It’s important to strike the right balance. When it comes to technology, it isn’t all good, but it’s not all bad. Countless inventions are nothing less than blessings produced by creativity as designated by the Creator.
Listing the benefits of technology would be pointless. All of us could easily rattle off a hundred inventions that have either improved—or even saved—our lives. A person would quickly sound hysterical if they denounced all inventions. Besides, no one would hear them since they couldn’t use a microphone or social media.
Even so, it’s important to question the world we have made for ourselves. Going to extremes on either side of the issue doesn’t lead to rational dialogue. Praising technology can become blindness. Opposing technology can be dismissed as simply longing for the “good old days.” Nostalgia can distort our perception. Such a mindset interferes with spiritual clarity. “Do not say, ‘Why is it that the former days were better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). It’s foolish to ignore history, but dwelling on the past is not a good fit for a Christian.
As we skirt the edge of disapproval, we need to remember what would be lost if we think the solution is going backward. As one journalist put it, “If you’re yearning for the good old days, just turn off the air conditioning.” 1
Truth is, we often have an image of the past that isn’t even accurate. “In every age ‘the good old days’ were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.” 2
Movies also distort history, glorifying the past, and romanticizing events to the point of fable. Most of us learned about history more from Hollywood than from school. But the films we love do not provide an accurate portrayal. “Based on a true story” still has more poetic license than accuracy.
Even so, if we do compare the present with the past with some objectivity, we might gain some insight about our current situation. When you examine what has happened along the way, you begin to spot patterns and pitfalls.
When you do reach back into the past to map out where we are now, one thing you will notice right away. Technology changes things more than we think it does. At the very least, an examination of history reveals one particular truth about our inventions. For every major invention, there are always side-effects no one predicted. Neal Postman warned that technology “always gives us something, but it always takes away something important.” 3
With all this in mind, we can direct our attention to two inventions in particular that demonstrate this basic truth.
The Clock
All of us were born into a world with clocks. As such, most people don’t realize how much they changed the world. Before clocks, time was mostly structured around nature. For most people, the day was organized by the presence or absence of daylight. Even the “hour” mentioned in the Bible or the shadows of a sundial were far more imprecise compared to modern time-keeping.
When two opponents agreed to “meet at dawn” for a duel, it wasn’t because they were morning people. It was because the rising of the sun was a universal moment in time. Up until the clock showed up, we used “natural time.”
Somewhere between the tenth and fourteenth century, a group of Benedictine monks came up with the idea of a device that would measure out the day in specific units. 4 The primary purpose was to calibrate pieces of time to measure out their acts of devotion to God—a precise amount of time for prayer, meditation, sleep, and all the routines of the monastery.
Eventually, other people heard about this invention. Have you heard what the monks are doing? That sounds pretty efficient.
By the middle of the fourteenth century, the business world began using this monastery invention. Not long after that, clocks could be found everywhere. In 1370, the king of France set up the Royal Palace Clock. Every sixty minutes, the clock rang bells for all to hear and the king decreed that everyone must regulate their day according to the official royal clock. Even churches were expected to submit to the king’s master timepiece.
As time went on (meticulously measured out), we became obsessed with the authority of chronological increments. Archbishop James Ussher even attempted to pinpoint the exact time of Creation (October 23, 4004 B.C. 9:00 a.m.).
Eventually, clocks conquered the world. In 1884, a conference was held in Washington D.C. to set up the Greenwich Mean Time system, establishing 24 time zones. From then on, man-made time encompassed the planet. 5
Ultimately the clock demonstrated an unfortunate turn of events. It was an invention designed to devote time to God, but it ultimately became a device primarily used to devote time to money.
Despite its origins, the clock doesn’t encourage time for God. It mostly takes it away. World-stuff is the priority. Spiritual concerns typically get whatever time is left over.
Why don’t you go to the assembly?
I don’t have time.
Why don’t you read your Bible or pray?
I don’t have time
Translation: I used the clock to divide up my days and when everything was sorted out and all the pieces of time were accounted for, there was nothing left to give to God.
Regardless of any doctrinal shortcomings of the monks, they would roll their eyes.
When it comes to prioritizing our time, Jesus said this. “Seek first His kingdom” (Matthew 6:33). When it comes to missing the assembly or not reading our Bibles, we know whether or not our reasons are legitimate. Make no mistake. It’s not a checklist, it’s a mindset. On your list of Things-To-Do, your relationship with God should be #1. But as F. LaGard Smith said, “The clock is killing the church.” Even as we assemble together to devote time to God, the clock looks over our shoulder, pressing us to wrap things up.
The clock has had a huge effect that no one ever predicted. We’re not in charge of the clock. It’s in charge of us. All day long, it tells us what to do.
The clock isn’t a necessarily a bad thing, but it does help to notice what it’s doing. If you’re like most people, the clock is running your life. It might even be sabotaging your devotion to God.
The solution isn’t to throw away our clocks. Maybe ignoring them once in a while is a good idea. Some of your favorite moments in life will be when you lose track of time—when you don’t consult a clock.
That alone seems significant.
The Light
Here’s another invention that changed the world more than we think: artificial light. Before Edison developed an enduring light bulb in 1879, the world was drastically different.
When the sun went down and darkness fell, you went to sleep. When the sun rose, you got up. With few exceptions that’s what people did. Candles and lamps certainly allowed you to do a bit of this and that, but for the most part, darkness meant bedtime. Sleeping too long in the morning light was wasted time. You had to make the most of that half-turn of the earth.
Artificial light made the day longer and ignored the night. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping in the light or being awake in the darkness, but artificial light transformed the world more deeply than we realize.
Artificial light can give us a longer day, but that typically doesn’t lead to good things. We stay up too late. The resulting person who greets the morning sun is a half-conscious version of you, who shuffles under the tyranny of the clock, propped up with caffeine.
When God documented Creation, He made sure to focus on the fact that He made units of time called “days.” Then He divided each day into two parts for a reason. He even uses the difference between these two parts to present spiritual implications.
“For you are all sons of light and sons of day. We are not of night nor of darkness; so then let us not sleep as others do but let us be alert and sober. For those who sleep do their sleeping at night, and those who get drunk get drunk at night. But since we are of the day, let us be sober.” (1 Thessalonians 5:5-8).
Being active after the sun goes down doesn’t automatically lead to bad decisions. You can still go to a late movie or work the nightshift or stay up all night talking. But after the sun goes down, that’s when people typically find a lot of trouble.
Our ability to light the world after God has turned off the lights has led to side-effects. Instead of winding down and relaxing with family, we use artificial light to extend the day. Even if we don’t make blatantly bad choices, we don’t sleep as much as we need to.
We stay up late, working and working, or vegetating ourselves into a stupor, until we finally surrender to sleep. Inevitably, our bodies know the truth.
It’s a common tale. We stay up late on Saturday night. The next morning, we shuffle into the assembly and make our bleary way through the songs, the Lord’s Supper, the lesson, and the prayers. Even if we keep our eyes propped open, it’s hard to really focus on any of it. Just like with the clock, artificial light has a tendency to interfere with making God our priority.
Invisible Aspects
The clock and artificial light are not evil technology. They are wonderful inventions that have provided countless benefits. But a closer look at both can reveal some general truths about all major inventions.
They have become so much a part of our world, we don’t even think about them. They have become invisible, and this makes their side-effects also invisible.
They are not bad in and of themselves, but they can provide a platform to make bad decisions more efficiently and unexpected ways.
The responsibility is in the hands of the user. You are responsible for how you might use these inventions. But in order to make good decisions with them it helps to see their true nature. In order to do this, you have to take the time—and turn on the light.
1 Griff Niblack (1897-1986), reporter for the Indianapolis Times
2 Brooks Atkinson (1894-1984), Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times
3 Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985)—Postman calls this tradeoff the “Faustian Bargain”
4 It seems appropriate we don’t have a specific date for the invention of a device that keeps time.
5 The clock demonstrates a universal trait seen in much of our technology: as clocks became more accurate, they became cheaper and smaller. Eventually we wore them on our wrists (a device currently on the edge of obsolete). Now our clocks our embedded in our phones. This is something that happens with a lot of technology. It starts out bulky and big, expensive and elite. But over time, it is reduced to something portable and even universally essential.
