John Dyer, in his book, From the Garden to the City, begins having you think about perspective. You and I live in a global economy, in a global village, if you will, by virtue of technology. I have experienced this myself. As an avid Mac user, I've belonged to a group called Christian Mac Users Group. I've met hundreds of people from around the world. Some are pastors; others are missionaries in foreign countries. Some are publishers; others are tech engineers. Some are Lutheran; others are Baptists. And out of these hundreds of people, I've only ever met two of them face to face.
It is a different world than it was twenty years ago, fifty years ago, and more. Review the ways in which technology has multiplied exponentially over the past 50 years alone and its mind-boggling.
This can't help but affect the church and Christians. But how does it do so? How have we allowed the "myth" of technology, as Neil Postman puts it, affect our thinking about technology, as well as our usage (or, in the case of some churches, lack of usage)? [Postman's point is that the "myth" is how we think of life as being normal; or as once having been normal. Yet if you trace back those times from the past, there was "myth" going on then about what was normal.]
I had a fascinating realization of this when my nearly seventeen-year old daughter had a project for a class. She had to describe herself using objects from home; objects that would tell of her family, her life and personality, likes and dislikes. Ann, my wife, wanted her to take a Sony®Walkman™ with her to describe her parents. Elizabeth kind of knew what the Walkman™ was, but had never used one; nor probably never remember seeing us use one either. The myth, for Ann and I, was that this was just "wrong" and abnormal. Why, we've had that Walkman™ for years!
Yet we both also remember never having a recorder of any kind in the first place, when we were quite young. And the case goes on. What is normal for kids and teens now, wasn't when we were that age. What was normal for us then, certainly wasn't for our parents.
This is the perspective we must bring to bear when we start to think about, talk about, use or forbid usage of technologies around us. One final example, that might stretch your mind a bit (I know it did mine). Just three days ago, I stood in the pulpit of Cornerstone EFC and invited those attending to turn in their Bibles to the passage for the morning. This is just S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) for us on Sunday mornings. However, do you realize that 600 years ago, you'd have never heard that from any pulpit? It's not just because the Church at the time forbad it; the people in the pews wouldn't have had Bibles to bring to church and open up to the passage of the morning in the first place. Or do you realize that so many Christians feel guilty because they don't have a regular "quiet time" in the Bible each morning? Yet you don't see commands in the Scriptures about this. Nor will you find descriptions of this in the New Testament. Why? Because they wouldn't have had Bibles in their homes either. I have no doubt they had massive portions memorized. Obviously, when they gathered they read from the scrolls, or perhaps even from the most recently arrived letter of Paul. But they didn't have Bible from which to do their daily devotions every day.
This is all the result of technology. So, we must begin with a balanced perspective before we go any further.