Pure Manners
Some of my favorite prayers in the prayer book sound remarkably out of date. I have always loved the Prayer of Humble Access and its image of gathering up the crumbs under the Lord’s table. I celebrate every occasion when we get to use the word inestimable in worship. Although we do not use it often, there is a prayer for our country that asks God to “bless our land with honorable industry, sound learning, and pure manners,” which feels like something my great-grandmother would have prayed.
Manners seem to have gone out of style. Elizabeth and I try to teach them to our children, but I must admit that I have not done a great job of channeling my ancestors’ fastidiousness when it comes to traditional expressions of courtesy. We have the basics down—napkins in laps, please and thank you, no elbows on the table—but occasions to practice the more nuanced details of etiquette—does the sherry glass go above the white wine glass or the red wine glass if there is no champagne flute on the table?—seem far and few between.
I wonder whether it may be time to bring back a strong commitment to formal manners, not because I am interested in my children joining high society but because society itself seems to have lost its basic sense of what it means to be human.
This week, a colleague of mine reflected on how sad he was to see, at the end of a college football game, some victorious fans berating the quarterback of the losing team. Were it not for the quarterback’s clapback, the moment may not have been preserved on national television, but it became a story, not because of the inhumane treatment of a college athlete from the lips of some drunken, middle-aged spectators but because the athlete dared to respond.
Two weeks ago, coverage of the Ryder Cup—a biannual golf competition among the best American and European golfers in the world—focused largely on the behavior of the fans instead of the drama-filled play. Unlike most golf tournaments, the distinctly national flavor of the Ryder Cup has always drawn enthusiastic supporters and competitors, but, this year, the spirit of fierce competition on the course was overshadowed by the vitriol in the galleries. Golf is often too stuffy, too restrictive, and too elite, but one can relax one’s commitment to etiquette without disregarding the humanity of those taking part.
Do you remember when politicians on opposite sides of a debate were able to speak with respect and admiration of their counterparts? Do you remember when we did not have to “unfriend” our acquaintances, neighbors, and relatives because of their contemptuous posts on social media?
I suspect that much of the problem stems from the technological dehumanization of our interactions with others. On the one hand, quick and efficient exchanges through electronic communication are a godsend. How many of us would rather receive a text message than a phone call? Other than an Amazon delivery, when was the last time the ring of a doorbell filled you with excitement and not trepidation? In general, I do not like email, but I would rather endure an exchange of a dozen messages than have to spend an hour in a meeting.
Our encounters with others have become dehumanized because technology, while making us more accessible, has simultaneously made us more distant from each other. As a result, people have been replaced by abstractions. I might be furious with someone whose political posts I find objectionable, but I have a hard time staying angry when I spend fifteen minutes in their company. Fans of the other team feel like enemies when they all blend together in a sea of whatever color represents their side, but, when you have an opportunity to speak to another fan in line at the concession stand, you quickly remember that cheering for opposite teams does not make you mortal foes. I wonder whether the drunken fans who berated the losing quarterback would be so vicious if they knew met that athlete’s mother in the parking lot before the game?
Believe it or not, the Bible has something to say about our overreliance on technology. In 2 Kings 6, right before the episode in which Elisha asks God to blind the enemy soldiers so that he can lead them as captors into the capital city, one of the prophet’s associates loses an axe head in the Jordan River. “Alas, my lord!” the junior prophet cries out. “It was borrowed!” Elisha then cuts off a stick from a nearby bush, flings it into the water where the axe head had sunken, and the iron tool floats to the surface, enabling the prophet to retrieve it.
At first, this seems like a rather minor miracle—a momentary intervention that suspends the laws of nature in order to restore a lost item and, thus, avoid the shame associated with being unable to return something that had been borrowed. In this historical context, however, the axe head was not only a useful tool. It was the pinnacle of technology. This was the Iron Age, and to lose that iron tool was like you or I accidentally dropping someone else’s fancy chainsaw into a lake. Back then, a blacksmith’s forge was as rare as a Ferrari dealership is today, and the loss of the specialized tool threatened to bring construction to a halt and to destroy the relationship between borrower and lender.
God intervenes in ways not bound by technology. When the story began, the axe was the cutting-edge tool necessary to get the job done, but, after it was lost, only the prophet’s primitive yet powerful intervention could make everything right. This story, therefore, feels like scripture’s commentary on the overall role of technology in civilization. Human advancements like an iron axe are helpful, if not necessary, for society, but there are some important aspects of common life that cannot be replaced by technological achievements.
More and more, I depend upon smart devices to improve my life. I dictate emails and text messages. I ask Alexa to turn on the lights and to remind me to water the plants. I call out items that need to be added to my grocery list and set kitchen timers without missing a beat. But do these often-terse interactions with inanimate objects erode my commitment to the humanity of the real people I interact with from a distance? Is the telemarketer who calls at an inopportune time anything more to me than a voice on the other end of the line worthy of my anger and disgust? In my mind, does the driver who cuts me off in traffic have any more dignity than the AI assistant who cannot understand what I am saying?
In his commentary on 1 & 2 Kings, Walter Brueggemann wrote, “It is, I suggest, the work of synagogue and church to invite folk into the narratives of wonder as an act of resistance against the world of technology that wants to reduce all possibility to human explanation and human control.” We return to the inexplicable miracles of God as a way to resist the expanding myth that the value of someone or something can only be measured in its utility.
When formerly miraculous things like same-day delivery and instantaneous video communication become commonplace, we risk losing touch with the awe and wonder of what God is doing in our lives. God is active in the world in ways that exceed our capacity for replication and understanding, and the respect for every human being that we have promised to pursue in the Baptismal Covenant is undermined when we let microchips become more marvelous to us than their God-gifted creators.
I am not suggesting that we throw away all our smart devices, unplug from the grid, and live off the fruit of the land. But I do think we need to resist the desire to make life so efficient, easy, and manageable that we lose our sense of awe at the intricacies of what God has made, including the people that frustrate us.
Some people claim that being polite to AI is a good strategy, not because we want technology to be merciful to us once it fully takes control but because the complex algorithms behind AI benefit from the sort of polite and collaborative speech that eventually produces more open and collaborative responses. I do not know whether that is true, but I do believe that being courteous in your human-like interactions with smart devices helps you remember that the multitude of real human beings all around us are real people with real feelings made in the same divine image as us. Alexa, Siri, Cortana, and Copilot may not have feelings, but the people around us do, whether we know their names or not.
Yours faithfully,
Evan D. Garner
