Evangelistic Orgasmatron

One of the most productive industries in the US is the porn industry. An oddly ironic industry dedicated to sexual satisfaction that isn’t satisfying through being exploited while exploiting others while producing ejaculations and creating nothing.

Woody Allen actually offered a  prophetic send-up of that industry in the movie Sleeper, featuring a future that would offer humans a new machine: the “orgasmatron.”

The existence of the vast non-reproductive production industry called porn will no doubt extend into the age of smart machines. It already has - moving from mere mechanisms to increasingly sophisticated forms of AI and virtual reality. It is another reminder of how the 2nd machine age will make mere production trivial at best and dehumanizing at worst.

For Christians this begs us to ask the difference between mere production and true creation. 

I noted in an earlier blog that it isn’t machines that make our era different from the past. It is the concept of the machine applied across a whole range of human activities and goals that marks the first machine age. And one of those activities has been evangelism, which in order to produce more disciples has become more and more mechanized. 

Jesus told his disciples to go into the whole world as witnesses. Given the small number of apostles this call wasn’t destined to be particularly productive. But then the account of the apostolic response to Jesus doesn’t talk about productivity. Instead the emphasis is on faithful witness to Jesus as the Christ and the presence of God’s Reign. 

While the apostles clearly wanted to faithfully go “to the ends of the earth” there is little evidence that they were building a gospel train to get there. Instead their preaching led directly to forming small groups of people into what we would now call an “incubator;” a place in which the seeds the apostles planted could come into maturity. Their major concern wasn’t making sure that the churches were growing in number, but that they were healthy. That health provided the environment in which God creates disciples and is itself a witness to the world of God’s Reign.

And the key to this health, as every book of the New Testament bears witness, is love, not production. Jesus’ words and deeds change human lives because they are acts of love. And love, God’s love expressing itself through human lives, is the only rational for shaping a Christian community. Christians living in fellowship are healthy precisely when love is expressed through the body. 

This is why it can seem so difficult from a machine age perspective to understand how Jesus acts or the way in which Paul exhorts his congregations. Who casts the first stone? The answer is that you love the person threatened with stoning. Who is my neighbor? The one who presents an immediate need for love. How do you remain morally pure? You love your neighbor. Should you eat food offered to idols? You love your brother or sister in Christ. Do you keep the law or exercise your freedom? The answer is you love your brother or sister in Christ. 

A congregation doesn't become an incubator of healthy Christians by imposing an efficient strategy for ethical decision making and production of disciples. It becomes an incubator when its members love one another. 

And the miracle of a healthy church in which healed people live healthy lives is exactly analogous to those people whom Jesus healed and whose lives thus became witnesses to God’s Reign. It is their health; their unblemished skin, their restored minds, and their steady gait that witness to God’s presence.

Incubators such as those found in the scripture may not be enormously productive in the sense that they produce many disciples. They are not the source of mass production so desired by the ecclesial hierarchy. Rather, they bear fruit. 

And this sets them apart from the vast evangelistic production facilities and traveling shows that have been the hallmark of American Christianity. 

In a way the beginning of machine evangelism is the Roman Catholic orders and later organized movements like the early Methodists. Reproducible, structured, methodologies are a fundamental part of machines. Yet at the same time these movements were concerned primarily with creating communities rather than producing disciples. Their intention was to create incubators and what we now call spiritual formation was paramount.

(Imagine Wesley’s regular purging of the rolls of his societies down to the healthy members if you want the starkest possible contrast to contemporary UM churches.)  

This changed in the US in the 19th century. Enthusiastic American Christian leaders of the 19th century would imagine winning the world for the gospel in their generation. Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days expressed the basis for their enthusiasm and optimism. The machine age had created the means for global mass evangelism. And just like Phileas Fogg, the new American evangelists were all about goal setting, strategy, finding resources, creating mechanisms for efficient witness using the latest technology, and from all that producing disciples. 

And so the Evangelicals would invent the evangelistic machine; jumping onto every new technology that might make it more efficient. Print advertising, mass tract distribution, phonographs, radio, television and now the internet were almost instantly adapted to producing followers of Christ as rapidly as possible. 

In a world of religious options you have to grab market share.

By mid-century this had become so engrained in Christian thinking about evangelism that churches like the UMC would even restructure themselves to resemble an idealized corporation; assumed to be the most efficient design for an organization dedicated to mass production. 

And America would become the land of the Christian machine: a combination of New York corporate structures, Hollywood studios cranking out Christian entertainment to draw in customers, and Detroit factories slapping labels on those coming off the evangelistic assembly line. 

Now, in the 21st century, it is clear that American Christianity has spent its seed all over the nation and the world and has born little fruit. 

Instead of bearing witness to God’s Reign in word and deed through the loving incubation of newborn souls too many American preachers tease their audiences on toward paroxysms of fruitless self flagellation, emotionalism, political fireworks, ecclesial busyness and ultimately moans of self-congratulation. Instead of incubators they build ecclesial orgasmatrons. For a nation and world ready to bear fruit they offer only onanism. 

In the second machine age Christians won’t need evangelists and preachers to get that thrill. As I noted in an earlier post, virtually everything necessary to lead church members and “seekers” through an emotionally satisfying experience will be created by a sophisticated machine. A VR headset will bring its wearer directly into the excitement of a Willowcreek or City Harvest worship service created by AI’s attentive to exactly the emotional needs and triggers of the participant. (If you think this is an exaggeration I’m in touch with one new Christian company promising exactly these services to local churches. I’ll post when they go public.)

The laser light show and just-so eroticism of the avatar praise band will keep one focused on the stage rather than 3D renderings (conveniently in shadow to save processor speed) of neighboring worship avatars. A personalized avatar counselor will hear confession, give verbal (and possibly physical) hugs, and for those so inclined a click of the mouse will squeeze out some Facebook slacktivism, a donation to a worthy charity, a thousand email invitations to non-believers, or even a virtual protest sign at the permanent rally at city hall, or the state capital. And all in time for users to click over for the NBA finals, jump on the online peloton, or check into another reality show about fake relationships. 

The only alternative that makes sense; the only Christian alternative, is a congregation of real people, who know each other, and who relate to one another as humans giving and receiving love rather than  being cogs in an evangelistic machine, or its product, or worse its exhaust. Only love, and the environment that supports it, can make us incubators rather than machines. And these alone will bear fruit, not merely spill seed.