{"id":1446,"date":"2023-03-19T06:20:57","date_gmt":"2023-03-19T13:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/insideourgooeyminds\/?p=1446"},"modified":"2023-03-19T06:20:57","modified_gmt":"2023-03-19T13:20:57","slug":"technology-and-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/insideourgooeyminds\/2023\/03\/technology-and-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology is a Fickle Mistress"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1455\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1455\" style=\"width: 225px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-1455 size-medium\" title=\"Williams\/williams\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/1451\/2023\/02\/glasses-on-keyboard-225x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\"><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1455\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Technology is fickle<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">TECHNOLOGY IS SUCH A MISTRESS!<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>I am sitting here writing to you because the <em>Teams\u00a0<\/em>meeting for Patheos is having technical difficulties. Of course, it is begging for me to write about it. How technology has helped and maybe even hurt us, our faith, or source of information. We live with these issues every day.<\/p>\n<h3>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Apollo was a fun time<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Remember when the Apollo missions worked their way to the moon? Even the Gemini missions before them? They had video! Remember also at the same time we had phones called<em> Trimlines<\/em> hanging on the wall in the kitchen. It was considered a <em>portable<\/em> phone because it had a twenty-five-foot cord. You could walk anywhere in the kitchen with your phone, sometimes even down part of the hall. Why would you have to go outside with your phone?<\/p>\n<p>Today, with the smartphones we have, the phones we mostly carry, we could fly those missions just by down loading an app. We would probably call it \u2018The Mission to Moon\u2019 app. The computer in the phone is more powerful than the room size computers used by those missions. Neil Armstrong and I could have the ultimate Face Time call.<\/p>\n<h3>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">How far have we come<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>That\u2019s how far we\u2019ve come.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s wonderful.<\/p>\n<p>Unless that becomes our drive. If that becomes our core method how we now do life, if the focus on the tool is more important that the message itself, we might have a problem.<\/p>\n<p>I haven\u2019t pulled my Bible out of my drawer in, well, years. The computer on my phone is bigger better faster than the book I hold. I can read it in the NIV or in Greek. All while sitting in the back row of the church. I now don\u2019t even need to go to church. I can watch it, especially after COVID, I can watch it from my back porch-in my jammies-with a cup of coffee. Why go to church? I can get what I need right here, right?<\/p>\n<h3>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">We need to be careful<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>We need to be careful. I NEED to be careful.<\/p>\n<p>I can get easily distracted and \u2018turtle\u2019 my life. Especially being a \u2018retired widower.\u2019 We all can stay alone and inside and do things, go places completely alone. Problem is, that isn\u2019t what God wants me to do. He wants me out there and talking to people, especially at this point in my life. Apparently, at this point in my life, I have something other people want to hear or learn from. There really is not replacement for human contact. And when you add a level of maturity to that, well, its something. The one thing the Evil One wants us to do is not gather together. He loves it when we are alone. Easy pickings for him to mess with. Especially if we are not around some older guy or gal who has been around the block a few times and give counsel to that young and up coming individual. This ain\u2019t our first rodeo as the saying goes.<\/p>\n<h3>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Our society\u2026.<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Our society use to be one where the entire town came together at church, or temple, or synagogue. We would meet for the county fair, and barn dances. Then life started to get busy and it has led to today. It\u2019s been slow. Evil has all the time in the world. He will wait for us until there is that time, evil can fall on us. It\u2019s kind of like the old story about putting a frog in a pot of water, then turning on the fire under it. The frog doesn\u2019t try to jump out until it\u2019s too late, not realizing it is too hot until its, well, too late.<\/p>\n<p>So, what does that mean? What can I do? I am sitting here typing on a computer which could have controlled all the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, probably at the same time. I can talk to a box and they turn the lights on, start my car. My house gets vacuumed by something that looks like a frisbee.<\/p>\n<p>Pray.<\/p>\n<h3>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<span style=\"color: #0000ff;\">Simply pray<\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Simply pray.<\/p>\n<p>It is how God loves us to communicate with Him. We talk to Him. That is prayer. All of a sudden, we are in discussions and conversations with the God of the Universe. Oh, and we are His kid. Sometimes we just need to be reminded of that. We just need to be told who we really are.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/insideourgooeyminds\/about\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">About \u2013 Inside Our Gooey Minds (patheos.com)<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.markjwilliams.com\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Home (markjwilliams.com)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How technology has helped and maybe even hurt us, our faith, or source of information. We live with these issues every day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4610,"featured_media":1455,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[300,242,400,1],"tags":[561,558,555],"class_list":["post-1446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engaging-with-god","category-fear","category-god-conquer-fear","category-uncategorized","tag-technology-and-god","tag-technology-in-our-life","tag-technology-is-fickle"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Technology is a Fickle Mistress Technology can be a fickle mistress<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How technology has helped and maybe even hurt us, our faith, or source of information. We live with these issues every day. 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