I suppose I could have blogged on some of these things, but then I didn’t really feel any great urge to do so – a bit of a break from blogging as well, I guess. Stewart has been covering the issue of resting and priorities with recent posts on ‘always available‘ and ‘busyness‘ – a useful reminder that we need, and benefit from, taking time out from our routine and the demands that are placed upon us. It’s also not been an issue of having nothing to have a rant about (OK, I admit it, I love a good rant) – there have been numerous things which have got me grumping (mostly associated with misrepresenting the Church of Scotland, misunderstanding the Reformation(s), and generally being utterly contradictory (that’ll be church services then). But again, I haven’t felt the need to rush off and blog about it (well, I was tempted, but really couldn’t pluck up the enthusiasm).

But perhaps the main purpose and benefit from this blogging/academic/placement interlude has been to clear the decks somewhat in anticipation of a panicked and pressured dissertation-writing drive. I’ve put off the writing for as long as could get away with as ideas and thoughts and readings all bubbled around in my head. But now it’s time to get that lot down on paper and see where it all ends up. So, chances are, this is not really an end to the blogging interlude, but it’s certainly an end to the timeout from academic obligations.

How has virtualisation impacted on notions of identity?

How has virtualisation impacted on our values as human beings?

How has increased connectivity impacted on the nature of our organisations?

How has increased connectivity and virtualisation impacted on our ability to develop meaningful communities?

Is a regulatory framework desirable?

What are the theological implications of the changes being brought to individuals, to society and to organisations by increased connectivity and virtualisation?

This is all good stuff and very relevant in our technology-oriented world.

Overall, the day was interesting enough, with some very challenging issues raised about our use of such technology, our expectations of privacy and much else. However, I was left with the abiding impression that none of the advertised topics was adequately addressed, there was no clear direction for where it was all going and, depressingly, that there was a bit (more than a bit) of disconnection with the reality of the pace of change and the uses to which the technology was being put. I can see the panel ending up commenting on technology that has long since fallen out of favour or moved beyond how it is being used at the moment.

Anyway, that’s really by way of introduction to what I want to mull over. One of the ideas that was floated around was that of ‘contextual identity’. Virtualisation allows us to ‘be’ different people in different places. Each of those personas is ‘real’ regardless of their existence in cyberspace or ‘IRL’. They are ‘real’ because they are an extension of who we are – we make them real because they are from us (arguably, part of our legacy of sharing in the task of creation when we named the animals) – and they are real because they have real consequences. Our virtual interactions with others will ultimately impact with a real person at the far end. We can be ‘different people’ on a night out with the lads or sitting in church on a Sunday morning and virtualisation has simply been an extension of that. But it offers greater scope for identity adoption and it often offers the veneer of anonymity and impermanence. It’s easier than ever to be whoever we want to be.

There are the obvious issues raised about ethical integrity and moral behaviour but I want to pick up on the issue of self-identity. When we adopt a contextual identity, whether it is who we are sitting in the pub, or our character in WoW, it is an extension of who we are. It cannot be otherwise, surely? That’s not to say that it necessarily represents a ‘significant’ part of who we are. It may be that tiny fraction of our personality that needs released every now and again for a bit of fun or it may be a large part of who we ‘are’ and what is important to us. The problem is that we are very bad at making relative judgements and tend towards the absolute. For example, I like to blog about systematic theology, therefore I must be an ‘academic’ with no understanding of real-life pastoral concerns. OK, bad example maybe. But joking aside, it’s an example of how one public persona could potentially be seen as representative of the whole person. Virtualisation compounds this problem with no discerning value-judgement being made on the ‘weight’ of each contextual identity. Added to that there is the possibility of many, many contextual identities and there may be little or no knowledge of the others from the one being looked at (and evaluated).

These issues are, arguably, purely sociological, and that would be true. But they do have a theological or faith dimension. Not least because some of those contextual identities may well representing a person’s faith, or ethics, or morals. But there is also the issue of ‘self’ and, from a Christian faith perspective, that is a theological issue.

Each of these contextual identities is real and so they are part of the real ‘us’ – they define who we are. Each aspect may represent a greater or smaller fraction of the whole, but they are nevertheless ‘us’. Furthermore, if we acknowledge that we are ‘fallen’ creatures then some (all) of those parts will be less than perfect. And it may well be that the ‘biggest’ aspect of us that is seen (virtually or otherwise, but especially virtually) is the least perfect.

And so integrity of ‘self’ becomes an issue. How de we ensure we are not misrepresented by those contextual identities and yet allow them to exist as part of who we are? But maybe that’s not our problem, but lies with others – how they perceive us, who they understand us to be given only the snapshots of us which appear in any given context. And therein lies another issue. We are not static beings. We grow, we learn, we change our minds, our views, our behaviour. Who we are is in a state of flux as we are moulded and shaped, brought down and raised back up again. Indeed the Christian belief in resurrection is not purely a future-focused one, but is a present reality as well. We are always in a time when we ‘die to self’ and become more Christ-like.

Therefore, the Christian understanding of forgiveness becomes all the more relevant as well. In many respects the internet is like a very large elephant – it never forgets. There is no shortage of websites where archive snapshots can be found of all manner of online mutterings are preserved for posterity. Any information we put ‘out there’ can be reused and further disseminated by others. Arguably it is no longer our own, but our fingerprints are still all over it. In a sense we cannot escape our virtual past and so our history, which is always bound into our sense of self, becomes more and more difficult to escape. But our past history, however influential on who we are now, is not who we are now. Christians, like everyone else, can be very good at dredging up the past but Christians should, out of anyone, be most aware of how that past can be set aside. If it were not so then Jesus stands for nothing and the cross is meaningless.

One final thought, and one that goes of on a bit of a tangent. Last Sunday evening I heard a sermon that got into a discussion of the nature of the Trinity. One picture offered was of a three-piece jigsaw, each part interlocking with the other two. It’s an unfortunate image in many respects, especially as the words used seemed to imply that each was ‘part’ of the whole and somehow lesser when ‘separated’. But in critiquing it we have the same issue of ‘self’ in the context of this discussion. We see these contextual identities somehow as individual parts of a jigsaw – not representative of the whole and incomplete without the rest of the pieces. But the problem is, like the relationship in the Trinity, there is no disconnectedness from the whole. Each piece may appear to exist in isolation, but that would be to misunderstand the nature of ‘self’. Each piece is shaped and formed by its relationship to the whole and so must contain some sense of the ‘whole’ within the ‘part’. But does that mean that we can extrapolate the ‘whole’ from the ‘part’? With the Godhead, yes, for it exists in perfect relationship. But for us, no, for our relationships, with one another and with ‘self’, are not perfect. But that, surely, is the challenge to who we are – to grow into better relationship and become more ‘integrated’. What, then, is the challenge to us for our contextual identity?

These are some of the things the seminar ought to have been addressing. Whether that’s the direction they are heading remains to be seen.

Ultimately, of course, this is all to my benefit. It’s the ‘real’ part of of ministry preparation. But I still have the academic stuff to do, although, technically speaking, I am as qualified as I need to be. Once again it’s not a lack of interest in the academic that’s a problem. I love studying theology. For me it’s the underpinning of who I am as a ‘minister’. It goes hand-in-hand with Biblical interpretation and it’s the dialogue between the two that defines my faith and its outworkings. For me, pastoral/practical theology is a result of these two things rather than being a more intimate part of the loop. Of course the pastoral and practical have to inform, or at least question, the Bible/theology ‘loop’, but it it those two which define whether our works are specifically Christian or simply philanthropic (although it’s an interesting argument over the distinction, especially if one is a Christian).

Anyway, this placement has, as placements do, brought the pastoral/practical to the fore and I’ve been busier with these than in any of my previous placements. And the encouraging thing is that as I engage more and more in these, I become more and more interested and excited and committed to them. I suppose that if you take a step back and have a more objective view, you could say that the third placement is the time of moving away from the academic and is the preparation for moving into probation and, ultimately, full-time ministry. So I guess it’s no surprise that this should be happening.

In a sense this gives the lie to the blog post title. Progress is being made in a particularly crucial aspect of my preparation for ministry. It’s just not happening in the area that I am obliged to do as well. Maybe in that there is a greater metaphor for ministry. There will be aspects of it that will excite and enthuse and these are the areas we will naturally wish to focus our energy and attention on. However, there will be areas of ‘obligation’, and they may even be areas we are interested in, but that simply don’t hold our attention as they should. Finding the motivation to do them is important to stop them piling up – they will need done sometime.

If anyone has found the answer to this, I (and the rest of the world, I suspect) would love to hear it.

And “worth it” implies some kind of future reward, or better times. I’m not so naive to think that life will suddenly become wonderful when I end up in my own parish. That, judging from what I hear, is just the beginning of a whole new set of ‘challenges’.

I guess what I’m saying is that in the intensity of it all (and it is intense), it’s easy to overlook other things, other people. Little things cause a lot of friction, because they get into the apparently smooth-running machine which is the routine of study and preparation. And yet, it should, in a sense, be the other way round. ‘Life’ was there before studies and so study is the intruder, the grit in the life machine.

Sometimes it’s necessary to stop for a bit of maintenance and to gain some perspective. It’s a shame that it’s the ‘grit’ that forces a halt. Much better to have planned maintenance.

Sometimes I do wonder if it’s ‘worth it’. I need to recognise that that is not the advance warning signal, but the emergency stop on the machine.

Time for a maintenance schedule to be put in place.

Lest we forget,

we will speak their names and hold them in our hearts.

Lest we forget,

we will pray with those who remember.

Lest we forget,

we will seek peace and bring hope.