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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Carseat Theology: Technology and God

My oldest son, age 7, and I often have interesting discussions about God and religion while driving. On Friday, as we were driving home from his chess club, he called out from the back seat, "I wish God would speak to us today, but I know He's very busy with so many people dying," "What's He busy doing?" I asked. "Getting heaven ready for all those people" my son replied.

We then began a chat about what my son wanted to talk to God about. And what I learned is this: he's looking for high tech solutions to more efficiently save mankind. He believes we could use an update from God about how to add more people to the church. Apparently, VBS, mission trips, and door knocking are "so yesterday," as he's begun saying. Technology is tricky. On the one hand, people embrace it as a way to share their faith to a broader audience, by using the Internet, for example. On the other hand, the Internet allows us access to a wide range of resources and viewpoints we never might have considered before, challenging our faith. There are so many aspects of technology we could contemplate. What do you think? Does technology help or hinder Christianity? Or is it a wash?

I'll leave you with my son's high tech solution:

"If God could speak to you today, what would you like Him to say?"

"I would like Him to tell us more about how to build the church. Like, he could tell me to invent a box for people to go in where a robot dunks them in the water (baptism). They could sign a form to go in the box. And if they don't have time to go to the box, they could sign a form and the box would just appear in their life and they could get dunked."

"Why would they be too busy to go to the box?"

"Well, in the future, everyone will be fat, like on that movie (WALL-E), so they'll be at the gym alot."

I don't know, would this increase the number of Christians? Sounds a bit scary to me :) However, it would be efficient and the robots would certainly appeal to many young boys!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, great post. I needed that this Monday morning.

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  2. Last week Arni at I think I believe had a post on technology and atheism.

    It is always interesting to peer down into a child's viewpoint of the world. I'm sure it must be difficult for you to have these conversations while in doubt.

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