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How Technology Is Undermining Our Faith

In Drips And Drabs

Even worse is this current practice of bringing your crack-addicted gadgets to church with you. Many pastors also bring their crack babies with them into the pulpit, setting a terrible example by eschewing a traditional bible just so they can appear hip or stylish, carrying their stupid iPads and appearing to work on them while the praise and worship is going on. Note to pastor: when praise and worship is going on, set the example by joining in. If you sit there, your legs crossed like a woman, noodling on your iPad, that’s what the congregation will do. The message you send is one of isolation and disconnect from the worship experience. The absence of a bible in your hand encourages the congregation to stop bringing theirs. This has led to a dangerous over-reliance on technology that has minimized even the drips and drabs of learning most Church Folk receive. The arduous and time-consuming task of flipping pages to find a text has been replaced by a voice prompt. Instead of at least glancing at scripture was we flipped through, we now go directly to the two verses the pastor is using for his text, two verses we forget the moment the recitation has concluded.

ThinkChristian.Net posted a few reasons mobile devices do not belong in the church, and I heartily agree:

1. Church should be a sacred time and place to disconnect from our technology-laden lives.

2. Mobile devices distract you from worship.

3. Reading the Bible on a small screen rather than in a book leads you to pick verses out of their context.

4. Being glued to your screen during church makes you focused on yourself and forget those you're worshiping with.

5. You shouldn't take your idols to church.

And that is precisely what the devices have become: an idol. Most people spend more time fidgeting with their gadgets than they do engaging with actual people, actual family, actual friends. They can’t put them down more than a few minutes. Many people sleep with them, some even keep their crackphone in the bed with them. Most every checks their crackphone the moment they wake up. They’re constantly checking, checking, checking for the latest drivel, and that’s what 95% of the crap that comes across onto your smartphone is. They’re addicted. They’re worshipping these devices.

I feel that bringing your idols into the church house is an enormous sign of disrespect for God. I can all but guarantee a hefty percentage of mobile device users in church are also checking their Facebook and email while pretending to take notes or read the scripture. Teens are certainly playing games, exchanging profane texts and otherwise screwing around with their mobile devices in church. Most of our pastors have a defeatist, “Can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” attitude toward this, presuming they think about it at all in between their own high-tech crack habit. Pastors: you ought to be ashamed. You ought to aggressively discourage—with HUGE signs at the door—people from even bringing their mobile devices into the church. You should have a crackphone check-in station where people can surrender their idols the way cowboys were forced to surrender their pistols before entering a saloon. Technology in worship is a good thing, it really is, but it must be implemented wisely, in a way the pleases God, that teaches and unites His people rather than fractures the congregation into a collection of individuals lost in their own self-absorption.

Idols: Most mobile device users in church are simply lying, by the impression they are making and by what
they tell others: I’m making notes. I’m reading scripture. What they are doing is checking Facebook. Sending tweets. They are showing off. I have an iPad and you don’t.

The Foundation of Our Faith On Batteries

What’s of even larger concern for me is the creeping eradication of actual books, most specifically, the Holy Bible. Many of us don’t use an actual book anymore, preferring the convenience of scrolling through a digital bible—often with advanced features like parallel versions, concordances and voice navigation. I agree: it’s pretty cool. For reasonably seasoned Christians, the digital evolution can be a great asset and study tool. The downside of this, however, is for the vast number of Christians who are, in essence, Christians in name only. These are your bench warmers, your young people, your seekers—earnest, honest seekers seemingly growing fewer by the day. These are people who have not had much foundational teaching, who do not read or, frankly, know their way around the bible.

Before the digital revolution, many of us cracked books—many, many books—to study the bible. As a youth, we had games and contests to see who could find what scripture first, which entailed studying that book—the actual book—on our own time in preparation. Most of us have favorite verses of scripture and most sincere Christians have an at least pedestrian knowledge of how the bible is arranged and where to find things in it without first going to the table of contents.

When the sermon got boring, we used to browse the whole chapter surrounding the verses the preacher is speaking from. I used to carry a Thompson Chain Reference edition and follow the links around the bible to glean a broader sense of the sermon (or discover the speaker was talking out of his hat). Not so with the new digital wave. Now we just go directly to those specific verses, which are flashed on a screen and wiped away after the speaker moves on. Few people who fall into the seeker category actually bring a bible to church, and many churches are eliminating bibles from their pews, going instead for the 30-second glimpse of scripture on the JumboTron. There is no more accidental discovery of wonderful verses as we flip pages to get to the speaker’s passage. For far too many of us, Sunday is the only day of the week we even open a bible. Now we don’t even have that.

As a result, this puts the foundation of our faith entirely in the digital realm. We don’t read, we don’t know the book—only the slim passages we scroll directly to via voice command. So, what happens when our batteries die? What happens when China crashes our Internet and wipes out everything on your smartphone and tablet? What happens if any of the fringe “Left Behind” scenarios occur, and Christianity is somehow outlawed and we are hunted and have to go underground? There are all of those scare stories about bibles being confiscated and being so scarce that believers will tear pages out of them to treasure as keepsakes. The more we allow the core of our belief to become dismissible and vulnerable to what is an extremely unreliable digital archiving, the less ridiculous these extreme predictions become. Given the looming cyber war between the US and major actors like Iran and China, anything you are storing digitally is more at risk than you can imagine. This is what makes books precious. China cannot erase your actual bible, that dusty relic you never open anymore. Iran cannot delete the files inside your head: the passages you’ve studied and memorized.

The First Tablet PC: Wooden writing tablet (Roman period from Egypt). British Museum. Photo by F. Jenkins. When John was born, the neighbors and relatives thought they would call the child “Zacharias, after his father.” His mother, Elizabeth, said that he should be called John. The guests made signs to the mute Zacharias to have him say what he wanted the child called. Luke says, He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they were all amazed. (Luke 1:63 NET)

The Greek word Luke used for tablet is pinakidion. It is used only here in the New Testament. BDAG Lexicon says the term is used of a “little (wooden) tablet esp. of a writing-tablet for notes.” Louw-Nida says the word describes “a small writing tablet (normally made of wood).” The Study Note in the NET Bible points out that “The writing tablet requested by Zechariah [Zacharias] would have been a wax tablet.”



 

It Will Just Be You

With each passing evolution of this admittedly fun and useful technology, we move ever closer to what the bible describes as “a great falling away” [2 Thessalonians 2], which describes what may be the vast majority of people who characterize themselves as “Christians” turning from the faith, following false prophets, or simply running scared. Why? Because God’s word has not taken root in their hearts. Why? because they don’t know their bibles. Why? Because their pastors, even well-intended pastors, have been ignorant about the best practices for integrating technology into our faith. This Great Christian Holocaust, as prophesied by God’s word, will not be caused by “the devil” or somehow forced upon us by the government. It will be caused by us. By God’s man. By the ignorance of pastors who removed actual bibles in favor of the 30-second glimpse on the JumboTron. This is the hallmark of ignorance: pastors who rail against seekers who take the pew bibles with them. Pastors: that’s what they are there for. If your church is too cheap to invest in actual bibles for people, you are in the wrong business. I remember pastors (and, more ignorantly, pastors’ wives) railing against the people who “stole” pew bibles, muttering about the expense. I would that everyone owned their own bible if not several bibles. We pray and presume the folks who take pew bibles actually read them, that they put those bibles to get use, but we can hardly be mad at someone, anyone, even a child, who wants a bible. Churches should be dedicated to providing a bible to anyone who needs one.

What simply fascinates me about biblical prophecy is how wrong our interpretation of it often is. At the height of the Scare People With Revelation movement, our assumption was the literal numbers “666” written in someone’s palm or on their forehead, or that the Gestapo would come house-to-house and take your bibles. We now understand things like QR codes and biometrics—which will, I presume, become the ultimate defense against identity theft: embedding a chip or using a palm print. In America, we all have already taken on a number, our Social Security card, which states, plainly, “Not To Be Used For Identification.” But that is virtually all a Social Security number is actually used for. We need not worry about some militia or government taking our bibles away because we, ourselves, are discarding bibles by the millions, going with our iPods and tablets, which can be shut down remotely by hackers or hostile governments (including, possibly, our own). And I am likely wrong even about the above scenarios: biblical prophecy will likely play out in a way and at a time we least expect. My point is this “mark of the beast” and “confiscating bibles” doomsday Left Behind scenario is not as wacky as it once seemed. As Christians, especially as weak-minded Christians who’ve bought into the world’s foolishness, we continue to imagine some grand scenario of Good versus Evil. The truth is, the real harm to our faith will, more likely than not, be our own doing. The real enemy is not the government or the antichrist. It’s us. It’s our ignorance, our laziness. It’s Christians settling for some half-baked version of an actual relationship with Jesus Christ. Our downfall will be our investment in ignorance at the expense of actual belief and trust in God.

As I said in a previous essay: There will come a time—and I realize almost no one reading these words believes this—when you won’t have an iPad. You won’t have a smartphone. You won’t have a PC or laptop or digital anything. It will just be you. You and a prison cell. You and a heart monitor. You holding a loved one's hand as they transition to meet God or meet judgment. What will you say? What song will you sing?

Christopher J. Priest
17 February 2013
editor@praisenet.org
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Smartphone Addiction

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Time Magazine's Techland section conducted a massive, fascinating international poll of 5,000 Americans, Britons, South Koreans, Chinese, Indians, South Africans, Indonesians, and Brazilians, and found -- quite unsurprisingly if you've been following smartphone addiction stats -- that everyone in the entire world is unable to simply leave their phone in their pockets. The Time survey paints an unmistakable portrait of a world collectively staring at a tiny display screen for hours and hours of every day. Among the incredible evidence of our impending cybernetic future from the piece:

84 percent of respondents said that they could not go a single day without their cellphones.

50 percent of Americans sleep with their phone next to them like a teddy bear or a spouse, a number that includes more than 80 percent of 18-24 year olds.

20 percent of respondents check their phone every 10 minutes
.
24 percent said they had used text messages to set up a rendezvous with someone they were having an affair with, a number that includes 56 percent of Chinese respondents.

Seemingly every week an eyebrow-raising new study or survey or national poll comes out cataloguing humanity's inability to not check its smartphone while at the dinner table, at least in the developed world. To wit: In June, we learned 40 percent of Americans checked their smartphone while sitting on the toilet (guilty!); an April survey from iPass found that our attachment to our smartphones was ruining our vacations; a February poll of Brits discovered that one in three would rather give up sex than go a week without their phones.

And so and so forth. We are totally, hopelessly addicted, so much so that there is now even a term for a fear of losing one's phone: nomophobia, a trend that, you will be unsurprised to hear, is on the rise).

READ FULL ARTICLE.

Why Smartphones
Hook Us In

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by Susan Davis WebMD Feature

In a study of 1,600 managers and professionals, Leslie Perlow, PhD, the Konosuke Matsushita professor of leadership at the Harvard Business School, found that:

70% said they check their smartphone within an hour of getting up.

56% check their phone within an hour of going to sleep.

48% check over the weekend, including on Friday and Saturday nights.

51% check continuously during vacation.

44% said they would experience "a great deal of anxiety" if they lost their phone and couldn't replace it for a week.

"The amount of time that people are spending with the new technology, the apparent preoccupation, raises the question 'why?'" says Peter DeLisi, academic dean of the information technology leadership program at Santa Clara University in California. "When you start seeing that people have to text when they're driving, even though they clearly know that they're endangering their lives and the lives of others, we really have to ask what is so compelling about this new medium?"

Whether smartphones really "hook" users into dependency remains unclear.

But "we already know that the Internet and certain forms of computer use are addictive," says David Greenfield, PhD, a West Hartford, Conn., psychologist and author of Virtual Addiction: Help for Netheads, Cyber Freaks, and Those Who Love Them.

"And while we're not seeing actual smartphone addictions now," Greenfield says, "the potential is certainly there."

A true addiction entails a growing tolerance to a substance (think drugs or alcohol) so you need more to get "high," uncomfortable symptoms during withdrawal, and a harmful impact on your life, Greenfield says.

Computer technologies can be addictive, he says, because they're "psychoactive." That is, they alter mood and often trigger enjoyable feelings.

Email, in particular, gives us satisfaction due to what psychologists call "variable ratio reinforcement." That is, we never know when we'll get a satisfying email, so we keep checking, over and over again. "It's like slot machines," Greenfield says. "We're seeking that pleasurable hit."

Smartphones, of course, allow us to seek rewards (including videos, Twitter feeds, and news updates, in addition to email) anytime and anywhere. Is such behavior unhealthy?

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