Let's play a game. I'll give you a quote, you tell me what movie it comes from. Are you ready?
"Last night, Darth Vader came down from the planet Vulcan and told me that if I didn't take Lorraine out that he'd melt my brain."
You guessed it - Back to the Future - easily one of the best films of the 1980s. Do you remember the scene that quote describes? Picture Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) dressed in a radiation suit, standing over his teenage father's bed, blasting him awake by pumping Van Halen at full volume into his ears through headphones controlled by Marty's Sony Walkman. It was one of the funniest, most creative scenes in the movie.
As I look back now on George McFly's mind melting experience, I see it as eerily prophetic of our times. The Sony Walkman was the first compact, portable music player, and it revolutionized how we listened to music. It was the grandfather of the iPod that so many of us have today. But the changes of the last few decades haven't been limited to music. Technology as a whole has exploded and saturated our lives to an extent that few in the 80s could've ever imagined. In addition to iPods we all now have cell phones, laptops and desktops, connecting us at a moment's notice to each other and the internet. Once on the internet we have email, facebook, youtube, wikipedia, hulu, countless blogs, games, news sites, and entertainment options to occupy every second of every minute of our time.
We tend to view these advancements in a positive light, and of course there are many positive things that have come out of them. But here's my question, and maybe you can relate... If all of these advancements are good, why does it seem like technology is melting my brain? Why, despite the wealth of information that is now at my fingertips, do I feel like I'm getting stupider? And is "stupider" even a word? I think I just made my point.
You may be nodding in agreement with me so far, but hold on...I haven't even gotten to the really frightening part yet. Technology has not only been melting my mind, but God has recently been revealing to me that it is also melting my spirit...my heart...my affections...for Him and his Word. Can you relate to that as well?
If your answer is yes, I've got some homework for you. I'm going to give you two links and ask you to read some of the same things that God used to open my eyes to my current situation. If you do find that God convicts you like he did me, please let me know (there is an email link at the end of this post). Repentance sticks better when it is done in community. In God's strength we can work together to make changes that will loosen the grip that the idol of technology has over our hearts, and see our affections for Him renewed! Here are the links:
A Quote: "I understand that one of my desires as a Christian should be to know God more deeply; the reality is that I spend very little time actually getting to know Him. Too often, my hours are spent pursuing other human beings through convenient electronic means like Facebook. My life can quickly become all about striving to know my buddies better than my Lord."
A Quote: While technology has many worthwhile purposes, it demands a high price from us. Studies have shown that our increasing media dependency is crippling our attention spans, wounding our ability to create meaningful relationships, and generating a false expectation that we should be able to be contacted at every hour of the day.
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