September is a month of tradition—of rote ceremony that we observe to mark the beginning of another fall. School has just begun or is beginning. The football season kicks off. And, reliably as clockwork, the folks at Cupertino unveil another Apple product to get gadget fans a-drooling.
I am, admittedly, one of those fans. Every tech-gizmo I own is stamped with that partly-eaten fruit. If they came out with an iCar, I might buy it. So when Apple unveiled a new watch—a stylish, customizable, do-everything doodad for your wrist—it jumped to the top of my 2015 Christmas list. It sounds like a marvelous bit of technology. With its map function, it can tell you where to go. With its Internet savvy, it can tell you what to do. You can buy your coffee with it (courtesy Apple Pay). You can even keep track of your heart rate (via built-in sensor).
Many pundits say the watch looks like the next big hit for a company that’s already had plenty. The iPod, iPhone and iPad revolutionized the way we think about tech, and this new gadget may foster another wave of articles comparing Apple to a religion. As Dr. Kirsten Bell of the University of British Columbia said in 2012, “A stranger observing one of the launches could probably be forgiven for thinking they had stumbled into a religious revival meeting.”
I don’t think anyone is going to erect a Church of Apple anytime soon, but I can’t completely wave away Bell’s thoughts. Statistics suggest that the United States is progressively becoming more secular: Fewer people go to church or claim to affiliate with any established religious sect. But I believe that most of us have an innate need to worship. To have faith in something. God, I’d argue, built in us a desire to seek Him, and it’s part of human nature to search for transcendency—even if we look in the wrong places at times. So where do religiously disinclined folks turn to when they look for that transcendence? That sense of wonder? I think some, unknowingly, turn to technology.
When you consider these miracles of modern tech we carry around in our pockets—and on our wrists—we find that they do, in some ways, try to address what we sometimes want God to be: a tool for us to use as we wish, or crutch in times of crisis. They listen to the cries of our heart and chirp, in that Siri-like voice, “How can I help you?”
And unlike the real God sometimes, our phones and pads and watches typically answer our questions in ways we can quickly comprehend.
Are we lost? Our gadgets can give us directions.
Do we long for answers? They can point us to Wikipedia.
Do we yearn for companionship? Why, Facebook’s right there with us.
Do we long for a God who has counted every hair on our head? To watch over us as He would every sparrow? Well, our phones don’t do that … but the Apple watch will count our every heartbeat and may, in the near future, notify a doctor if it detects something amiss.
Our gadgets know all about our secret desires and wayward predilections—but they don’t make us feel guilty or suggest that we should change our ways. They comfort us in our times of need. Indeed, as Bob Hoose mentioned earlier this week on this very blog, sometimes we’re unable to let go of these sources of comfort even for a few minutes.
In a way, we have created minor gods in our own image—gods to whom we sacrifice our time and treasure to, just as pagan cultures have always done. They are gods seemingly perfect for our self-centered, instant-gratification era.
‘Course, the problem with all of this is that a true God wouldn’t submit to being our tool. We’re meant to be His.
God can be frustratingly illusive. He doesn’t always answer our requests in the way we’d like. Sometimes, in truth, it doesn’t seem like He answers them at all. He’s a hard sell in the world of Apple. And when we dare ask what He’s done for us lately, He thunders back,
“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much. Who determined its dimensions and stretched out the surveying line? … “Who kept the sea inside its boundaries as it burst from the womb, and as I clothed it with clouds and wrapped it in thick darkness?”
I love that.
We live in an age where some turn to technology as a savior, to the Internet to answer all our ills. This is not a new inclination, of course: Every age makes its own tiny gods, or tries to make the real one fit in a pocket. The breadth and depth of our true God frightens us. Or, at least, it should.
This is a time of wonders—as marvelous and mysterious in its own way, perhaps, as the time of the Nephilim. But it’s also as transient. Apple itself teaches that very thing September after September, as it trots out a new gizmo to replace the old. For those who figuratively worship at the altar of Apple, they pray to disposable deities.
There is but one God who can truly answer our innermost questions, who loves us as His children, who stands unchanging in a universe that never stays still.
Recent Comments