The following is a guest post by my friend and colleague, Dr. Don Shepson. Don is the Chair of the Ministry and Leadership Department at Toccoa Falls College and an ordained Priest in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA).
Recently I have been thinking a great deal about a trend I have witnessed sweeping through college campuses the last few months, Yik Yak. It is a
smartphone app that allows users to “chat,” or more honestly, post or comment
on anything with others who are close to them physically. In other words, only
users within about 2 miles of one another are able to see what is posted and
comment.
The trick?
It’s completely anonymous.
To understand this new app I viewed a student’s phone (mine
isn’t smart enough yet for this app) to see what kind of “yak’s” were taking
place near me on campus, and what I saw was alarming. In the interest in saving
digits (after all, this is a blog with a 650 word limit), here are two
examples:
“[So and so, with a specific name]” looks really hot today,
I can’t wait to see him in the gym without his shirt.” This had seven “upvotes”
from anonymous people who apparently agreed.
“I wonder what [so and so, with a specific name] slept in
last night? Any ideas?” This one came with a handful of responses that included
“I don’t know, but I wish I was there” and “nothing!”
As you might imagine, these leave the specifically named
individuals wondering what on earth each did to warrant these kinds of awkward,
uncomfortable, or even threatening comments. They made me wonder too, about the
idea of anonymity within a Christian community. I have worked with Steve for
years in college ministry on two campuses and one thing we have always been
impressed by (not necessarily a good thing, we get easily impressed) is the
willingness of students to say and do things that they think are anonymous. Anonymity
seems to me to cut across the grain of Christianity.
In his book To Know As We Are Known Parker Palmer observed:
“The goal of a knowledge arising
from love is the reunification and reconstruction of broken selves and worlds.
A knowledge born of compassion aims not at exploiting and manipulating creation
but at reconciling the world to itself. The mind motivated by compassion
reaches out to know as the heart reaches out to love. Here, the act of knowing
is an act of love, the act of entering and embracing the reality of the other,
of allowing the other to enter and embrace our own. In such knowing we know and
are known as members of one community, and our knowing becomes a way of
reweaving that community’s bonds."
Anonymity however contains a number of dangers that prohibit
a Christian community (like college campuses or churches) from knowing or
becoming known more fully as Palmer describes. When we separate our selves from
Christian community, as anonymity permits and promotes, we privatize our lives
and what happens is that we loose healthy and Godly accountability, we make
room for misunderstanding, and we hide our true selves that need the gentle
shaping and love that a meaningful community offer. In effect, we make space
for darkness and separation to become dominant factors in life, which are the
antithesis of Christianity, where honesty, integrity, compassion, love, hope,
charity, and peace are to reign in our hearts and minds.
The whole of 1 Peter 3 is instructive on these matters
(read, memorize, and live it), and the key verses to highlight are 8-9, “Finally, all of you, be
like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble. Do
not repay evil with evil or insult with insult. On the contrary, repay evil with
blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing.”
It is my prayer that in Christian communities and campuses our response to apps like Yik-Yak would reflect our calling to be a people who
are known to one another as those who are full of love and grace, even as we make
ourselves known in the careful and Godly words we chose to speak about each
other, and our own selves.
