A Fear of Whales

A Fear of Whales

Luddites for Jesus

posted by rgaffney

Have you heard about the recent study about how people are increasingly disconnected from each other because of the Facebook and txting? Or how traffic accidents are up because people are Twittering while driving? And attendance at church is down because the kids these days can’t tear themselves away from Worlds or Warcraft.

Our lives today are filled with noise, we are constantly stimulated with our phones and out computers and our GPS devices, we are becoming disconnected from the spiritual world and from one another because when we are always tied in to the digital world we lose the ability to be fully present.

We need to find ways to “unplug” from out electronic idols. And escape from our digital addictions so that we can reconnect with God in nature.Unplug

Because that’s where God is, right?

In nature?

God’s not on the internet.

I’m not going to deny that there are people who have legitimate problems with technology replacing social interaction, or who worship their iPhones, or who have legitimate addictions to computer gaming. But its my opinion that fro the most part, those people would be screwed up anyway. It’s not technology’s fault.

I also won’t deny that it would be deeply transformative to people to live without technology for a while but argue that many of the more escapist and distracting technologies are actually older. Clocks for instance only became so prominent and accurate as they are now because of the Railroad industry in the US. They are not inherent to the spirituality of the ancient near east. Date books are not new, but neither are they inherent. And escapist fantasy stories predate WoW by eons.

If you are having difficulty connecting with Jesus. It’s because you are sinful fallen and broken, not because you have a smartphone. And the missional call of God is not to run away from it’s secularness but to redeem even this new technological space,

Genesis 28:16



You Might Also Like...
Previous Posts

The Centrality of Grace
I have a big list of blog ideas. When I get an idea for a blog, I put it on the list. When I get time to write a blog, I open a list and write a page about the idea. Usually I add in some analogy to illustrate it or some argument for it’s truth if it’s controversial. Then I steak a pictu

posted 5:31:17pm Apr. 09, 2013 | read full post »

Apologetics and its Miscategorization
Generally speaking, the church tolerates apologetics nerds like myself. They acknowledge us, and withhold comment except perhaps to say something like “maybe you could teach a class or something sometime” Sometime never comes. Believe it or not that’s a pretty good lot for us, comparatively.

posted 4:07:52am Feb. 28, 2013 | read full post »

Expel The Immoral Brother
I wrote earlier about profanity. I argued that the bible often finds profanity necessary to make it’s point. At the time I said that I wanted to make that point not just to defend profanity, but because there were other points that I felt were important to make, that rested on that point as a prem

posted 5:29:00am Jan. 16, 2013 | read full post »

Han Shot First (A Meditation on Relativism, And Why It’s Dumb)
I will not be the first Christian to write a blog that 6 people ever will read refuting relativism. I won’t be the last. I’m not the smartest, and despite my ambition for uniqueness, my article will not break any new barriers in the field of epistemology. It is, according to all formal logical t

posted 5:10:00am Jan. 10, 2013 | read full post »

Buddhist Fisherman
I am aware of some ministries that have become so focused on the the importance of evangelism that they talk about “The parable of the fishless fisherman”. I won’t link you said parable (as it’s copyrighted) but the gist is that just as a person who claims to be a fisherman but never catches

posted 2:41:06am Jan. 08, 2013 | read full post »

Advertisement
Comments Post the First Comment »
post a comment

Post a Comment





Report as Inappropriate

You are reporting this content because it violates the Terms of Service.

All reported content is logged for investigation.