Disclaimer: I wrote this about two months into the quarantine last year. At the time, I was an Evangelical heavily inquiring into Orthodoxy, but hadn’t yet converted, let alone attended a Divine Liturgy. Now that I’ve been brought into the Orthodox Church my views on this topic are more expanded, and even more staunch. However, I wanted to post this mostly unchanged, as it reminds me of how I felt not very long ago, and shows just how much the world has changed since. – Ryan, 1/26/2021
“Consecrate a fast,
Call a sacred assembly;
Gather the elders
And all the inhabitants of the land
Into the house of the Lord your God,
And cry out to the Lord” (Joel 1:14 NKJV).
In response to the desolation of the land by a plague of locusts, the Prophet Joel, inspired by the Holy Spirit, said to sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather all the people of the land into the house of the Lord, and cry out fervently to God in order to be saved. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine, the church was forced to assemble online. But online communion is no assembly at all.
We are indeed separated. Never from the love of God, but from one another. When we speak to one another on the phone or on FaceTime or on Skype, it is good. We can see each other when we otherwise aren’t able to due to great distances or time restraints. But we’re speaking into black mirrors. That great distance is still there. The telecommunication, whatever medium it may be, cannot replace physical engagement.
We were made by God, in His image and likeness, and we were made for assembling together. Online church is good, but it cannot replace physical church. The feeling of disconnection and the effects thereof are more glaring now that it’s been over two months of separation instead of two weeks.
If this pandemic ought to teach us anything, it can be said that the church needs to be in person. We are to have assemblies, solemn and otherwise, to call on the Lord our God. As much as we think we can do that on Facebook live with comments of praise in the chat, or a drive-in church with car horns honking in agreement, we will feel the emptiness thereof and will know that we can’t.
Society is taking a hard shift into an economic system where the clear majority of jobs will be done by robots, drones, and artificial intelligence programs. We are slow-walking into a system of universal basic income and universal healthcare. It won’t be long before we’re offered to buy into smart cities, with social credit scores akin to China’s system which they successfully had in place before the pandemic started. Health records in the skin won’t be fought, it will be the norm. Virtual reality, augmented reality, psychedelics mixed with streaming services, and haptic feedback technology will foster a new kind of stay-at-home policy for many. Purchasing Elon Musk’s Neuralink technology to interface with AI will be as easy and common as buying a new pair of shoes. Still there will be evil, still there will be corruption, and still there will be a fervent need for Christ and physical, solemn assembly in the Church.
The cat is out of the bag – it’s simple to flip a switch and create global lockdown. Don’t be fooled by a system telling you to live online. Don’t be fearful of whatever changes come. Don’t be scared to assemble in person, because this won’t be the last time that we’ll be tested to stay separated. There is power when the Holy Spirit moves upon an assembly that not only calls upon the Lord, but also waits on Him. That’s where there is healing and miracles and signs and wonders. All these things also happen in the lives of Christians when they are in their prayer closet, but we are called to both, being essentials to keeping strong in this fallen world.
We aren’t stupid, we can feel the separation even when speaking on the phone. The phone makes us yearn to be in person. We must be in person, not as a preference, but as an essentiality to our human nature. Everyone has different levels and thresholds of how they prefer to communicate with people and to what extent, but those preferences and reservations are a stumbling block when God calls us to assemble and cry out to Him.
As the author of Ecclesiastes says: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. We can’t live in or on our computers. We can’t reach a point of technological, intellectual, or scientific progress that will allow us to throw out the sacraments of the Church. We can’t baptize on Zoom. We can’t lay on hands through FaceTime. Chrismation can’t be streamed, and we can’t partake of the Eucharist over conference calls.