Imagine that you were living back in the B.C. times. You wanted to find out how a family member was doing in a distant village, let's say about 150 miles away. What are your options for being in touch with that person? Pretty much, you have two options. You can travel there yourself, or you can write a letter (assuming you are one of the literate people of the time). Those are pretty much your options.
Now contrast that with today. If you want to get in touch with the person on the floor above you, you can do any of the following: call them on their landline, call them on their cellphone, text message them, email them, facebook them, walk upstairs to see them, or have a memo sent to them. So many more options to communicate with others today than some 2,000 years ago.
The ability to communicate well and rapidly has changed the world. Think of it from this perspective. If you had to write a letter, and that was your only real means of communication with someone far away, you would probably take your time to write out what you are thinking. You'd make sure that you used appropriate words to convey what you wanted to say, perhaps thinking them through before you put them down on paper (after all, no erasers yet!). You would probably add anything extra in that you could, since it might be some time before you wrote another one, or when you would hear back from this person.
Again, contrast that with today. How many times have you sent off an email or a message to someone, and then a few minutes later, realized that you forgot to include something? So you easily sent off another message. Or how many times did you quickly write something out, only to have the other person misunderstand what you said because you didn't take a great deal of care in choosing your words?
I would imagine that most Christians would look at communication technology and say that it is a good thing. I would heartily agree with them. One of the things, however, that I see as a weakness with this rapid ability to communicate is that we tend to give less thought and care to the words we use. And that can have some fairly dramatic impact.
Communications technology is a very useful thing for sharing our faith and growing in our faith. Just think, you can email your pastor or someone who can help you answer a question about your faith and get an answer back fairly quickly. That's a good thing. But then, also think about this. You get upset at someone who shares your faith with you, and rather than waiting for things to cool down, you zip off an email to them to explain how upset you are and why. They receive it, perhaps misunderstanding a few things you say, and suddenly the situation is worse. Now a lot more hurt feelings and matters of forgiveness need to be dealt with.
One other thing that I can see as dangerous with our current communications technology is that it has greatly impacted our ability to actually talk to people face to face. I see it happen where people get so used to zipping off a brief idea or two that they lose the ability to relate to people beyond a mere idea or two. Just think about the impact that this can have when we Christians start to lose our ability to talk with and interact with one another.
I am a huge proponent of communications technology. I do also think that we all would be better served by, at times, slowing ourselves down and thinking about how this technology impacts our lives and our faith.
Now contrast that with today. If you want to get in touch with the person on the floor above you, you can do any of the following: call them on their landline, call them on their cellphone, text message them, email them, facebook them, walk upstairs to see them, or have a memo sent to them. So many more options to communicate with others today than some 2,000 years ago.
The ability to communicate well and rapidly has changed the world. Think of it from this perspective. If you had to write a letter, and that was your only real means of communication with someone far away, you would probably take your time to write out what you are thinking. You'd make sure that you used appropriate words to convey what you wanted to say, perhaps thinking them through before you put them down on paper (after all, no erasers yet!). You would probably add anything extra in that you could, since it might be some time before you wrote another one, or when you would hear back from this person.
Again, contrast that with today. How many times have you sent off an email or a message to someone, and then a few minutes later, realized that you forgot to include something? So you easily sent off another message. Or how many times did you quickly write something out, only to have the other person misunderstand what you said because you didn't take a great deal of care in choosing your words?
I would imagine that most Christians would look at communication technology and say that it is a good thing. I would heartily agree with them. One of the things, however, that I see as a weakness with this rapid ability to communicate is that we tend to give less thought and care to the words we use. And that can have some fairly dramatic impact.
Communications technology is a very useful thing for sharing our faith and growing in our faith. Just think, you can email your pastor or someone who can help you answer a question about your faith and get an answer back fairly quickly. That's a good thing. But then, also think about this. You get upset at someone who shares your faith with you, and rather than waiting for things to cool down, you zip off an email to them to explain how upset you are and why. They receive it, perhaps misunderstanding a few things you say, and suddenly the situation is worse. Now a lot more hurt feelings and matters of forgiveness need to be dealt with.
One other thing that I can see as dangerous with our current communications technology is that it has greatly impacted our ability to actually talk to people face to face. I see it happen where people get so used to zipping off a brief idea or two that they lose the ability to relate to people beyond a mere idea or two. Just think about the impact that this can have when we Christians start to lose our ability to talk with and interact with one another.
I am a huge proponent of communications technology. I do also think that we all would be better served by, at times, slowing ourselves down and thinking about how this technology impacts our lives and our faith.
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