You Can’t Automate Community

Sometimes I stop and think to myself, "Gee, I'm a geek."

I have to confess that I love good home automation: blinds that know when to open and close based on the light outside; lights that not only sense when you're in the room, but adjust their shade of white to suit your circadian rhythm; heating and cooling that keeps the house just right; and yes, a trusty robot vacuum that twice a week cleans up Gracie's long hair. When it all works together, I feel a great sense of efficiency and, if I'm honest, control.

But what happens when the internet drops out, a software glitch leaves me in the dark for three seconds or, heaven forbid, the robot vacuum gets stuck between the cat bowl and a half-unpacked bag of groceries? Coming home to a half-vacuumed house does not put me in a great mood.

I suppose I've automated parts of my life to be more "available" and, dare I say it, more efficient. Unintentionally, though, I've fallen into a very modern dilemma: simplifying life to the point where any disruption to the system triggers a frustration that never existed before. And I haven't even mentioned AI!

A recent season of Daniel Sih's Spacemakers podcast, provocatively titled "Enough, This Self-Help Is Killing Me!", unpacked the irony that too much "life hacking" can work against us, leaving us fatigued and frustrated when the outcome doesn't match the promise of the good life.

Perhaps the problem is that a life built for efficiency leaves us impatient with the messiness of real relationships. God didn't design us to be optimised. He made us for one another.

Much of the New Testament is made up of letters, many from the Apostle Paul, teaching early churches how to live, how to treat one another and how to stay strong in their faith in Jesus Christ. They faced real challenges too:

"Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited" Romans 12:16.

"Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" 

1 John 4:11.

When you think about it, we don't spend time with others in order to be efficient. We linger, we're present and we take it all in. That is what community looks like. As believers, we belong to a community and we are responsible to it. We are called to share our gifts and talents, to love, to be generous, to encourage, to live in unity and to be humble. Why? Because that is how the world will know that we belong first to Christ, and then to each other.

We cannot automate this. And we cannot outsource this to AI. Our most important network will always be a human one.

In that spirit, we warmly invite you to our AI in Education Parent Forum tonight from 7:00 to 8:30pm in the Multicourt. Following a devotion from Rev Noddy Sharma and an update from our Emerging Projects AI team, parents will be invited to share their hopes, concerns and questions around tables. We'd love to see you there.