Learning from the Streets

Are you noticing how exhausting working on zoom is? yes? well you’re not alone, zoom fatigue is now a thing. Its as if coping with the grief, loss and distancing of the pandemic aren’t enough, now 5-6 weeks in zoom fatigue is hitting us hard. Its causing challenges like ‘unscheduled afternoon naps’ , a hankering after old fashioned ring tone phones, even MSN messenger (kids ask your parents) . We’re not far off calling it an diagnosed illness, a disability in itself. With prescriptions for zoom fatigue soon to happen.

But before the church goes head long into responding practically with the issues caused by Zoom fatigue, shouldn’t there be at least some consideration of how zoom fatigues should be reflected upon theologically? So that a response can then be grounded in scripture, part of the canon and we can improvise ways that befit the whole narrative.

So, in reflecting theologically about Zoom fatigue, we look first at creation, in Genesis we read that : ‘Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very zoom!…then he completed his work of creation he rested’

Even here we see that in a perfect world, God, gave space for rest, the task of communicating to male and female tired him and he needed introvert restoration time.

Looking ahead to Moses, after guidelines of rest and living are proclaimed in the 10 commandments, we read that ‘As the people zoomed in the distance , Moses approached the digital cloud where God was’ (Exodus 20: 21) . We see there, using a technological hermeneutic, a real sense that the cloud is bigger than the screen. That God himself is outside of the zoom, but the cloud, and this should keep us in perspective when contemplating our place in the zoom narrative.

David seems to himself be struggling under the weight of zoom fatigue when he poetically writes, in Psalm 121

‘I lift my eyes up, from the screen, 

where does my help come from’?

going on in verse 6 to stay that;

‘The sun will not harm you by day, nor the zoom by night’ 

David clearly here offering the distinction between the light of the Sun and the digital pixels of the zoom, one is light, one is dark. He understood.

Prophetically, Amos, heeds the same warning, in an unprovoked message, he goes head long into the perils of zoom, saying, in Amos 6; verse 1

‘what Peril awaits you in the lounge in luxury in Jerusalem’ 

In the original greek, the word for lounge is ‘Zuum wayteeen ruum’ Which can be translated to the English, as Zoom Waiting room. We are reminded to be mindful of waiting for our own peril in the lounges of luxury. The Zoom waiting rooms of the privileges, thus sayeth Amos.

In Ezekiel, there is the prophecy. In Chapter 37, as an alternative to zoom, we see the Vision of the valley of the dry Phones. The phones once wet with saliva and conversation, now dry, but will one day be restored to glory.

In the New Testament, in his Manifesto, Jesus in Luke 4, proclaims that , in a fulfilment of Isaiah, his message was to bring ‘Zoom news to the poor’ – an awakening of the captives and that the digitally blind shall again see. (Luke 4 18-19, the New Living technological Version) , his entire ministry had a zoom missiology, the gospel of zoom, quite possibly.

We are comforted to by an eschatological view, Jesus reveals that the future has a place for the many, saying in John 14, that

‘in my Fathers house there are many zooms‘ (verse 6) and so we see there, great comfort in the reality that a future not only includes zoom, but that the many zooms will be appropriate to the needs of those who use them, many zooms.

We are assured to that Jesus can carry the burden of zoom, as he says in his well known passage, Matthew 11:28, ‘ Zoom to me all you who are weary and burned, and I will give you rest’.

Thankfully, it is as if the entire story of the Bible, from Creation to Jesus, is about zoom fatigue all along. In all the thousands of years of biblical study and interpretation, I cant see how it was missed.  I realise that this is only a Biblical reflection on Zoom fatigue, and that there needs be both a zoomology from below as well as above, and there informed practices of the zoom church be in the conversation. But I offer these few Biblical verses as a starting point.

Please do see this as a ‘working towards’ a Theological view of zoom fatigue, rather than in any way a final document, and add your own below, there may well be conferences and books to be written on this in the future. But I hope this brings a little bit of a starting point to the discussions.