousins that shouldn't marry if they were Mennonites. There are too many similarities to outright call them essentially different things. But put them both on stage and they do very different things. The acoustic guitar plays six strings with chords and picks single strings to accent them, it strums and tunes and behaves like a guitar does. And the electric guitar can barely be heard from the stage.

"Wait." The church sound guy says. "You need to plug it into the amp."

"Wait, you need the plug the amp into the electrical outlet."

"Wait, you need to plug the amp into the sound system."

"Wait, are you using effects pedals? you need to plug them in too."

"Wait, we need to do a sound check."

There are more wait's in waiting but I don't mean to keep you.

What just happened here? These two instruments are conceptually the same things. Six strings, fretboard, pegs, hardwood fixtures, mother-of-pearl inlays, and a PVC pickguard. And the best electric guitars seem to be hollow-bodied just like the acoustic ones. About the only tangible difference is one has the microphone built into it, technically. What's with all this waiting.

Because goods come as they are and services come with conditions.

The sun will dry your clothes for free and reliably every day. So long as the rain is not giving them an extra rinse. But solar power, to run your dryer, needs specific angles and hours of sunlight to charge specific batteries and off-grid systems, built by specifically trained tradesmen who hang their coveralls out to dry in the sun.

A Tesla only looks like a car. Anyone with a real car can tell you this. But those that bit the magic EV bullet from Mr. Musk aren't driving cars. They're being driven by A.I. and what is ostensibly a phone app on more expensive hardware. You can tell that they are being driven by the way you can't idly hit someone because the car will decide your driving needs to stop. My everyday driver can hit people and requires a sacrifice of my sinful desires to drive in a straight line and swerve when necessary. It can't stop me from sinning because it's a car and I'm a sinner. It's also fully capable of sinning, fully capable of doing sinful things. But doesn't because it's a car not a service of a car. 

My 1.8-litre Toyota Echo and its neighbour of a work truck, a domestic 6.7-liter Dodge Ram 2500, are the kinds of cousins that can't have extra fun at family reunions. They are versions of each other and are what every car since Great Grampy Ford Model T left the assembly line were. And the best part is they know it. The Dodge doesn't try anything with its Japanese cousin because the relationship is too close, and vice versa. So, they both sneak into the pantry for snacks and not other things that involve mouths and tongues. They don't cause the kinds of problems that a more complicated machine can cause when it's made to look like something simpler.

But the Tesla, is something else. It comes to the family reunion like a newcomer and with conditions. Like the kind you get from your mother when you want to bring the new girlfriend to said reunion. She might look like everyone else there, two eyes, one nose, and a fondness for casserole and sweet tea. But she isn't family unless an entirely new set of conditions are met. She can take the Dodge to the pantry and get in a lot more trouble because there are less relations, and that strangeness is the fuel for that trouble when not addressed. No one bats an eye at Dodge and Toyota being in a room alone together. They're family. But people wonder what that Ram is doing with his bedroom door closed with the Cyber Truck every time she comes over. We all have heard the joke that that family of cars spells S3XY, better keep the door open, Mr. Musk.

The guitar like the voice is a relation to music outright. The voice makes sound and with a bit of training the guitar makes sound too and that sound can be joyful and the delight of the Lord. 

The difference between a mic'd acoustic guitar and an electric guitar is one is an amplified version of the genuine article. The other is a manipulated version of the genuine article. One is made for and used to the end in its purpose. The other is an end in itself leading to other purposes and other ends. As many ends as you could fit into an effects pedal, to be exact. This is an important distinction because of the lack of distinguishing between what goods are and what services are. Goods are actual things in time and space. And services aren't. Services are concepts that pull goods in as their fuel. Services are what give you the security of never having to worry about hitting a pedestrian, by removing your right to repair your own vehicle, or drive. Services are what let you play a worship song, exactly, literally, like Hillsong and Bethel play their songs, at the cost of having to own and operate a litany of tech to support the idea of that song in the first place. A fragile system that often goes down mid-song the way a hymnal and a choir never seemed to.

What we then call the goods in our lives and the services matters. Because it's only by saying things are alright when they are not, that we get ourselves in trouble. It wasn't until we said we could "gather" online that we dared to try sharing communion with ourselves and a screen. We would never try to share communion over a postcard or letter to the Corinthians, but pen and paper are conceptually understood as the kind of goods that can't provide those services. But when given enough stimuli, a screen that tastes nothing like the bread and speakers that taste nothing like wine, convinced us that we could do a communal and metaphorical meal, with our gathered body of believers at home, with wine and bread we didn't actually share with them communally.

You all did it a few years back in the hopes that it was at least permissible to do. Tech convinced you to enter into a form of worship and sacrament, during a pandemic, that was drastically different than what was theologically correct. And it did so because it's what technological services do. They beg you to use them. Beg you to try it out to see if they can satisfy your needs and desires. They're an attractive newcomer asking for help in the pantry to get the honey, and their features and services look as smooth as they are. Which is the problem. 

"Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple. For your obedience is come abroad unto all men. I am glad therefore on your behalf: but yet I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple concerning evil.

Romans 16:17-19 KJV

The church saw the internet in its time of need or maybe better put desire and saw that it could provide the service of Sunday mornings and communion with very little tweaks to what we did on Sunday mornings and during communion. It saw that bread on a screen and bread on a charger looked almost the same so they called it the same and let the electric guitar do a slightly longer solo because it was good for engagement on the livestream.

But what the church didn't do during COVID, was communion. Because it wasn't together, no one shared bread, no one passed the cup, and some of us ate later because the live stream was recorded. It provided a service instead of practicing good. Until the church can rightly make these kinds of distinctions. We will have the kinds of things that went sideways during COVID go sideways without it. 

For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? what shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.

But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

1 Corinthians 11:21-22, 28-29 KJV

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