Standing in the seventh floor of a massive building which houses the controls and operations of a large telephone company, I could not help looking around and snooping into the staggering amount of electronic equipment and looking at the millions of meters of cables running all over the place.
And as I looked a this mammoth operation which is just a portion of the controls required to operate all of the telephones this company handles, I could but reflect on what it involves to live in our society today.
Just over a hundred years ago if we needed to talk to someone we would just go visit him, or in the cases of people separated by great distances, they would write a letter, which would take from days to months to reach the person in the other end depending on his or her location.
Today if I want to see my family I turn on my computer and call them, and in an instant I can speak with any of them and see them. In fact video conversation has become the thing of the day, and many communication companies are already offering the services which allow you to talk to anyone in the other side of the globe through your television set as if you both were sitting in the same room.
I just got me a new cell phone a few days ago, and I got the same unit for my wife, and as we played with them yesterday we realize we can make video calls, so we spent some time calling each other for not particular reason, so we could play with our new toys and see each other while we talked on the phone.
And this is all wonderful, for technology has brought us closer, closer to our families and friends and closer to the world, I have been recently talking to families and friends whom I had not seen for decades, and I manage to minister to several people all over the world on a daily basis thanks to the power of technology. The distance barrier is broken, communication has reached gigantic milestones, and, if the Lord tarries, I still believe it will continue to grow to the point of anyone being able to literally be in the same room on a moment’s notice with someone else sitting across the planet through virtual holographic imagery.
These great advances in technology have affected our thought patterns, our attitudes and our behavior, although we may not realize it in the onset. But how have they affected our identity? And most importantly, how have they affected the kingdom of God? And what price, if any are we paying for all of these advances, what are the consequences?
I remember as a child I used to play telephone with my friends by attaching two cans to a string, at that time it never occurred to me that it would be necessary to equip several large buildings with a gigantic infrastructure and thousands of electronic gadgets, and to spend many billions of dollars in operations, just to talk through a string.
On a large scale, we have built our society around it, and we have become enslaved by the usefulness and convenience of technology, especially communication technology. We have become dependent on technology to such an extent, that we are no longer able to perform if we do not have it around us. Even as we go on vacation, or to a place of relaxation, we carry with us the computer and the cell phone and many other gadgets which hold an invisible string to which we are attached.
These advances have certainly allowed us to accomplish many positive things for the spread of the gospel; we can do today, in one day, what took months and even years to do just a few decades ago.
And many regions which were unreachable just a few years ago are today connected and hearing the word of God through radio or television or many other means which were not available then.
Yet this trend has caused a loss of innocence around the Kingdom of God. The availability of so many resources so quickly, has overwhelmed the world and it has brought the moral standards of man to dangerous levels of decay. This deterioration has slowly and unavoidably affected the brethren. Like a virus the negative influences of this realm of illusion has penetrated the church, and through a constant attack on the will of the individual, especially the young, which is being continuously bombarded by sexual and covetous innuendos it has brought less than desirable changes in the way many Christian gatherings and organizations go about doing what God has called them to do.
We hear it on the radios we see it on television, we smell it on the streets, there are banners everywhere announcing a myriad of erotic products to make you beautiful, intelligent, desirable, protected, effective. Books, videos, music, the internet, everything that surround us today is being utilized as a mean to influence the mind of the individual through communication, a constant influx of dirt that with the excuse of making us “modern” have made us amoral, almost inhuman
And we see with disdain how not only the world at large but our world has been influenced. How the church of Christ Jesus has bought into it. We find our pews filled with girls wearing clothing which are so revealing, that they may as well be naked, boys wearing trashy fashions which make them look dumb and irresponsible, our vocabulary has been permanently destroyed by expressions which derogate our values. Our leisure activities are rarely related to building character or growing in Christ, they tend each day more towards being more like the world and less like the Kingdom of God.
And more each day of the new generations are practicing a Christianity which is far from Christian.
Technology has given us great advantages and many positive things have been accomplished through it, but Satan never sleeps, and he has slowly and smoothly slipped into the body of Christ through technology a purely deceptive version of the gospel.
Only a blind person would not see it. And many will call me antiquated and a few other names for thinking this way, yet the Bible continues to be the only true inerrant word of the living God, and the Bible speaks clearly of these matters.
Technology is not necessarily at fault for the decay of the moral fabrics of man, though it has obviously accelerated its process, and it has with it brought us closer to the end as prophesied in the Bible.
Satan has tweaked technology to spread the knowledge and practice of evil, to such extremes, that the world condones it and practices it and even promotes it matter-of-factly.
The children of God on the other hand have been mostly sleeping through this revolution of communication, and while the Lord calls us to be innocent as doves and shrewd as snakes (Matthew 10:16) and while He calls us to be wise in a world of fools, we have not been tapping into that God given wisdom which we all possess.
It is not too late, let us be the salt of the world. And you will say I am too insignificant to do anything. The Lord would respond to that; no child of God is insignificant, and every bit of effort added to the total will cause a giant wave, a Spiritual explosion leading to reformation, to restoration and to evangelism.
We all have the gift, so do something with yours, the tools you need are available all around you, so do, speak, act, contribute, be significant for the Lord.
He has already won the war for us, so let us win a few battles for Him.
Rev. Jose Antonio Luna
A servant of Christ Jesus.
achsan uddin