One question makes liars of us all. You yourself have answered this question a thousand times, and you almost never give an honest answer.
How are you?
You smile and you lie.
Fine. I’m doing just fine.
Even if you’re not doing fine, you still shake someone’s hand and say that you are. But that’s okay. It’s not deception; it’s etiquette.
Even so, it’s a legitimate question and sometimes it deserves an honest answer.
How are you?
If you’re like most people, here’s the truth:
When you first wake up, you immediately check emails, texts, or any other notifications that made your smart phone twitch in the night. Then—since you didn’t get enough sleep, you have to hit the ground running. (Sometimes it feels like it hits back.)
You get ready, check your phone, get dressed, check your phone, grab your stuff, check your phone. You put the “fast” in breakfast—that is if you bother to eat anything at all.
Your List of Things to Do is already ricocheting around your brain and with this whirling commotion in your head, you hurl yourself into the day. By the time you’re out the door, your pace has all the leisure of a track event. And that’s before you even get in the car.
Plus, you have too many Things to Do. In your attempt to complete all of them, you have to limit the amount of time and attention for each one. Yet, despite this triage efficiency, you know you won’t get everything done. You never get everything done.
All day long, the clock bosses you around and the constant, pressing question is always, What time is it? Even while you’re in the middle of handling one thing, the next thing is already breathing down your neck.
People, situations, routines, and habits pull you through the day faster than you can take it all in. You often fly through a whole twenty-four hours without making one legitimate decision. Sometimes you move mindlessly like this through a whole week. There’s even the ominous possibility you’ll do this for the rest of your life. As you fly through your days, there’s no room for introspection or insight, because you’re not living your life—your life is living you.
There are serious spiritual implications.
Jesus warned us how “the anxiety of the world” can be like thorns that “choke the Word” and make a person’s life “unfruitful” (Matthew 13:22). As Christians we have to do our best to identify anything that can threaten our relationship with God. There are thorns that destroy Christians. This is how you end up losing everything that truly matters. It’s important to consider the possibility that our technology has thorns.
Since there’s nothing new under the sun, we know the 21st Century isn’t exceptionally antagonistic to souls. The world has always had the means to sabotage our spiritual safety and God has always provided the means for our survival. If we remain close to God, nothing can stand in our way
Scripture even provides a list of hypothetical threats, none of which has the power to separate us from our Creator. Death, angels, world leaders—nothing can cut us off from the love of God unless we allow it to. This list also includes “things to come” (Romans 8:38). Regardless of how futuristic we might become God’s love and His plan of salvation will always remain intact. He is faithful. The only question at hand is our whether or not we will be.
But the biggest problem with our problems is that we tend to only use the wisdom that comes from hindsight. And even then, it’s aimed at our ancestors. It’s easy to look back across history and say, Ah, look at how simple they were. Look at how they sabotaged themselves.
It’snot so easy to have the same clarity about our own current situation. This limited hindsight is merely a form of blindness.
There’s an old saying. “If you want to know what water is like, don’t ask the fish.” Water is all the fish has ever known so it’s nearly impossible for him to have any kind of objectivity. This is especially true for us when it comes to our technology.
Our way of life (shaped by our inventions) is so familiar, it takes significant effort to even see the technology, let alone examine its effect on us. Besides, why trouble the water? Our lives are relatively comfortable (or relatively painless). Modern life isn’t so bad. Any effort to challenge the ways of the world seems borderline absurd. This is why anyone who casts dispersions on our way of life is often dismissed as irrelevant.
To flinch at the future or paint dystopias doesn’t help. That kind of thing only leads to pessimism and mostly just annoys people. However, it also isn’t good to simply plod along and pretend everything is fine or inevitable. Failing to assess our situation only makes us all the more vulnerable to the potential danger.
If you’re like most people in our society, there’s something off about your life. If you take an objective look, there are indications that much of the trouble can be traced back to our technology. Although our devices and innovations provide incredible benefits, they also have resulted in significant setbacks. Some of us have become wary.
The word you’re looking for is Luddite.
In the 1800s, when the machines started to replace men in the textile industry, a group of angry weavers (who had lost their jobs to these contraptions) rose up and smashed the machines. They did this as a kind of tribute to another weaver, Ned Ludd, who according to legend destroyed machines when he had lost his job. And so, this little rebellion against technology has been memorialized by the term Luddite: someone who opposes new technology.
Destroying machines doesn’t stop the future, but it’s important to take a close look at the devices we’ve made. Anyone who blindly embraces every innovation as pure progress is just as foolish as a Luddite.
Sociologist Neal Postman addressed these concerns in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. “Those who speak about this matter must often raise their voices to near hysterical pitch inviting the charge that they are everything from wimps to public nuisances to Jeremiahs. But they do so because what they want others to see appears benign, when it is not invisible altogether.” Even though our surroundings might feel normal, it’s important to question the world we have made for ourselves, even at the risk of sounding hysterical.
There’s certainly nothing new under the sun, but the 21st Century has unique challenges and we fish are all the more likely to be blind to our situation and therefore all the more vulnerable. The great majority of the world is riding the wave of progress without a second thought. Those who might actually have second thoughts—those who might question the advancement of modern society are often and easily ignored.
Regardless of the benefits provided by our innovations, there is a significant cost. There are some things we have lost along the way that have spiritual implications. But if we open our eyes, we’ll have a much better chance of recovering what was lost. It would be foolish to pretend technology only improves our lives. Bashing progress might be absurd, but so is blindly embracing it.
bret@rockymountainchristian.com
