Do you text people who are sitting right next to you?
If so, you might have a problem...
I thought about this topic the other day at work. Thirty seconds earlier, I sent an Instant Message to a colleague sitting barely five metres away, instead of walking over to her.
At my desk, I’m surrounded by gadgets. I’m typing on my laptop, which allows me to work around the clock. My smartphone has an inbuilt GPS, so I never need to stop and look at a map, phone for all those work calls, wifi to connect to wireless hotspots, and a camera. I have another mobile for personal calls. My iPod is nearby, to drown out the noise when I want. Email’s constantly being checked in the background. Later I might update Facebook with another witty status message.
We live in a connected world. Sometimes I’ll pickup my phone and marvel at the fact that I can speak to someone on the other side of the planet instantaneously. They call it the Information Age - the world of online banking, eBay, mp3s, blogs, YouTube and more. But have you ever wondered - is all this technology neccesarily a good thing?
We’re always wanting to be entertained, always consuming information. If you believe the news, there are more and more cases of ADHD. Life is faster-paced, leading to people feeling burnt out, overwhelmed, and depressed. People spend hours each day playing games in their pajamas. Increasingly, you hear of people breaking up via TXT or email.
Interestingly, one of the earliest descriptions of technology in the Bible occurs in Genesis 11 - the people wanted to make a name for themselves (ie. be like God), and built the city and tower of Babel. God saw that they were too proud and arrogant, and punished them by scattering the people and confusing their language.
Now, I love tech stuff, and there are heaps of good uses for it. We can even use it to spread God’s Word to a greater audience than ever possible in the past. But I think that like a lot of things - it’s how we use technology that matters. For example, there’s nothing wrong with being entertained. But, we should never let it become the master over us.
So if you find yourself on Facebook, or playing PS3/XBox/Wii every day after school for hours, maybe it’s time to think - who is your master?
On the other hand, can you think of good ways to use technology for the sake of the gospel?
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