“Touch grass.” It’s the command social media users bark when they want to underscore just how out-of-touch they find others’ takes. Ditch your screen, walk out your front door, and inhale reality. Presumably one breath of blue sky and a front lawn under your feet will cure you of your internet radicalization.
More recently, I’ve heard a gentler version of this dig applied to dating advice. I belong to a generation with record numbers of unmarried people, people whose romantic and sexual relationships have been primarily initiated through apps. Though we can’t presume every one of us is dissatisfied with this state of affairs, there’s a significant number yearning for an alternative to the swiping.
Perhaps you’ve seen that viral graphic. Fifteen years ago, it illustrates, online dating became the No. 1 way American couples meet. In fact, more couples are likely to connect on Hinge or Bumble or Tinder than by any other means combined, including at work, in college, via introductions by family and friends, in their neighborhoods, or at a bar.
The apps increasingly feel like shopping on Amazon. There’s an overwhelming volume of options you worry aren’t actually any good—and yet online dating is an unavoidable facet of modern life, putting our happiness in the hands of for-profit companies that don’t have our best interests at heart.
Hence: “Get outside.” It’s simple advice, this new mantra of influencer discourse. It feels refreshing. Put down your phone and meet someone out there in the “real world.”
I’m excited by this turn away from Tinder. I agree with it. I love “being outside.” My weekly routine includes hula lessons, hiking the Oahu ridgeline, and a running group. I’m a natural extrovert. But I’ll also confess: Nobody could tout me as a “success story.” For a decade and a half, I’ve put together a robust calendar of athletics, arts, and dinner parties. They haven’t brought me marriage, much less a serious relationship trending in that direction.
A Dating App Dilemma at Church
If pining for a valentine catalyzes volunteering at a soup kitchen, joining a kickball team, and working in the church nursery, bring it on.
But I’m also aware that building relationships, romantic or otherwise, isn’t as easy as joining a book club, adding one more commitment to the calendar. As our dating patterns have morphed in recent decades, so too have our entire lifestyles. Seemingly innocuous decisions like investing in a quality home entertainment system, opting to order in instead of eating out, and buying our groceries online have meant, especially for those of us who are single, we’re increasingly alone—not just on Saturday nights when we could be at the bar, but in all the interstitial periods of our weeks.
This aloneness hasn’t stressed all relationships, maintains Derek Thompson in his recent Atlantic cover story on “the anti-social century.” Thanks to text messaging, families talk to each other more than ever. We communicate with broad affinity networks we could never access before the internet, whether that includes discussing the latest episode of Abbott Elementary with a Facebook group of fans or live-tweeting the NFL playoffs.
But our general prioritization of convenience and our loss of third spaces means we’re more isolated, even when we do manage to “get outside.” The cost is borne in our relationships with our neighbors, the local librarian, and the barista, “wreaking havoc on the middle ring of ‘familiar but not intimate’ relationships with the people who live around us.”
Thompson argues that the demise of these relationships has contributed to the political polarization we experience today. And it’s clear to me that our antisociality also impacts our dating culture in deep ways no influencer can fix with a list of tips.
This shift toward digitally mediated solitude presents a particular tension for Christians, for whom the miracle at the center of our faith is incarnation. Throughout the Old Testament, God dialogues with humans: His confrontation with Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, his many conversations with Moses, the back-and-forth banter and lament expressed by the major and minor prophets.
But Jesus doesn’t arrive as a series of messages. He comes physically, embodied, a baby. God shares meals, hangs out with little kids, and turns the water at a wedding into wine.
Many of us have learned to feel socially satiated through a bloated diet of texts and videos, social media distractions and push alerts. These bursts of communication work sometimes: Think of the well-timed meme! But most relationships will starve without in-person interaction, and new ones won’t get off the ground. That matters not just for our dating lives, but for our witness.
Jesus gave us a mandate to “go into the world and preach the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:15). His final words before the Ascension echo his charge earlier in his ministry, when he sends out the disciples two by two. “Going outside” may not be a quick fix for romantic problems. But living our faith seems to require it as a nonnegotiable.
Opting to build a life on a foundation of conveniences like front door drop-offs, internet porn, and movie streaming severs us from the world God loves and the people Jesus came to save. Living a life cocooned by these amenities also discourages us from taking relational risks, be it introducing ourselves to our neighbors after ignoring them for eight months or approaching someone to ask for a phone number.
A couple years ago, my holiday card asked my friends to set me up with someone. Nobody—I sent the card around the world—took me up on this. I write this to say, I’m at as much of a loss as ever when it comes to finding “my person.”
But God made outside and called it good. Let’s open our doors and walk out.
Morgan Lee is the global managing editor at Christianity Today.
The post ‘Going Outside’ Hasn’t Found Me My Person appeared first on Christianity Today.