My Body & My Neighbor (2 Corinthians 4:10‪)‬ Cityview Community Church - Sermons

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My Body & My Neighbor
April 21, 2024 | Brandon Cooper

20240421_BrandonCooper_MyBodyMyNeighbor

Brandon Cooper delivered a sermon series on the embodiment of Christ's love through our physical bodies. He emphasized the importance of face-to-face relationships and physical presence in serving others according to Scripture. Cooper warned against replacing real human connection with technology and argued for prioritizing local community over national news consumption. He encouraged listeners to evaluate how they can better embody Christ's love through physical acts of service in their immediate communities.






TRANSCRIPT_______________________________________________+The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Well, if you wanna go ahead, grab your Bibles open up the second Corinthians chapter four will be in verses seven to 12, mostly this morning, kind of zeroing in on verse 10, in particular, second Corinthians chapter four, as you're turning there we are, of course, living in a digital age. And that means that we increasingly inhabit the thin spaces of virtual communities, you know, marked by things like very nationalized political, or cultural conversations. And these sorts of conversations and communities are replacing the thick spaces of place, and family, and faith communities, they're, of course, very poor substitutes for all of these things, too. So it's no surprise that as a culture, we are increasingly lonely. Now, we've talked about this before I've even quoted Robert Putnams Bowling Alone as kind of the A good example of this, the title comes to the fact that there are more people bowling than ever before, but fewer people bowling in leagues than ever before their bowling by themselves. And he goes through a whole list of different ways that this is manifesting. And some of the issues that come along with it. This is so bad that in the United Kingdom, they have actually appointed a national minister for loneliness, to deal with the epidemic. And it is an epidemic, it is a health epidemic, even it is killing people. Being lonely. Being friendless, is worse for your health makes you more likely to die early than the combination of drinking heavily, eating poorly and smoking. Which is remarkable when you think about it, cuz it's not a great combination right there as long as we're talking about the allergy of the body, but it is very real. So for example, 19 93% of men reported that they had no close friends 3%. Today, that number is 15% fivefold increase. And among men under the age of 30, the number is 28%. In other words, the graph is going like this, right. So this is a real problem that we have got to talk about. And we acknowledge the elephant in the room. It is driven by technological advances like that has what has brought this about. And so we're going to need a critical approach to how we use technology. Technological advancement is a Faustian bargain if you remember your Dr. Faust is from your literature days sold his soul to the devil to get wisdom, yes, there is good stuff that comes from it. But there might be a little bit of a selling of our soul in the process, technological advancement gives but it does also take away and not always an equal measure. So one of the ways we see this, of course, is that we get, you know, we get our news from everywhere, all at once. I mentioned before, we have kind of a national conversation, so we don't get local news, we just get world news all the time, we are always connected. Like right now you are connected with your devices, the overwhelming majority of you some of you are probably even getting notifications, as I'm talking about different things that are happening around the world. And some of the ways we talk about that even that word connected by the way, it's almost Orwellian.