Are Camps Still Needed?

 

" Ours is an over-stimulated culture, and an insidious side effect is that our inner worlds are atrophying. As our world becomes more and more driven by external stimulation, and our lifestyles mirror the dizzying speed of our technology, we focus outward at the expense of the inward. We take leaps and bounds in one direction, but drift from another, which can have the effect of alienating us from ourselves, others, and God.

My wife and I recently witnessed the disorienting nature of technology at a local movie theater. The next day, perhaps ironically, I recorded my reflections on my blog:

There were three people in the rows in front of us who had their cell phones open during the entire movie. They were text messaging and surfing the Internet and otherwise annoying people. As I saw those cell phone screens open during the movie, I observed that the people using them were not fully committed to being anywhere during those two hours. They were physically sitting in the theater, even sitting with others who accompanied them, but their minds and hearts were scattered all over the place. They were not fully present, in terms of their attention, to the visual and auditory experience in front of them. They were not fully present to their friends and family that they were sitting next to, and they were not geographically present to the people they were text messaging. They had a hand and foot in several different places that were disconnected, leaving them as some sort of radical amputees. There were everywhere and they were nowhere.

Aside from how piercingly bring a cell phone screen can be in a dark movie theater and how bizarre it is to text message during an intense and complex spy movie, I got to thinking about how handheld technology affects our sense of personal identity. So many people walk through their lives as ghosts, not fully present to anything, gliding through places and around people but not really seeing or experiencing or being seen or experienced." (From Introverts in the Church by Adam McHugh)

 

After I read this quote, I could not help but agonize over the truth of what was explained. It seems to me that our culture is a mile wide and an inch deep. We are losing the capacity to think, to reason, to ponder. We have replaced being with people with electronic interaction activities. We have defined community as those who are connected, while not really being connected to anyone.

As we meet, we are always aware of a cell phone vibration or Ipod Touch signal. At home, the laptops are open, the television is on, the phone is in hand, and the people we love are connected to everything while being engaged in nothing.

We live lives of lonely desperation, and hope we find some answers in some, any, or all of our connections.

Really, the fundamentals of life have not changed, even though the technology has. There is a need and even a longing for depth in relationships, even if there are few models to show us what they look like. Silver Birch Ranch offers an alternative to our contemporary lifestyle that focuses on the inner life, on knowing Christ, not just connecting with Him, and learning how to make Him known. We still have places where people can get away, look at each other, and engage fully with another human. Our Wisconsin campus is at the edge of thousands of acres of national forest, and our Canadian campus is the definition of "remote." I once again invite you to investigate what the tool of Christian camping is really all about. I encourage you to come to camp this summer as a family, or come as a counselor with your children and their friends, and see what a week, disconnected from the external world, will do for you and those you bring.

Oh…and when you come, turn your cell phone off at the gate, and do not ask if there is an internet connection you can use. Instead, look at people, listen to them, and connect face to face. Look at God, take time to sit by the edge of the lake and listen, look, and feel around you. Come and take time to feed your inner self and strengthen what is becoming so weak before it's too late.

Resources available at davewager.com