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When Technology Becomes an Idol

Our dear friend Bruxy Cavey wrote this reflection on how technology can contribute to spiritual apathy. Has technology replaced God in ways you may not have noticed? It’s good to “unplug” on a regular basis to reconnect to the real source of our LIFE.

From the article:

  1. The Internet robs us of our sense of our own ignorance and limitations. Space for questioning and pondering is replaced by immediate fact-finding. We feel like we possess the power of gods.
  2. GPS robs us of any sense of being lost. We always know where we are and how to get to anywhere we want.
  3. Mobile Phones make us feel always connected, mediated through our personal screens. Time to be just ourselves, alone with our thoughts, has evaporated.
  4. Credit gives us the power to get what we want when we want it with, in the short term, apparently no cost to us. The world is open to us, wanting us with open arms (well, wanting our business anyway).

In short, we feel… sufficient. Some people would argue that this is a good thing, allowing technology to ween us off our outdated God-dependency. But what is ancient is not always outdated, and what is contemporary is not always the better version of ourselves.

Image by Matthew Clark. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.

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