A Luddite's lament

Bill McClellan is a literary hero for me -- a description which no doubt would make the longtime St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist blanch.

He would hate, one would imagine, being an object of admiration to anyone.

McClellan describes himself as an old-fashioned "ink-stained wretch" in an world made unrecognizable -- at least to him -- of social media and online newspapering.

The very general circulation publication you are reading picks up more digital subscribers each day.

It's the future.

It's not going away.

We all know this.

McClellan struggles to understand this new world, though.

He doesn't get why people wouldn't want to hold a physical newspaper in their hands, turning the pages, noting the stories above and below the fold and turning to the "funny pages," the comics.

In a column written in the 1990s, the self-admitted Cubs fan in a Cardinals universe once wrote of going to a local laundromat.

While waiting for his socks and assorted undergarments to go through the washer cycle, McClellan noticed someone nearby reading a novel.

A trashy novel, to his way of thinking. Beneath the dignity of a fine connoisseur of fiction.

Some years later, the columnist returned to that same laundromat.

By then, cell phones had become ubiquitous.

People swiping digital pages, heads buried in their smartphone screens.

McClellan made the following observation:

"I used to feel sorry for people who read lesser works. But now, if I see anybody holding anything and reading it, I rejoice!"

The world has moved on, but a few of us aren't quite ready to let loose of what was -- at least not quite yet.

I'm pleased to be a frequent user of the "free library" kiosks located in many towns in Southeast Missouri. You take a bound book, you leave one, everybody benefits. But the time of books with a spine is passing. The new wave is taking over.

The other day, making my way to a classroom in SEMO's Dempster Hall, more than 20 students were congregated in the hallway outside a classroom.

My classroom. The one in which it is my honor to teach the New Testament.

The door was closed, but it was unlocked. As is often the case, a custodian sweeps through in the early morning, enters a universal key, and takes care of that small detail for instructors.

None of the students had tried the door to see if it was open.

Each one, without fail, saw a closed door and went straight to an electronic device -- checking Facebook or Twitter or listening to music through ear buds.

As I gave entry to my preoccupied charges by simply pulling open the door, the thought struck me that slowly but surely, 21st-century technology is killing community.

At least the kind of community that involves conversation, one that might have included the words: "Hey, is that door locked?"

As the students passed me, a few muttered "thank you," but most of them did not even look up.

It occurred to me this week that it was a very good thing indeed that Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth during a primitive time in earth history.

As he sat down to teach at Lake Gennesaret, otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee, imparting the Sermon on the Mount, I like to imagine that he held the rapt attention of his listeners -- people struggling with life, hopeful this carpenter had answers.

I don't know how attentive those first-century folk were.

What is certain is that the technological distractions of today did not exist.

If the folks who showed up to hear the greatest teacher the world has ever known had had smart phones, I'm not sure his message of God's grace would have made it out of Galilee and Judea.

Nobody would have heard it.

All of us would have been the poorer.