I could have been a Luddite*

Warning: Hypocrisy alert!

Let's get the obvious charge of hypocrisy aside. Yes, I'm using a modern technology and the medium of a blog to pooh-pooh the evils of technology.

That being said...


It is no secret that I view smart phones quite critically. It has been my experience that smart phones, despite their name, usually cause the user to act like an idiot. I once had to slam the brakes of my car to avoid a teenage boy who stepped directly in front of me while texting (or playing a game, or watching a video, who knows and who really cares?). He never flinched--I don't think he knows I almost hit him. Then he tripped on the curb and then he...wait for it...walked into a tree.

Good thing his phone was smart.



If only such idiocy was limited to the youthful, we could chalk it up to youthful enthusiasm. Alas, I see people of all ages, grown adults and card carrying AARP members, mimic such idiotic actions of that young, teenage boy.

Aside from the general rise of stupidity that seems to be directly related to the use of smart phones, I do not care for them because of the disintegration of social interaction that I witness in the world around me. Sometimes I just want to scream, "Is the text or Facebook status update or e-mail you just received really more important than the conversation we were having face to face?"

I realize I'm in the minority, but sometimes I enjoy talking to someone without having them immediately go to wikipedia to look up the topic we are discussing and start reading it, thus effectively killing the conversation.

But I've never considered the ways in which smart phones can cause a disintegration of our relationship with God. Carl Trueman has just posted an excellent essay on just that topic. When I purchased my last phone I told the salesman, "I only want a phone that makes and receives phone calls." He kept trying to offer me complex little fake tricorders until finally my wife spoke up and said, "He isn't kidding. He doesn't want any of that stuff." I have since operated under the false belief that I was, apparently, the only person on the planet who felt that way. But I'm not, and that is refreshing.

Even more refreshing is his perspective on solitude.  Consider what he has to say on the sound and fury--signifying NOTHING--of our age of smart phones:

"I suspect Christians can be among the worst offenders. I hope that no Christians were lining up for the latest Apple iPhone many hours before it was released. It is, after all, just a phone - just a phone! - and not a cure for cancer, AIDS, poverty or the lack of clean drinking water in many parts of the world. But I am confident that my hope on that score is a vain one. Many Christians are as deeply embedded in the sad culture of consumerism as anyone. And even those of us who are not, who have phones that look as if they predate VHS recorders, can still con ourselves that all of our activity, all of that sound and fury in our lives, signifies something worthwhile. Yet how often does it signify nothing but the fact that we strut about on the stages we have made for fear not simply of loneliness but even of solitude; for solitude is the place where we have no alternative but to reflect upon the most serious realities of our existence."

You can read the rest of his essay here








*I realize I'm misappropriating the term Luddite.