For Relationships, Are Emojis Enough?

“Hi, I’m Emoji. You know me. I’m the happy face, or frown, people use to express their emotions, attitudes or moods on Facebook, a text, or an email. I’m a whole lot more fun to look at than ‘LOL’ or ‘smh’ or ‘:-).’ I like to consider myself an assistant – I help folks convey feelings when trying to communicate only with words through electronic technology. I also help to save people the trouble of having to interact face to face, eye to eye, and engaging in that bothersome activity called ‘relationships.’”

Thanks, Mr. E, for your cameo appearance today. You’ve certainly become the face of social media. We’ll let you know when we need you. See ya!

How did we ever survive
without emojis - emoticons?

Did you know that only seven percent of all communication is verbal – actual spoken words? That means 93 percent of communication is non-verbal – tone of voice, eye contact, body language, pace of speech, general appearance, and other factors. Trying to effectively communicate electronically can be like trying to hammer a nail with one hand. Not easy. Hence, the emergence of emojis (emoticons) for expressing thoughts and feelings visually. If people can’t see us, how else will they know whether we’re happy or sad, angry or hurting, bored, dead serious – or just kidding?

I’m not opposed to communicating via text, email or social media. Being a communicator, I utilize these resources a lot. They’re useful for reaching out to people far away, and have also helped me reconnect with old friends and former classmates. But electronic communication – even with availability of emojis – has shortcomings. It does little to enhance real-life relationships; in some respects, it can impede relationship-building.

We’ve all seen young people in malls, their eyes fixed on their smartphones, texting – sometimes to people standing next to them! Couples spend romantic evenings in restaurants, staring at their devices rather than conversing or gazing meaningfully into one another’s eyes. (Admittedly, my wife and I have done this on occasion.) On social media, even a shy, reserved person that never speaks up in public can seem the life of the party.

People are finding it harder to make – and maintain – eye contact, one of those ingredients for non-verbal communication cited above. People have become accustomed to looking down. How can one sustain a conversation while constantly checking to see what someone’s posted on Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, or Facebook? An alert for an incoming message can quickly interrupt meaningful personal interaction.

As I’ve said before, it’s not my intent to denigrate electronic communication. It has its place. But God designed us for relationships, real relationships; not ones formed around bits and bytes, symbols and abbreviations. In the first chapter of Genesis, after the Lord created animals, birds, fish, other living creatures, and then mankind, there’s no indication He wrapped up His work by creating the “emoji.”

We see a premium on relationships in the Old Testament, whether it’s Joseph mending fences with his spiteful brothers; Moses prepping Joshua to lead the Israelites; Elijah mentoring Elisha to be his prophetic successor; David and Jonathan, and other examples.

We see this emphasis throughout the New Testament as well. After beginning His earthly ministry, the Scriptures tell us Jesus “appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach” (Mark 3:14). He enjoyed hanging out with them.

And while providing on-the-job training to His followers for ministering to others, Jesus didn’t send them out alone. “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go” (Luke 10:1). They didn’t go with iPhones or PDAs.

Maybe the reason Jesus came to earth 2,000 years ago was because when He gave His “sermon on the mount,” His audience wouldn’t be distracted by texting or video games. He had their undivided attention.

The apostle Paul underscored the value of relationships he’d established, writing how important they had become to him: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (Philippians 1:3-5). Even though he was limited to the written word during his imprisonment, Paul wanted his own followers to understand the devotion to them, something that couldn’t have been conveyed through emojis – even if they had existed back then.

Despite the conveniences of electronic media, there’s no substitute for person-to-person, eye-to-eye, side-by-side communicating. In these challenging days, when our world seems in such turmoil, our need for mutual support and encouragement is perhaps greater than ever. The happy face of a living, breathing someone standing in front of me is always better than one appearing on a computer screen, a text, or a Facebook post.

Proverbs 27:17 gives us this reminder: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” Just as a blade is sharpened only by contact and necessary friction, we require direct, personal contact to become sharpened spiritually. When we need honing and sharpening for life, emojis just won’t do.

Faith Doesn’t Come with Compartments

Compartments are usually good things. Cars have “glove compartments,” although hardly anyone uses them for storing gloves anymore. Now they’re holders for things like operator’s manuals – also something hardly anyone uses. And maps, which few people use – are we seeing a trend here? They keep receipts, a pen or pencil for those rare occasions when we need to physically write something, maybe a flashlight or first aid kit for emergencies.

Parents of toddlers utilize compartments to separate toys, clothing, crayons, diapers, and other essentials for retrieval at a moment’s notice. Purses come with compartments for wallets, checkbooks, cell phones, tissues, makeup, and anything else a woman might need for going to work, the supermarket, or mall.

Toolboxes have compartments for sorting things like tools, nails, screws, bolts and nuts. When engaged in a do-it-yourself project, you need to find what you need when you need it. (I don’t know much about this personally, but it’s what I’ve heard.)

Compartments are helpful in many ways. But not for living out one’s faith.

The Bible is packed with wisdom
for the contemporary workplace.

Unfortunately, that’s not how everyone sees it. A friend who works in a ministry to business and professional people bemoaned the fact that for many of them, when it comes to their faith and their work, the twain never meet. He wrote:

“I try to encourage and help my groups to integrate their faith in their businesses and within their spheres of influence in the marketplace. Unfortunately, they are very compartmentalized and are righteous on Sundays – and holy terrors the rest of the week.”

That’s a tough assessment – but experience and observation have shown me this is often the case. At one time, I was among those holding this attitude. I was growing in my faith, but clueless about how to relate what I heard on Sunday mornings to my work at the newspaper office on Monday (or any other time during the week).

I didn’t doubt the Bible was good for “the sweet by and by,” but was slow to realize it’s good for the nasty now and now as well. That’s one reason for my book, Business at Its Best: Timeless Wisdom from Proverbs for Today’s Workplace. Once I started reading a chapter of Proverbs as a daily practice, it became clear biblical principles apply not just to one’s personal life, but also for our professional life. It addresses common workplace topics like integrity, communication, decision-making, teamwork, honesty, anger, humility and pride, managing finances, finding direction, and many others.

My life verse comes from that book of wisdom: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

However, workplace wisdom comes from other parts of the Bible as well. My “career verse,” which inspired the name for my new writing/editing enterprise, ReadyWriter Ink, comes from Psalm 45:1, which states in part, “…I recite my composition concerning the King; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer.”

1 Corinthians 3:9 says, “For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.” Can you imagine being invited to co-labor with God in carrying out His work, the mission He has for His creation?

Many other passages are worth citing, but perhaps one verse sums up the imperative not to compartmentalize work from our faith. Colossians 3:23-24 exhorts, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”

We all have bosses. Even entrepreneurs owning their own companies are responsible to customers, clients and vendors. But I like to envision the boss’s office showcasing a nameplate that simply reads, “God.” He’s the one we should all be reporting to, ultimately.

Falling Apart . . . or Falling into Place?

We all know how life makes surprising twists and turns, taking us to places we never imagined via routes we couldn’t have expected. It’s almost like asking the question, “How do I get to…?” and getting the reply, “You can’t get there from here – you have to go somewhere else first.”

The path for my career as a writer and editor, for instance, has hardly followed a straight course. Including my college studies, it took me from New Jersey to Houston, Texas; to Columbus, Ohio; to suburban Philadelphia; back to Columbus; then back to Houston; and finally, to Chattanooga, Tenn. It turned into a “scenic route” no one at AAA or a GPS would have plotted for me.

I was reminded of this while listening to a song by Casting Crowns called, “Just Be Held.” The lyrics include the refrain, “Your world’s not falling apart, it’s falling into place.” Whenever we’re in the midst of major, unanticipated and unwanted changes, or confronted by times of great hardship or adversity, we can easily buy into the idea that our world is falling apart. But “falling into place”? Not so much.

And yet, with the wonderful, 20:20 clarity of hindsight, it’s heartening when we discover that what seemed falling apart at the time was indeed part of God’s grand scheme for making things fall into place. At times, we overuse Romans 8:28, casually applying it like ointment for the wounds life inflicts. But we can’t overstate its truth: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

It’s like the Lord’s way of saying, “You may think things are falling apart – but I’m using circumstances so that your world will eventually fall into place.”

When we’re young, it might be a romance that ends abruptly, leaving us feeling shattered. Hopes may be dashed when a young person’s college of choice fails to extend an invitation to enroll. It could be a much-hoped-for job offer that never comes, or being out of work due to corporate downsizing or other factors beyond one’s control. A devastating medical diagnosis that can turn formerly serene lives into seemingly endless chaos. Or after managing to juggle finances from month to month, suddenly finding the pay ends long before the month does.

Many other events can flip lives upside-down. Everything seems to be falling apart, placing us on the brink of despair. At such times, it helps to remember that what appears to be falling apart from our limited perspective could be neatly falling into place – from God’s point of view.

When our lives feel like the light at tunnel’s end has burned out, in the words of Casting Crowns’ “Just Be Held,” we need to remember: “So when you’re on your knees and answers seem so far away, you’re not alone; stop holding on and just be held.”

One of my favorite words in the Bible is “behold.” It’s what the angels used when they announced the birth of the Christ child to the shepherds. It’s a biblical way of saying, “Hey, listen up!” So, when life takes a sudden turn, leaving you disoriented and dismayed, remember:

     Behold! Let yourself be held by the One you’re beholding.