FAITH AND TECHNOLOGY: the good, the bad and the ugly

We find ourselves in peculiar times. These times are so because the founding fathers of Christianity, I don’t think would have imagined or projected the kind of times we currently find ourselves. No one would have imagined that a time would come when we would have suicide bombers, people who have devoted themselves to a cause when if it costs their lives. The only person who saw an aeroplane in the Bible – albeit by revelation – called it a big bird. Who would have thought that a time would come when two friends in different extremes of the world would communicate via cell phones and the internet and it would look like they were face to face – it is called video technology. What a world we find ourselves.

The advent of technology in our world has so much transformed and metamorphosed our lives – the most essential thing to most people now is their cell phones. The transformation is so massive and so rapid that if you purchased an appliance or a computer software application today, it could become out-dated or an updated one could be on the market by next month. It is very common to find everyone ‘facebooking’ now. The world’s most popular question is ‘Are you on Facebook?’ It is not uncommon to see at the door of the churches today – please switch off your handset – where were this instructions 10 years ago? People, even Pastors run out of the church auditorium to the corridor to receive ‘that important call’. Some years back, members of a church would always travel at a particular time of the year. They would come from far and wide if only to hear the ‘Senior Pastor’ speak for that once in the year. Now, the ‘Senior Pastor’ says stay at home, we’ll transmit it to you via satellite. Whoa! What is technology doing to us? What more? It is no more fashionable to carry a bible while going to church. Why do that when you can put all the versions of the bible on your phone and quickly flip through it even before the Pastor finishes calling the selected portion. Video recording in church use to be for selected occasions like Christmas day, Senior Pastor’s visit and Easter day. Today, every service of the church is been recorded, both via audio and video and a respected Pastor even recently remarked that when he travels out of his church vicinity, he just hooks up to the internet and he’s connected to the service going on back home. When people born in the 80s have problems recognising the gramophone, how would you expect those of 90s and 2000s to do, what with the advent of Mp3, Mp4s, I-pods and even the CD-player is becoming out-dated now. What a life that technology has made for us!

In retrospect however, it is not all the way good. Technology could have given us the good things and made the living of our lives easier but it has also given us the bad and the ugly.

Today, there is the talk of genetic engineering,
 or in simpler terms, trying to create life. We have decided to alter the place of God and ‘become like Him’. All over the world is the debate on whether to legalize abortion
 (which in itself is a technology) without taking into consideration the sanctity of human life, even from conception. The cell phones that give so much noise disturbance in church are still the same ones by which we communicate with ourselves. Every church struggles to own a website now for better reach to their ‘internet compliant’ followers while acknowledging that the same internet is the world’s most easily accessible database of pornography and other vices. While it is needful to have hi-tech sound equipment to engulf the audience at the bustling camp-meetings, conventions and mega-church programs, no one recognises the noise pollution to the other inhabitants of these environments. The television is undisputable used for information and entertainment but its influence on the mind has been advantaged for spreading immoral ethos, false ideals and corrupt doctrines all in an attempt to draw us back to the ‘world where we left.’ Many of us are all too glad about the use of fingerprinting and other biometric indices for crime detection and fighting but may I please announce that this is just a stage rehearsal for its actual use – the series of events involving the antichrist and the 666 – don’t tell them I told you.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen (Heb. 11:1) and Technology is the study, development and application of devices, machines and techniques for manufacturing and productive processes. Technology is also a method or methodology that applies technical knowledge or tools. Not many will argue that technology has not made our lives easier and more comfortable; however placing things in its right perspective is much more comforting. We do know that Faith has an ‘object’ which is God so which of the objects are you focusing on – GOD or TECHNOLOGY?

The question may seem hideous but you must understand that the real essence of technology which is outlined above has been distorted. Over the years, the end-products of all technology is to reduce belief and reliance in God and make man all sufficient with the end result of taking man out of the centre of the equation of the world and replacing with robots. Whoa! How true is that? Ask yourself this – despite the fact that computers operate on the principle of garbage in garbage out, many still engage in the debate on the superiority of the computer to man’s intelligence. The computer, a man-made technological invention is now thought to be more intelligent than man, a God-made faith-based creation. It is this determination to reduce reliance on God that led to the building of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 – ‘that we may make a name for ourselves’. It is however noteworthy that God is the first inventor. Remember that God made the world and now made clothes after the fall for Adam and Eve, the first technological invention. And since we are like God, it was natural that we continued in the inventive capabilities of Him whose image we were made in. however since the devil has never relented in producing a fake substitute for all God’s original intentions, we now have these treasure in dishonourable vessels which is the perversion of the clean objectives of technology.

FAITH AND TECHNOLOGY – THE RIGHT PERSPECTIVE

Technology as a holistic entity is not bad depending on its application to our daily life. It is however needful that the influx of these technoventions does not make us lose our focus on God and break the ranks of those who through faith and perseverance completed their life course and obtained the reward of eternal life.

More importantly, the church must be proactive in making use of ALL technology available to us for the furtherance of the gospel. No technology is sinful when initiated with the right motives and channelled into a fruitful direction.  Only then can faith be backed up with technology to produce a total being in the 21^st century.