Google Won’t Cut It For The Big Questions

Recently, as I used Google to figure out a feature on a prayer app I use, I encountered a series of search results.  One of them was this:

Should Christians use the ____ app?

But that’s the least of the inquiries people bring to the internet.  As I’ve searched for Bible verses and local churches and Scriptural topics, I’ve stumbled across predictive inquiries that give a hint about the questions people pose to Google:

God is love means what?

What does [insert Bible verse] mean?

What does God think about guns?

Should Christians [insert behavior here]?

How does Jesus save

I am always both happy and sad to see these inquiries.  Happy because it means people are asking.  And this should be no surprise.  All I ever hear in religious news is that the “nones”—those affiliated with no mainstream religion—are on the rise, but the deep questions of the soul and spirit have not waned. 

Now more than ever, people want to know what’s out there.  What it all means.  Why we’re here.

Now more than ever, people suffer and struggle and want to discern a path through the world.  Now more than ever, people seem to understand that whatever this is, it isn’t what supposed to be—but they lack the vocabulary to articulate what “supposed to be” could look like, or what it might mean, in our post-enchantment age.

But when I see these questions I’m sad because people are asking Google.

There are reasons for this, of course.  Privacy.  Embarrassment.  Whim and fancy.  Uncertainty.  Some people may not want anyone in their life but the internet to know their spiritual inquiries, may feel ashamed even to be asking them.  But the fact that the internet is where people turn to with some of these questions makes me believe it is primarily because of a perceived lack of options elsewhere.

Let me confess something from many, many years ago.

I was experiencing a serious bout of anxiety over something frankly silly.  Even at the time, I knew the problem was insignificant.  But the anxiety wasn’t.  And I don’t use that word lightly.  I don’t mean “fear” or “worry.”  I mean full-blown panic attacks.

I prayed nonstop.  I fasted.  I spoke with my husband and mother about it and they prayed too.  I felt deeply broken, uncertain of how to proceed.  I felt like a failure of a Christian, since I clearly was not receiving the peace so many other believers seemed to receive. 

One night, very late, in tears over how awful I felt, I searched online “prayer support for anxiety.”  I stumbled on a church somewhere out in California that manned a 24-7 prayer chat.  Type your requests in, and they’d pray with you.  I did, and they did.

You might wonder why I didn’t go to my own church, instead of the internet, with the request.

I didn’t because not three months earlier, I had listened to a man in my small group lose his mind over a commercial about depression medication.  “Depression, anxiety,” he ranted, “all of these mind diseases—if you have the Holy Spirit maybe you’d not be struggling so much, amen?”

The rest of the group laughed.  I don’t know if they agreed or not.  But I know that his words and their laughter made it preferable for me to turn to the internet for spiritual support rather than my own church.  Because I was afraid of being perceived as not Spirit-filled, as somehow flawed, as an object of mockery.

Sometimes, people ask Google what God thinks about guns because they’re afraid of starting a political firefight in their own congregation, or being branded forever as x because they asked a question.  Sometimes, people ask Google about how Jesus saves people because they just want some genuine answers, rather than the full-court evangelism press and pressure to join a small group.  Sometimes, people ask Google for Scripture interpretations because they’ve never been part of a congregation that encourages questions.

This isn’t always true, of course.  But the questions that we bring to Google make me think many of us are longing for a particular type of space in the church that can be hard to find: a space of gentle dialogue, questions, acceptance and mercy, a place for listening and learning that doesn’t necessarily expect easy answers or pat solutions.

A while back, in our search for a church, my husband and I investigated one particular church that was, let’s say, way out of our denominational purview.  We were open about this from the beginning, confessing sheepishly to our contact, “We don’t really expect to become members here…but we’re just inquiring locally, and we’re curious.”

The man turned and smiled.  “Look,” he said, “God’s going to be the one to direct you where you need to go.  If he wants you here, you’ll end up here—and if he doesn’t, you’ll end up somewhere else.  But what I want you to know is that whenever and however you want to show up here, whether for a day or a season or the rest of your lives, or never, we’ll be thrilled to see you just as much as regardless.”

He meant it, I could tell, in those interactions and others after.  When we didn’t pursue the line of inquiry and confessed that we were pressing pause for the time being, he was as warm and kind and still reached out to check in on us.  He didn’t try to put us on the membership train or abandon us once we got off it.  He was content to let us be.  To let God do whatever God needed to do.  It was the kind of gentleness that can’t be faked, that can’t be replicated over chips and dips or by events or espresso machines.   

 A friend once asked me a question that caught me off guard.  “What’s the most church-like environment you can think of that isn’t explicitly religious?” she asked.  “That isn’t church?”

A few answers came to mind: birding communities, when birders gather together to appreciate a cedar waxwing or whatever other critter pops up at the local patch.  The goth dance club I once went to when I was in college where it didn’t seem to matter what you looked like or how you danced and all the folks who didn’t seem welcome anywhere else could find a place to be.  The community of women I was a part of in college where deep support and deep conversations were the order of the day.

What are people looking for?   Something like what exists in those places above, I think. A sense of community.  Conversations, I think—sometimes hard ones.  A place to think and develop their own thoughts.  The freedom to wrestle with difficult questions.  And an environment where they feel deeply loved and accepted, not on a superficial social level but with familial love and belonging.

I think modern churches attempt this environment.  I think some churches are better at achieving it than others.  But I think what makes it hard is that this kind of thing isn’t something that be achieved by material objects or even by activities.  It’s achieved through time and effort and presence, and all seem to be in short supply at a congregational level.

So maybe the answer is at the individual level instead.  To be that person who represents Christian community.  Who is willing to listen to hard questions without immediately dragging up an answer.  Who is willing to walk through Christian concepts and ideas without being Membership Class 101.  Who provides that warmth and acceptance and grace to those who are believers and those who aren’t.

Because Google can’t meet those needs.  Only Christ can.