No one singular item of our day has changed the landscape of society more than the smart phone. It is arguably the modern world’s most popular item outside food, shelter, and clothing. The question of our day is not whether we will continue to use our smart phones, but whether we will use these “connector devices” to connect to others or to be absorbed into the technology itself? 

In theory, they should increase our connections but many claim, and have the statistics to show, that they do not.  They do the opposite by bringing so many options to the table that we become distracted from others around us and from God. It pumps into our veins the trivial and the immediate instead of the important, our neighbor, and the transcendent. I remember once sitting with family friends as we were chatting. My mind wandered. I found myself ignoring my friends and looking down at my phone following some piece of news. After catching myself, I dropped the phone into my lap and apologized saying, “I have become the person I hate.” 

But can and should we do without them? The weather, the traffic, news from our wife, children, parents, church, the emergency road service company, and the list of essential ways we use them goes on. Baring a massive worldwide breakdown, for the rest of our lives we will live in this constant state of electronic connectedness whether it is by smart phone or what popular item replaces it next. A better question for the day is how can we intentionally use this connectedness to connect with God? How can we combine the world’s most popular tool with the world’s greatest task? That is to love God with all our heart and our neighbor as ourselves.

Instead of a list of do’s and don’ts. I thought I would ask some questions and present some verses to ponder as we stare into that little black screen.

Does it involve us in making disciples of the nations?

 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28: 19-20 (ESV).

Is it connecting us to whatever is good, whatever is true, and whatever is noble etc…?

 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. Philippians 4:8 (NKJV)

Is it causing us to ignore our actual next-door neighbor?

Better is a neighbor nearby than a brother far away. Proverbs 27:10 (KJV)

Are we trying to be omnipotent and absorb and rule the whole world from out little screen?

You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it. Psalms 139:6 (ESV)

A great tragedy of technology is to think that just because there has been a rapid leap forward tech wise people have changed. Even in rapidly advancing technology, we fall back on God’s order of things. The truth about who man is. People are created in his image, fallen by sin, and in need of a savior outside of themselves. When we stare into the universe through our current smart phone, the question should be what universe are we staring into? God’s real universe in which we can effect and interact or one of our own imaginations where we are absorbed into a fiction or the trivia of the day? Let us be able to say… for me and “my phone” let us serve the Lord.

Doug

The words of British poet Robert Abrahams say it well, “For some men die by shrapnel, And some go down in flames, But most men perish inch by inch, In play at little games.”  Our goal is to identify the little games and put a stop to them and put the right weight on the right things.