The Rev. Kate Braestrup, chaplain to the Maine Warden Service, opens her Week Five sermon series Sunday morning in the Amphitheater.
In the scripture reading for the day, Jesus spoke in a parable to the crowd and asked: “To what can we compare the Kingdom of God?” The Rev. Kate Braestrup said that Jesus echoed the prophet Ezekiel, that seeds scattered would grow and produce more seeds and keep expanding fruitfully like the mustard tree.
“Theology is not botany and the Kingdom of God is not a shrub, but the analogy (of a mustard tree) compares the Kingdom of God to the process of the growth from seed to sprout to stalk to head, to full head to more seeds,” Braestrup said.
She preached at the 9:15 a.m. Wednesday morning worship service in the Amphitheater. Her sermont title was “The Satanic Algorithms,” and the scripture reading was Mark 4: 26-34.
Like many of us, Braestrup learned about algorithms in middle school, generally understood as “if this, then that; if that, then this.”
“The term entered fully into our conversation when machines were ensouled with algorithms,” she said. “Data smaller than a mustard seed becomes greater than everything. It has driven us miserably crazy, and the world feels a few beers short of a six pack.”
Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of The Anxious Generation, pinpointed the year 2010 as the time when very suddenly, something went very wrong — especially with adolescent girls. The rates of anxiety, depression and suicide suddenly shot up. The statistics looked like a hockey stick, going along a steady rate and then shooting up dramatically.
“The same thing happened to teen boys, but at a more gradual pace,” Braestrup said. “It was like some horrible virus was injected into the American blood stream. A malignant algorithm bloomed with the rise of social media.”
When Facebook and Twitter first appeared, “they were good for family pictures and smut,” she said. Like Paul’s letters to brothers and sisters in the faith in far-flung cities, or the printing press, telegraph and telephone, early Facebook and Twitter provided a means to keep in touch.
Then in 2009, Braestrup said, Facebook tweaked its delivery to allow people to like a post and to share it. Twitter allowed people to like and retweet a post.
People were able to publicly endorse posts and to post a reaction, however unconsidered. Thus began the culture of “like, like, share, share, click, click click.”
This instant ability to post and share affected Braestrup’s work. She teaches a course on desk notification and family visitation. She added a slide to her presentation called “Racing Facebook,” because bodies were being recovered and the news posted on Facebook before the Maine Warden Service could notify the family.
“There was a man with a mental illness who got into a shoot-out with the police. In the 10 minutes it took us to get to his mother, she already knew (he was dead) and had seen the video,” she said.
Haidt’s research shows that people are most likely to share posts that trigger a strong anger reaction. “Those awful people,” said Braestrup. “It gives us pleasure to be angry at them and it is literally addictive. It is called ‘internet dependence,’ and it increased during COVID.”
Overdependence on the internet increases people’s dysfunctional response to posts, Haidt said.
“We might have a strong reaction to a newspaper story, but we rarely write a letter to the editor, or raise a flag or attend a protest,” Braestrup told the congregation. “We might have a discussion with a neighbor, asking, ‘Did you see that story?’ That discussion might provide a perspective that might change our mind, because we do have open minds.”
She continued: “To like, share and click makes us impervious to contradiction. ‘I click, therefore I am.’ Accumulating clicks soothes the brain and makes us think we belong to something. The algorithm makes us believe we are more righteous and we get more dopamine and we believe that ‘those awful people’ are evil.”
Haidt wrote that the platforms that are the most moralistic have the least-reflective responses. “Hearts of flesh are being turned into hearts of stone,” Braestrup said.
On the receiving end of these mob-mentality posts, individuals were driven to insanity and suicide. Businesses and other social institutions hurried to change any policy the mob did not like. There appeared to be a consensus, when in reality there was not. Then actual mobs appeared.
“Mark Zuckerberg is not the devil, and the decision to make the change in 2009 was not made with evil intent. The algorithm is neutral, but it now drives the Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of Hell,” Braestrup said.
She quoted a Latin phrase, Quos Diabolos vult perdere, prius dementat. “Who the Devil would destroy, he first makes cray-cray,” she said.
Braestrup reminded the congregation that Diabolo means to throw apart, and things once joined are flinging apart and vulnerable to temptation.
James Madison, in The Federalist Papers, no. 10, wrote: “A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.”
Facebook and Twitter, Braestrup said, are unfriendly passions.
She also cited 18th-century satirist Jonathan Swift, who wrote that “falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect: like a man, who hath thought of a good repartee when the discourse is changed, or the company parted; or like a physician, who hath found out an infallible medicine, after the patient is dead.”
Braestrup said, “True in 1710; truer in 2010, even if we don’t use social media.”
Society has been permanently altered, more adversarial and bigoted. Social media demands we declare our loathing of others, she told the congregation, and encourages us to believe that survival depends on conformity. What happens online has become our real-world social habits.
“Ours can be a discouraging world; that has always been what it is,” she said. “God is who God is. Diablo has changed the means, but the ends are the same. Our God is a tenacious and creative God and is the soul of this place. God is at work in this place and time.”
Braestrup offered some practical advice about using the internet. “Don’t like anything political; like the pictures of the grandkids. Don’t share; if you are stimulated to share, look around you, read widely, have a conversation with ‘those awful people.’ Maybe your mind will be changed.”
She continued: “Trust God and trust that God is at work, as well. We have free will, humility and stubborn love. Discuss, don’t react. Love, don’t like. Teach your children to show up and help. Have faith. Hold fast. And all the trees of the field will know that God is God.”
The Rev. Mary Lee Talbot, Ph.D., five-year companion of Sammi the Stabyhoun therapy dog, presided. Melissa Spas, vice president for religion at Chautauqua, read the scripture. The prelude was “Allegetto grazioso,” from Symphony No. 8, by Antonin Dvořák, transcribed for organ by Joshua Stafford, director of sacred music and the Jared Jacobsen Chair for the Organist. Stafford played the prelude on the Massey Memorial Organ. The Motet Choir had the day off in honor of “Hump Day” — the middle day marking the halfway point of the summer season. The anthem, “God is a God,” by Wendell Whalum, was sung by Roger Chard, accompanied by Maurita Holland on the piano. The postlude was “Fugue in D Major, BWV 532,” by Johann Sebastian Bach, played on the Massey Organ by Stafford. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and services is provided by the Jackson-Carnahan Memorial Chaplaincy and the John William Tyrell Endowment for Religion.
