Eye contact, posture, tone, gestures, rate of speech, touch, and many more subtleties provide a host of cues that create mood, relationship, response, intimacy, fear…(the list is inexhaustible). Face-to-face interaction is powerful and informative…
Unfortunately, it seems that face-to-face is being replace by face-to-phone.
What’s your estimate on the number of smart-phone interruptions each day in your interactions? My guess is 50%…meaning at least 50% of the conversations I have in a typical week someone’s phone, either mine or there’s clicks, buzzes, peeps, plays music or rings. And now with watches connected to phones, it’s not uncommon for people to break eye contact and look at their watch to check for incoming messages. (It usually triggers an evaluation of the conversation because it makes me wonder if I’m torturing the other person and they are impatiently waiting for it to end…or something).
Certainly digital devices have multiplied problematic conversations but they’re not the cause. The stereotypical 50’s husband hid behind his morning newspaper; friends and lovers talk about anything but the sore subject that needs to be addressed; friends and spouses give the silent treatment in vein attempts to avoid difficult resolution; the list of who we’re going to sit next to or avoid at work can grow embarrassingly long. Face-to-face conversation has always been replaced by face-to-something-or-other from fear, stubbornness or other sinful excuses.
Enter our God who wants to be face-to-face.
Now, enter our sin that prevents a face-to-face with God.
Next, enter Jesus who lives face-to-face with humanity in all it’s pain and imperfections; who turns toward the Father on the cross who is turned away.
Finally, enter forgiven you and me perfectly restored and able to – even called to look each other in the eye and illustrate the forgiving and restoring face of God.
“No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and His love is made perfect in us!” – John (1John 4.12)