The aim of this arti­cle

There has nev­er been a time in his­to­ry when tech­nol­o­gy advanced as rapid­ly as it does today. It aims at mak­ing life eas­i­er and pro­vid­ing things not pos­si­ble before. Mul­ti­me­dia and Inter­net have already become com­mon­place. More and more peo­ple have their per­son­al smart­phones and com­put­ers. In spite of all its ben­e­fits we are also faced with some neg­a­tive effects that could influ­ence our lives and the way we inter­act with each oth­er. One might ask: How should we relate to these devices and ser­vices? What does an old book like the Bible tell us about using tech­nol­o­gy in our mod­ern age? What are its dan­gers? Since we are also faced with ques­tions like these, we gave them some thought, and would like to share them with you in this arti­cle.

1 What’s going on today?

1.1 Digital addiction

We live in the age of Inter­net, smart­phones, tablet PCs and home the­aters. You could spend hours on these devices for enter­tain­ment every­day.

• Many tele­vi­sion pro­grammes and videos feed the crav­ing for excite­ment and lust for the sen­su­al, expos­ing view­ers’ eyes to vio­lence, sex­u­al sins, immoral­i­ty, vanity—just to name a few of the reg­u­lar things which attract their con­sumers.
• Com­put­er games cap­ti­vate their play­ers by open­ing up doors to fan­ta­sy worlds and reward­ing them with vir­tu­al suc­cess. In some games, you even have the license to kill or to vent your aggres­sion and frus­tra­tion on your ene­mies.
• The vast amount of infor­ma­tion in the Inter­net engross­es its users as they find plea­sure in know­ing more and more, and become proud of what they can find out through search engines. It is also easy to over­come bore­dom and kill time by explor­ing the lat­est videos, music, apps, news, or even con­spir­a­cy theories—there is an inex­haustible amount of them avail­able.
• Through the Inter­net, you have easy access to pornog­ra­phy, which arous­es an insa­tiable lust for more. It destroys the pure heart need­ed for build­ing nat­ur­al and lov­ing rela­tion­ships. Peo­ple’s minds are led to focus on self-seek­ing desires and to regard the oppo­site sex (or even the same) as objects of lust. This could dam­age your life for­ev­er¹.

On top of all this, smart­phones have made these things avail­able at the touch of a fin­ger at any time and any place.

Expos­ing our­selves to things like these will deprave our minds. It’s seri­ous: you might get that far that you lose all willpow­er to get away from it all!

Those who become addict­ed to such things tend to neglect their duties and rela­tion­ships in life. There is a dan­ger of becom­ing inca­pable of cop­ing with real­i­ty, pre­fer­ring to flee to your own world where you feel as if you have more con­trol. This is now con­sid­ered a new prob­lem in our soci­ety by experts along­side alco­hol, drugs and tobac­co, a prob­lem which may some­times even require pro­fes­sion­al ther­a­py.

Being able to do things more quick­ly and effort­less­ly through tech­nol­o­gy may also be a trap for those who are ambi­tious. It could absorb you into doing your own things and not care about what is going on with oth­er peo­ple as you find your sat­is­fac­tion in feel­ing proud, self-impor­tant and self-suf­fi­cient. But we should­n’t for­get the one who gave us our cre­ativ­i­ty and made our work pos­si­ble in the first place. The prob­lem of self-cen­tred­ness, which has been around for ages, is not solved through tech­nol­o­gy.

1.2 Cyber-friendship

Some claim to have gained more friends through the Inter­net, as com­mu­ni­ca­tion becomes quick­er, more afford­able and con­ve­nient. Dis­tance is no longer a bar­ri­er thanks to e‑mails, instant mes­sag­ing, Inter­net tele­pho­ny and video calls. With social net­work­ing web­sites like Face­book, a new friend is just a click away.

Inter­net indeed makes it pos­si­ble to get to know new peo­ple. If used in the right way, it can cer­tain­ly be ben­e­fi­cial. It also enables us to main­tain rela­tion­ships with those we are not able to meet because of long dis­tances, although any­one inter­est­ed in a deep rela­tion­ship would con­sid­er it only a tem­po­rary and less-than-ide­al alter­na­tive, as John the dis­ci­ple of Jesus expressed in one of his let­ters, writ­ing in the set­ting of his time:

Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be com­plete. (2 John 12)

Friend­ships built through social net­work­ing or in chat rooms are often not based on care and com­mit­ment to each oth­er, but on fun and excite­ment. They are often shal­low. Since it is not always pos­si­ble to know who is real­ly behind the user name, you could even pre­tend to be some­one else or take on a char­ac­ter that is more attrac­tive and admirable to gain more friends. Some enjoy play­ing a spe­cial role to impress an anony­mous audi­ence which would oth­er­wise be impos­si­ble in real life. There is plen­ty of room for emp­ty talk and irre­spon­si­ble words. Trust­ful rela­tion­ships are dif­fi­cult here. But strange­ly, you could get so entan­gled in this dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment that it becomes dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate on any­thing else while wait­ing for the next instant mes­sage on your smart­phone or com­put­er.

Even with gad­gets that bridge long dis­tances in com­mu­ni­ca­tion, you might find your­self more dis­tanced from the peo­ple around you because you spend more time with your gad­gets than you do with them. It is no rem­e­dy to counter lone­li­ness by liv­ing in the illu­sion of hav­ing many good friends at the oth­er side of the screen whom you have nev­er even met per­son­al­ly. We should invest time in build­ing real rela­tion­ships instead.

A good rela­tion­ship is about trust. And trust is based on hon­esty and sin­cere care for each oth­er. It is about the readi­ness to open up our­selves to let oth­ers take part in our lives, show­ing who we real­ly are and yet bear­ing each oth­er’s weak­ness­es and short­com­ings. It is about com­mit­ting our­selves to seek the best for each oth­er and about walk­ing the path of life togeth­er to reach the eter­nal aim—God, who is love², from whom we receive love and through whom we learn to love. God offers us such a rela­tion­ship and also teach­es us the way to build such rela­tion­ships among our­selves.

2 Why do we get entangled in such things?

What dri­ves us to do the things we do, is what we believe is valu­able. The val­ues in this world with­out God are large­ly based on sen­su­al plea­sure, self­ish desire and pride. The Bible warns us not to give in to the ways of this world, which lead to the destruc­tion of our souls.

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is pass­ing away along with its desires, but who­ev­er does the will of God abides for­ev­er. (1 John 2:16–17)

With­out God, the val­ues that some­one has are also often deter­mined by what oth­ers think. They are as change­able as the wind of fash­ion. If we sub­mit to them, we will feel the pres­sure to con­form to the norms of oth­ers in order to gain their accep­tance, fear­ing that oth­ers might look down on us if we don’t keep up with the lat­est fad. They want to out­do each oth­er by being the first to have the best and know the lat­est. Pride, envy and scorn become part of their lives and take away the peace of heart and room for good­will.

But our val­ue does not depend on what oth­ers think about us. Nor does it depend on what we have or how we appear. We are valu­able because our Cre­ator made us and loves us, with per­fect love. He wants to crown us with dig­ni­ty and help us stand on firm ground in Him in this volatile world. Jesus said:

Every­one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been found­ed on the rock. (Matthew 7:24–25)

We can eas­i­ly be drawn to things like those men­tioned before if we don’t find the real ful­fil­ment in our lives. Man’s real ful­fil­ment, secu­ri­ty and help is to be found in God—this is how God cre­at­ed man to be. Hav­ing reject­ed God and being sep­a­rat­ed from Him, man is left alone to look for a sub­sti­tute. Through­out his­to­ry many peo­ple have been striv­ing for this. They try to grat­i­fy them­selves with all kinds of things, going from exces­sive con­sump­tion of food and alco­hol, to enter­tain­ment, to sex­u­al impu­ri­ty, ecsta­sy, mon­ey, pos­ses­sions… Though always com­ing up with new ideas, they are nev­er sat­is­fied. It is impor­tant to stop and real­ize what is going wrong, and to take time to look for the real solu­tion, instead of resort­ing to what dis­tracts us from it. Shal­low joy and quick thrills only relieve the inner long­ing of man for an instant, and soon after lead to the deep despair of emptiness—this is the very char­ac­ter of sin. With­out God, peo­ple need to hold on to things that seem to give them a cer­tain val­ue in life, though when seen with an open heart, they in fact have no last­ing val­ue at all.

But we can and should say “no” to the atti­tude of this world. These things not only deprave the hearts and minds but also lead us to eter­nal sep­a­ra­tion from God. Our Cre­ator wants to help us out of it by call­ing us to change our hearts, our minds and our lives.

For the grace of God has appeared, bring­ing sal­va­tion for all peo­ple, train­ing us to renounce ungod­li­ness and world­ly pas­sions, and to live self-con­trolled, upright, and god­ly lives in the present age… (Titus 2:11–12)

3 Is it affecting you?

If the wrong use of tech­nol­o­gy already has an influ­ence on your life as described ear­li­er, we want to urge you not to be deceived or enslaved by the things which seem excit­ing for the moment. They actu­al­ly rob you of your free­dom and dig­ni­ty, lead­ing you to empti­ness. Rather, look for what remains for eter­ni­ty.

Take some time and log off your vir­tu­al ID, turn off your gad­gets, switch off your com­put­er, pull out your ear­phones and open your­self to dis­cov­er the real­i­ty around you. Flee­ing from the real to the vir­tu­al world can nev­er solve prob­lems. The solu­tion can only be found if you face real­i­ty and take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your own life and the lives of oth­ers, even if it might be painful some­times. Instead of hid­ing your­self in vir­tu­al forums, look for real rela­tion­ships in true love, espe­cial­ly with the One who is the source of real­i­ty, who knows what is best for us.

4 It sounds like Christians are against technology

That’s not true. Some think of Chris­tian­i­ty as old-fash­ioned and there­fore think that Chris­tians are unwill­ing to embrace tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments. Let us clear up this mis­con­cep­tion by con­sid­er­ing an exam­ple in his­to­ry.

When speak­ing about tech­nol­o­gy, peo­ple prob­a­bly think pri­mar­i­ly of mod­ern inven­tions like com­put­ers and space­ships. How­ev­er, we should not for­get that such achieve­ments would nev­er have been pos­si­ble with­out the step­ping stones laid in the past, which were in those days—in the broad­er sense of the term—modern tech­nol­o­gy. Chris­tians too made use of the tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments of their day to serve God’s king­dom. As the words of Jesus and the Apos­tles were put into writ­ten form, they were copied onto papyrus and parch­ment, and lat­er on paper. For a long time, it was a spe­cial priv­i­lege to own a per­son­al Bible since it was main­ly only avail­able to cler­ics and the rich. In the last few cen­turies, the print­ing press made it pos­si­ble to dupli­cate the Bible in a less cost­ly and stren­u­ous way, mak­ing it more acces­si­ble and afford­able to the com­mon peo­ple. In spite of ini­tial attempts by pseu­do-reli­gious author­i­ties to for­bid the mass­es from pos­sess­ing their own Bibles, these attempts final­ly failed—fortunately—and many peo­ple since then have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to read and exam­ine the Bible at home.

So tech­nol­o­gy has been ben­e­fi­cial for Chris­tians as well. We are not hes­i­tant to use it for the right aim. Nev­er­the­less, there is a need for care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion, espe­cial­ly from the moral and spir­i­tu­al point of view. To under­stand this more, let us first look at what the Bible says about God’s plan for mankind in Gen­e­sis, the bib­li­cal account of the ori­gin.

5 God’s original plan

God has made every­thing good and set man to rule over, cul­ti­vate and take care of His cre­ation accord­ing to His pur­pose.

And God said to them, “Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply and fill the earth and sub­due it, and have domin­ion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heav­ens and over every liv­ing thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, ‘Behold, I have giv­en you every plant yield­ing seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heav­ens and to every­thing that creeps on the earth, every­thing that has the breath of life, I have giv­en every green plant for food.’ And it was so. And God saw every­thing that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morn­ing, the sixth day. (Gen­e­sis 1:28–31)

The Lord God took the man and put him in the gar­den of Eden to work it and keep it. (Gen­e­sis 2:15)

God showed His love to man by entrust­ing him with the respon­si­bil­i­ty of using and admin­is­ter­ing what he received, not for self­ish aims, but for the ben­e­fit of the whole of mankind. For this pur­pose, God has equipped man with abil­i­ties to orga­nize, gov­ern, under­stand, assess, and inno­vate. How­ev­er, His aim is not that man should work inde­pen­dent­ly of Him, but that man should coop­er­ate with Him. Man’s prop­er response to God’s love is to faith­ful­ly do what is good, hon­our­ing Him and respect­ing His cre­ation. So it is also part of God’s plan that man uses his cre­ativ­i­ty for good things.

How­ev­er, man’s deci­sion for sin has brought the world into a fall­en state, where God is no longer giv­en the posi­tion He ought to have. Ego­tis­tic and evil inten­tions, which were for­mer­ly absent in God’s cre­ation, have become part of this world. Peo­ple pre­fer to act self­ish­ly than to seek the will of the right­eous God. This does not mean that man has become inca­pable of doing any­thing good. Man is still free to decide accord­ing to his con­science to do good deeds, even in a world formed by god­less­ness.

Because of this, judg­ing whether an inven­tion is good or bad may some­times seem com­plex. It may not always be easy to see a clear divid­ing line if we only con­sid­er the inven­tion itself. Let us take the exam­ple of a knife: it could be used to pre­pare a meal or to injure some­one. We see that the inten­tions and atti­tude of man play a great role in this mat­ter. They are the very things that count, the things of time­less impor­tance. And this is just what the Bible speaks about.

For the word of God is liv­ing and active, sharp­er than any two-edged sword, pierc­ing to the divi­sion of soul and of spir­it, of joints and of mar­row, and dis­cern­ing the thoughts and inten­tions of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

If God is giv­en the cen­tral place in our lives, He can help us dis­tin­guish good from evil accord­ing to the cir­cum­stances so that we may know how and whether to use what the world offers in order to serve the real aim in life. He shows us real, eter­nal val­ues we can hold on to, and helps us resist the temp­ta­tions and wicked­ness of this world. If we obey Him, He sets us free from the slav­ery and pres­sure of the world which is dri­ven by its self­ish aims. He wants to for­give us by cast­ing our sins far away if we come to Him with sin­cer­i­ty. God can do what tech­nol­o­gy can­not do: He can puri­fy our hearts and restore us to a life of love and peace with deep, long-last­ing rela­tion­ships. Our minds will then be no longer focused on tem­po­rary things.

…test every­thing; hold fast to what is good. Abstain from every form of evil. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:21–22)

6 Other things happening…

The exam­ples we gave focus on com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mul­ti­me­dia devices. We should bear in mind that there are many oth­er prod­ucts of man’s inno­va­tion that bring about neg­a­tive effects on mankind, prod­ucts which have become part of peo­ples’ lives. There are still oth­er impor­tant aspects we have not con­sid­ered such as the effects on the envi­ron­ment, health and human rights, which are beyond the scope of this arti­cle.

Nev­er­the­less, the fol­low­ing points are worth men­tion­ing: some neu­ro­sci­en­tists like Man­fred Spitzer³ and Adam Gaz­za­ley⁴ think that the cur­rent use of these mod­ern devices ham­pers chil­dren’s and young adults’ learn­ing progress because they encour­age mul­ti­task­ing and dis­cour­age deep thought and con­cen­tra­tion. The younger gen­er­a­tion have increas­ing­ly less regard for their teach­ers’ and par­ents’ author­i­ty since they can eas­i­ly become “wis­er” and more “knowl­edge­able” through search engines.

As for human rights, in many cas­es these elec­tron­ic devices which we may buy at rel­a­tive­ly low prices have been man­u­fac­tured under harsh or even inhu­mane work­ing con­di­tions. Being greedy for prof­it, man­u­fac­tur­ers have no scru­ples in tak­ing advan­tage of poor peo­ple in devel­op­ing coun­tries. Those des­per­ate to earn their dai­ly bread are ready to sub­mit to the demands of their unjust employ­ers who pres­sur­ize them for more per­for­mance in exchange for lit­tle pay and humil­i­at­ing treat­ment⁵.

7 Get to know how we overcame

Some of us were addict­ed to things men­tioned above in the past and have found the way out through Jesus. We would like to invite you to con­tact us to speak about how we can over­come them and share our expe­ri­ence and thoughts on this mat­ter.

Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gen­tle and low­ly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my bur­den is light. (Matthew 11:28–30)

1. You may be inter­est­ed in read­ing more about the val­ue of puri­ty in anoth­er arti­cle of ours in “The Val­ue of Puri­ty” ↩
2. More on this in our arti­cle “God is love” ↩
3. EHRENSTEIN, Clau­dia. Does The Inter­net Make You Dumb? Top Ger­man Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Says Yes — And For­ev­er. In: DIE WELT/Worldcrunch [online]. Pub­lished on 2012-09-12 14:01:16 [cit­ed 2013-07-16]. The orig­i­nal arti­cle pub­lished in Ger­man. Avail­able from SBS News: Does inter­net make you dumb?. ↩
4. GAZZALEY, Adam. How mobile tech can influ­ence our brain. In: CNN Our mobile soci­ety [online]. Sep­tem­ber 23, 2012; Updat­ed 1720 GMT (0120 HKT) [cit­ed 2013-07-16]. Avail­able from: CNN: How mobile tech can influ­ence our brain. ↩
5. Tes­ti­mo­ny to this can be found on the Inter­net, e.g. in: Chi­na Labor Watch ↩