A healing link

The Very Rev Albert Bogle explains why the Church needs to promote secure online environments.

MOBILE phones are becoming an extension of ourselves.

There is so much of our identity now stored in these devices. We can store pictures that record memorable moments of our lives. We can manipulate images to remove someone from a photograph in order to rewrite history, or perhaps to recreate a different narrative for future generations.

We can join discussions, select a selfie and reach out to others. Using texts, we can weave together a conversation and add to the info by using Google, and appear pretty knowledgeable. We can do our banking, book appointments, pay bills, and keep our diary. Our phone can tell us when to go to bed and when to rise.

It will be no surprise to learn that over 60% of those who read the bible, and join in live daily prayer gatherings on Sanctuary First do so using their mobile phones.

It would seem we are destined to live with our phones in hand.

The problem is that we appear to be addicted to our mobile phones and it would seem that we don’t know whether we should love them or hate them. Perhaps we will better understand our smartphone dilemma when we begin to understand ourselves better and admit that we have a bias to sin. Now sin is a topic we don’t want to talk about.

Melvin Kranzberg may not be a name known to many people, however he was a professor of the history of technology and he wrote six laws of technology that still apply today. His first law says: “Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

Here in this first law he sets out knowingly or unknowingly the problem of the human dilemma when he states ‘nor is it neutral’. The apostle Paul describes our dilemma very clearly (Romans 7: 19, 20) I particularly like the King James Version which has a memorable poetic ring to it :

“For the good that I would, I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. Now if I do that I would not, it is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with me.”

Paul goes on to express a prayer of gratitude that it is Christ alive in us by the power of the Holy Spirit that gives us the power to resist evil.

So if technology is neither good nor bad, does the problem not lie within the human heart? You might say technology including the mobile phone is like a mirror, a communication device that reflects back to us what is going on in our hearts. The hurtful text messages, that have a devasting effect on the young, the misinformation, the fake news, the scams, while all conveyed by the technology are created by humans and conceived out of the human heart.

This is the reason why we as Christians must not shrink from speaking out, we need to promote the need for secure environments online. The church must be one of the counter-cultural information providers offering a message of hope and truth in the midst of a culture where your truth need never be verified. However, living with perpetual doubt and lies will eventually lead to self-destruction. For the Christian the truth of the text message we share has its verification, not in arguments and debates, but in the lives we live. Your mobile phone is a link that can offer help, support, and healing, to many. ¤

Why not link a friend into Sanctuary First a secure online environment. www.sanctuaryfirst.org.uk