Introduction
You are about to experience the Internet in a way that is both very new and very old, as a modern-day sacred text, a source of spiritual inspiration and fulfillment. As the world of cyberspace has increasingly become part of our daily lives, it has become, for many, a public library and shopping mall, a post office and entertainment center. In this book, the Internet is seen as a catalyst for worship and introspection. This is not to say that one should bow down to the computer on your desk as some metallic Baal or Zeus. This is merely to suggest that the Internet can help us to experience and approach God.
I take two very different approaches to this task in these pages: one is experiential and the other more analytic and expository. In those chapters where this subject is discussed analytically, I first consider the general question of whether spirituality and technology are compatible, then present a wide variety of ways to perceive sanctity within this new technology we call the Internet. Some of the arguments are straightforward, others more complex; some involve mainstream religious ways of understanding God, other take a more mystical perspective. As we delve deeper and deeper, getting closer and closer to the core of the subject, we are led to the startling conclusion that the true essence of God can be understood ù indeed most plausibly is seen ù as being digital in nature.
The experiential approach is both the most risky and unique, and is reflected in those chapters appearing in italics. These consist of a series of three actual online spiritual journeys I have taken. Through these journeys, which are chronicled primarily in a stream-of-consciousness format, I attempt to model a new form of spiritual exploration; call it "the virtual pilgrimage," if you will. The reflections recorded here provide a running journal of my spiritual struggles and fears, and moments of epiphany and amazement while journeying online. I've tried as much as possible to present these chapters as raw religious data, hoping that, while all the details of my journey may not parallel yours, there will be moments of deep resonance for you. At the very least, I will have shared a valuable tool that might be helpful to your own growth. Having completed three journeys for this book and others on my own, I believe we are on to a new means of utilizing the vast power of this new technology to connect us to all of Reality.
The medieval Jewish mystics known as Kabbalists believed that existence is multi-layered. That is, God's presence becomes more manifest through the unfolding of Creation. Similarly, our ability to perceive God increases as we penetrate deeper into anything we encounter, be it a force of nature, a personal relationship, a text, or, for that matter, a Web site. So while we are diving into the Web to find God, let us imagine ourselves coming across some buried treasure covered by a multi-layered casement of barnacles and seaweed. As we dive from site to site, we are in fact peeling away at those outer layers, and within each site itself, we also peel away at the superficial in order to find what is most essential, which is often what is most hidden.
If we are to treat the Internet as a sacred tableau and what appears on our screen as a sacred text, then it should be possible to employ time-tested exegetical techniques to allow God's essence to unfold. We'll be doing that here.
So join me now as we travel through a world that transcends time and space, built upon the elements of Creation. Using the tools of ancient wisdom, modern technology and plain old gut instinct, we are ready to begin an adventure that our grandparents could not have imagined, a pilgrimage without dust. Who knows where we will end up?
I encourage you to read the experiential chapters while online, if Internet access is available to you. I cannot guarantee that all the sites I present will be accessible to you. In fact, given that the only constant in cyberspace is change, I guarantee that a number of the sites will not be available. Even in the few months between the time I originally took these journeys and the completion of this book, there has been much change. Were I to follow the same path today, the results would be quite different. But that's what makes it so exciting and unpredictable. Still, you'll be able to follow along better if, at least occasionally, we are both looking at the same thing. And what's most important is that if you are reading these chapters while online, you can always put the book down from time to time and go off on your own. This is meant to be both an interactive reading experience and a catalyst for your own spiritual explorations.
Serendipity is the key to finding God on the Web. When we least expect it, God will be there. I hope you'll also sense the haphazard, what-lies-hidden-around-the-corner sensation that I had as I moved from site to site. I suspect that you'll discover, as I did, that like the evolving process of Creation, the true meaning of one site might not be understood until we've reached the next, or the last, or not at all. I suspect that you'll be amazed, as I was, at seeing how the digital universe unfolds in a manner similar to the Cosmos envisioned by the ancient mystics, one that aims remarkably toward equilibrium and harmony, a balance of the male and female, between justice and mercy, good and evil. We'll all sense the organic nature of reality, how seemingly unrelated things are in fact intimately connected. We'll see signs of the supreme value of life and the defeat of death, the establishment of order and the conquest of chaos. We'll look for God and look to discern God's will. We'll look, in the end, for clues to our own mission and destiny.
Since we won't need to walk, we might as well take off our shoes, for we are standing on holy ground. Just as Moses removed his shoes when he saw the miracle of a replenishing fire, so do we bare our feet as we prepare to bare all, sitting before our fiery box of miracles. We echo the psalms of former pilgrims and wonder whether their faint echo too might be heard at some point on our journey.
As we dive into the realm of cyberspace, God's inner life comes more clearly into focus the deeper we go.
"From the depths we call upon You, O God," says Psalm 130.
To those depths we now embark, O God, to find You.
Chapter One
It was late in the summer of 1995 when I first connected to the Internet. I had just hooked up a new computer in my home and was playing around with this new supernatural toy when suddenly I was in what they call a chat room. I looked up at the top of an almost-blank screen and saw that there were only two names there, and one of them was me. Well, not really me, but my screen name. Hamrab.
The other person was called Whalermouth. I tried to figure out what that meant, but then figured that if that other person was trying to do the same with my name he'd be having a hell of a time. It wasn't worth trying to shake the anonymity.
Then, my four year-old son Ethan noticed some words on the screen. "Hello, Hamrab, tell me if you are there."
My God, it talks! The computer was talking to me. Or really, some completely unknown yet distinct person, created in God's image, just as all human beings are, yet totally unseen and unheard, someone was reaching out to me as a human being in this most inhuman of environments. What was I to do?
I wasn't ready for this. Do I answer? Do I let on that I'm really there? Well, I typed in; "Hamrab says hello." Totally flustered, and not wanting to get involved with anyone who would call himself Whalermouth, I clicked my way out of the room and to a local weather report. It was an easy click, much easier than hanging up the phone on all those solicitors who call at dinnertime. Too easy, in fact. Because the human factor had been so masked by words on a screen. I'm not even sure why I said hello in the first place.
The fact that my son was there is not in itself significant, except that, well, you see he had helped me to turn the thing on. You know someday, maybe when he's sixteen, he'll be able to hit a baseball farther than his old man. And someday, like maybe when he's nine, he'll be a few technological light years ahead of me. But that's OK, because I know that my parents, when they were my age, were thrilled just to be able to manipulate the old rabbit ears to get decent black and white reception of Milton Berle. That was the extent of their technological prowess, back in those good old days when gophers were pesky animals, the net was what you caught flies in on a hot summer day, and the web, was where Dad had to string up his son's baseball glove.
But all that has changed in just a few short years.
And God has changed too.
Well, God hasn't really changed, or at least I don't think so. What is changing is how we think of God, and the metaphors we use to describe Him....I mean Her...I mean, not God, but "spirituality." I mean, can you see how confusing it's getting?
Confusing it may be, but no more perplexing than the transformations taking place in how we look at the world around us and the language with which we express it. As we reconfigure our images of the Sacred to fit our new era of technological interface, the results could be spiritually enriching for each of us, and of great benefit both to organized religion and to society at large. But in order for that upgrade to take place, we must switch our default from outmoded images of the Sacred to something more user-friendly.
But before I lapse completely into cyberbabble, let me back up and state my case for re-imagining God.
Over the centuries, people of all faiths have employed countless metaphors to describe that which is both Ultimate and ultimately indescribable. The Hebrew Bible alone contains dozens of different images of God, envisioning the Sacred as everything from a male warrior to a mother eagle. Each of these represents not only a view of divinity, but also a way of looking at the world ù and ourselves. Those who composed the book of Exodus' triumphant Song of the Sea, who called God a "Man of War," had a world-view that was decidedly patriarchal, where an active God with human features could take sides in wars against lesser gods and humans. It was a world where justice prevailed. At the other extreme we have Job, to whom God was a voice out of the whirlwind, distant, terrifying and beyond understanding, reflecting the unjust world in which the righteous Job suffered so horribly.
As each generation has struggled to understand its place in the cosmos, it has fashioned a God to facilitate that process. One might claim that this process makes a mockery of Western religions, which typically see the fashioning of divine images as idolatrous behavior. But the second commandment, the one that says "Make no other Gods before me," says nothing about making other metaphors. Idolatry is when you point to a rock and say, "That's God." When you point to the Grand Canyon and say, "My God! " you are not saying that the canyon is God, but that the awesome spectacle of that huge carved-out rock is helping you to experience God. We experience God in many different ways, whenever we sense awe or profound gratitude, order, serenity or wonder. As new technologies take hold, these transcendent feelings are evoked in new ways and become more commonplace and accessible. It is no surprise that the popularity of books, music and films with spiritual themes has increased markedly in recent years.
While the latter part of the twentieth century had no monopoly on turbulence ù and it is true that through all of history the only constant has been change ù the pace of change has increased dramatically over the past three decades. At least it feels that way. One could claim that the first part of this century was even more tumultuous, what with the inventions of the airplane, automobile and modern mass warfare. But that is of little solace to so many today who feel so lost and detached, reeling with displacement.
Perhaps this alienation stems from organized religion's inability to keep up. In the past, religion has been at the forefront either of opposing change (as with the condemnation of "rebels" like Galileo and Spinoza), or promoting it (as with the eventual embrace of great religious figures like Paul and Isaiah). But right now we hear few powerful voices of faith and very little direction from the pulpit. Our clergy seem bent on clinging to old metaphors that have no relevance to people whose worldview has been altered radically. Our churches and synagogues seem curiously out of touch with how most of us are feeling about religion, to the point where many people have become far more comfortable not using the term religion at all, replacing it with the more generic word "spirituality." Yet religion is not dead, just as God was not really dead in the 1960s, despite all claims to the contrary. What is dead is the prime metaphor of God that sustained Americans throughout the middle of the twentieth century.
What's dead is "The Shepherd."
I can recall the one time I tried to use a new translation of the 23rd Psalm at a funeral. Immediately afterwards, I was verbally decapitated by an angry mourner for turning the "Valley of the Shadow of Death" into the "Valley of Deepest Darkness" and for changing that cup that "runneth over" into one that "overflows." But my greatest transgression was to tamper with the prime metaphor of that seminal psalm. "The Shepherd" provided the key image of God that sustained American Christians and Jews through the horrors of depression and a cataclysmic war. That tranquil image of calm certainty allowed people to submit, to accept a lot that might easily include premature loss and tragedy, to resist despair in stoic confidence that right would triumph and that their side was right. The shepherd metaphor presented God as a loving (male) caretaker, not as intimate as a parent nor as demanding as a teacher, king or judge ù for Americans were suffering ù but one in complete control of our destinies and, most importantly, a God who took responsibility for us. Americans needed to believe that God had a stake in us.
So this was the one time that I changed "shepherd" to "companion," an alternative translation of the same Hebrew word. "The Lord is my Companion." Sounded good to me.
Big mistake.
That mourner, who not coincidentally came from that wartime generation, was looking for the soothing stroke of a shepherd's staff. The last thing he wanted at that moment was a "companion."
Since that day I've stayed with "shepherd" at funerals, but I've abandoned that metaphor in every other sense. For I have come to understand that precisely that which galvanized my parents' generation is now numbing my contemporaries and our children. The shepherd metaphor does not comfort me anymore, if it ever did. It has nothing to do with what provides me with the spiritual sustenance I need to make sense of my life. It simply doesn't resonate, for a number of reasons:
As a Jew, I cannot imagine myself in the role of sheep, especially when six million of my fellow Jews were led like sheep to the slaughter. Although many resisted and most were heroic even in passive resistance, the image of sheep-to-the-slaughter remains, nearly six decades later, the pervasive nightmare of the Jewish people. Sheep are passive, plump and witless sweaters-in-waiting. The idea of being a sheep sickens me.
As a human being, I can not trust a God who, on His shepherd's watch, would allow His sheep to die. The shepherd God might already have been on the critical list before the War, with new technologies and urban sprawl already rendering this metaphor obsolete. But the Holocaust was the final blow. If the wolves eat the sheep, how can one not fire the shepherd?
As a pastor, I find the shepherd-flock image stifling to my ministry and to the congregation. New models of spiritual leadership, placing the pastor in the role of, well, a companion, provide fertile ground for me. As a fellow seeker, I am able to lead by example, without prodding, with room for my own experimentation, with allowance for an occasional failure. I've found most pastors to have great difficulty coming down from the pasture, but once they do the effect is liberating, for them and their former flock.
And finally, as a participant in the technological revolution currently changing the way we look at everything, I have found new metaphors that are much more appealing, new ways of organizing my universe that connect me to that which is Greater than myself.
So I've been searching for God online.
Incidentally, I also believe it's possible to find spirituality in my VCR instruction manual. And in my home videos, my cell phone, my beeper, my remote control, my cable box and television screen; in the Hubbell telescope and the space shuttle, in my microwave oven and in a cloned sheep called Dolly. How I see God in these other technological phenomena is the subject for a more broad-based book; yet in some sense, a deep search for God on the Internet, the subject of this study, is a microcosm of the larger issue.
Through my search for God online, I've discovered danger signals along the journey. I believe God can be found on the Internet, but God can also be lost there. In the end I'll offer no conclusive answers, no lightning-bolt revelations, just lots of new insight gained from one man's spiritual struggle in front of a computer monitor.
Through this book, we'll explore together some new ways to find enlightenment in this technological age, not by rejecting the material world but rather by elevating it, so that it can elevate us. For me there is no other choice but to seek God through engagement in this world. I come from a tradition that refrains from asceticism. When the world seems to be going haywire, a Jew can't just run off and hide. Neither can we take technology and make it into yet another idol, as cult groups like Heaven's Gate have done. We are enjoined to grapple with the world and make it better, not to escape from it. Admittedly, there are some highly respected ascetic traditions, including some that have biblical roots, which do see great merit in solitude. But even the monastic life typically is not intended as an escape from material reality that surrounds it, but ultimately as a contributor to its salvation.
The death of the shepherd metaphor has brought with it the death of rugged individualism as the American ideal. For that shepherd was also, thinly disguised, the Marlboro man, the John Wayne general and the Humphrey Bogart cafe owner. The God of the past generation was a lonely sort, accepting His solitude because that's what true leadership was all about. During the Cold War, America had to stand tall in the saddle, rifle cocked, ready to ward off evil Injuns and wolves. The God I sought and to an extent found on the Web is quite different, and so is the world that we live in. Today's God dances with wolves and prances with Pocahontas. The age of individualism and Cold War wagon circling has given way to one of mystical outreach and interconnection. America's Declaration of Independence has been replaced, in a spiritual sense at least, with a more universal Declaration of Interdependence.
So now we escape the green pastures where our cup has now run dry and venture boldly beyond the valley of the shadow of death, to explore the rocky terrain of our real and virtual universe, in search of the God we believe in.
(c)2000. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Thelordismyshepherd.com by Joshua Hammerman. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.
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