Dan's Thoughts

Vision #27 - November 1st, 2006

Most of you seem to be warning that technology can become idolatrous. Well, that’s exactly what I was getting at in my essay. We don’t need to leap into any use of gadgets before we understand why we are using them and for what. Even though loving new gadgets can make us feel cool, the price is too high if gadgets alienate us from one another or from God.

It is fairly easy to be either a traditionalist who abhors innovation or an innovator who abhors tradition. However, to be an innovator who honors tradition (or a conservative who innovates) requires a bit more reflection. C. S. Lewis often warned against our culture’s lemming-like rush toward “progress.” He said that people rarely stop to define the word. So “progress” nearly always degenerates into a worship of “the next thing.” He is right of course (when is he not right?) but his valuable insight has to be measured against the need to communicate in a changing world.

The reformation didn’t happen just because Luther nailed a paper to the church door. It happened because the printing press allowed him and the other reformers to reach the masses in a way that had been unthinkable just a few generations before. Wycliffe was as powerful a reformer as Luther and certainly as devout. But he had no printing press so he didn’t make as big a splash as Luther. In a few years after Luther’s defacement of the church door, it became unthinkable for a believer not to own a Bible. That was not because the Protestant reformers were so persuasive; it was because it became possible to print Bibles economically. Before the printing press, a Bible cost more than a church building. Here then is an example of how technological advance can make a positive impact upon the church (according to Protestants anyway.)

Another example of how technology impacts the church revolves around the pipe organ. The Orthodox churches didn’t allow pipe organs in their sanctuaries because the early church didn’t have them. As a result, Western churches, Catholic and Protestant alike, went in a different direction musically than their Eastern friends. Orthodox churches arguably have the most beautiful choirs in all of Christendom and sing music that will make your hair stand up on end but no musical instruments. They decided to keep the patterns of the early centuries with simple, acoustics and the human voice. I for one, love Orthodox music. (Try Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, or his Liturgy of St. John Christostom!) However, it is important to realize what is lost as well as what is gained by rejecting technological innovations. J.S. Bach was a man of God if there ever was one and he made the organ sing praises to God that even our secular culture still treasures.

The main point here is that new technology always forces us to make decisions. We can reject it because we don’t want to lose what we already have. We can embrace it simply because we like new technology. Or we can study it, cautiously determine how we can use without a loss of spiritual life and then move forward with it. Of these three approaches, the most pitiful one is to move forward simply because we like new stuff. The decision to forgo technological advancement is often sincere and noble but limits a church’s outreach even to its own grandchildren (think about the Amish). The best option seems to be the third one – make the technology serve us instead of allowing the technology to determine who we are or what we are going to do.

It is still the “foolishness of preaching” that saves souls. An IPOD can’t do that. On the other hand, a sermon on an IPOD might be just what the doctor ordered.

Dan