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We are Relational Creatures

The computer age has created a new kind of isolationism and I keep reading that it can have a crippling effect upon people. In church, we are encouraged that above all else we are relational creatures. The Ten Commandments start with (1) a loving relationship with God and (2) a loving relationship with our fellow man holding them in the same esteem with which we hold ourselves.

As I said above, I keep reading isolationism can have a crippling effect, but I have to ask for a more complete definition before I lose any sleep over quiet time alone. I like people but I am an introvert, and as such, I gain strength and balance through extended quiet times alone with God. It took fifty-four years for me to figure out I had failed to develop adequate balance in my life because I had equated quiet time with unproductive time. One has nothing to do with the other. I will argue that loving relationships can be enhanced through quiet, unstructured and unproductive periods of contemplation and meditation. Furthermore, if the computer is a tool an individual chooses to use for the enrichment of those quiet times, then sobeit. www.biblegateway.com is a most effective tool for Bible search and study.

The whole person is a person who is on the one side open to God, and on the other side open to other human persons. It has been said that there is no true person unless there are two entering into communication with one another. The isolated individual is not a real person. A real person is one who lives in and for others. And the more personal relationships we form with others, the more we truly realize ourselves as persons.

This idea of openness to God, openness to other persons, could be summed up under the word love. We become truly personal by loving God and by loving other humans. By love, I don’t mean merely an emotional feeling, but a fundamental attitude. In its deepest sense, love is the life, the energy, of God Himself in us. We are not truly personal as long as we are turned in on ourselves, isolated from others. We only become personal if we face other persons, and relate to them. --Kallistos Ware, "Ordinary Graces".

Jane Mullikin
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