Last weekend, while driving to Orangeville, Sherri and I listened to one of the Think CDs put out by the Work Research Foundation. I think we listened to the latest one: "It's the Culture, Stupid: The Challenge of Cultural Renewal" by John Seel. To be honest, I can't remember much about it, but part of his message was that we cannot change culture by relying on grass-roots movements, but we need to have capital in order to change culture, and therefore we need to get high-ranking people involved, so that the idea has some serious backing. Interesting, but I don't know enough about the subject to comment well, so I will just refrain.
On the way back to Orangeville after preaching twice in Owen Sound CanRC, I listened to a Think CD entitled: "Living Biblically in Technologically Saturated Times." This one had more interest for me, and it got me thinking about these things. The speaker argued that technology is not neutral, and therefore as Christians we must really think about the technology we use or adopt, etc. I think his point was that we have to exegete technology. He used the example of a car, or automobile. It is 'auto' because it is self-propelled. But it is also 'auto' because it does not rely on tracks to guide it--it can go wherever the driver pleases, whenever he pleases. It is, at heart, an individualistic technology.
Whether or not I agree with him, I don't know. But it did get me thinking about technology and if it can be considered in some way neutral. I had just preached on 1 John 4:1-3, which urges Christians to test the spirits, because there are only two kinds of spirits in the world: those from God, and those that are not, the spirit of the antichrist.
I made a point in my sermon (twice, I think) that there are no neutral spirits, no third option. But in my own mind I hadn't drawn all the consequences of such a statement. This would mean that technology is not neutral--but can we say that technology is morally good or bad? I don't think that we can go that far. But perhaps we can see its non-neutrality in the fact that in the fall into sin, the whole world was cursed, including the work of human hands: technology. So technology, by its nature, does not live up to what it ought to be.
Therefore, as Christians, we should carefully consider the technology we use, so that we use it properly. And even before technology is developed, really think through some very important questions: do we need it? What will its effects be? How will it change things? How is the best way to develop this technology? What are its best uses? etc. I know that there are many other questions to be asked, and some of the ones that I just wrote need some fine-tuning and thinking through themselves. But we can't (and I myself have been guilty of this) just take technology for granted and use it without thinking. If technology is contextually good or bad, we have to be sure to make it good, use it well, and figure out whether it can be used well at all.
These are some the things that I have been thinking about lately. Which makes me miss studying philosophy--we don't get into much of this kind of thing at the College. So I have started reading philosophy for fun. Ever since writing my MA thesis on Nicholas Wolterstorff, I have wanted to get into reading Alvin Plantinga. So that is what I started this evening while taking care of Callum. I am reading (slowly) a compilation of Plantinga's writings, The Analytic Theist: an Alvin Plantinga Reader. Hopefully I can work through it, unlike some of the other books I started reading. The College doesn't give much free time...
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