"Technology is great..."

It's funny to watch people when their electronics fail. People always feel a compulsion to say to me "Technology's great when it works." Why they say this to me, I don't know. Maybe it's because until recently, I constantly had a computer in my back pocket, and I've got enough tech-geekery to save my church an occasional $80/hour in calls to Computer Doctor, so they think I need a reality check or something.

But what they're talking about isn't "technology." Technology is the -ology, the knowledge, of techne (craft), of ways to do things which are theoretically better, more efficient. When the sound system went down at a conference I was at last month (which negated our ability to hear the slight-voiced speaker we were enjoying), some wag quipped that if Jesus had preached the Sermon on the Mount with a sound system, we'd have been more concerned with the technology than with the message. But Jesus was using technology, at least the technology of His day. He was using the technology of the natural acoustics of the local geography as an amplifier. He was using the technology of public speaking, which is far more efficient than repeating the same message to 5000 people one at a time. And then some one used a really hi-tech thing called writing (which only certain Information Technology specialists, called scribes, were fluent in), to amplify that message so that millions upon millions could interact with it.

Technology is a helper to communication. Some of it is easier to maintain (especially that which has had centuries to be perfected, like paper), more reliable (like a mountainside), but it's all technology. Roman roads, papyrus and ink, the Greek language, were the technology of mass communication in their day, which carried the Gospel message across the known world. Email, internet, cell phones, even radio, are all still maturing. Give them time. They're already, in their imperfection, spreading the Word to corners Roman roads never reached. And they remind us that God chooses to use the imperfect things of this world (like us) to do His work.

And next time someone says to you that technology;'s great when it works, ask them when's the last time their pencil broke. We're still perfecting that one too! : )

Look, ma! Actual content!!

OK, I've decided that I've been making this whole blog thing too big of a deal, and I just need to write. Quit worrying about audience, quit fussing with "theme", and just write. Merlin Mann writes "Remember that your blog is only incidentally a publishing system or a public website. At its heart, your blog represents the evolving expression of your most passionately held ideas." (from 43 Folders) So I'm gonna do just that.

So bear with me, folks. The ride may get bumpy, but well, it'll be fun. At least for me, anyway! : )

Why "Asking Good Questions?"

I was watching "Contact" this morning. Fabulous movie, written by a man I loathed 9 years ago. But that's not the point. As Ellie and Palmer are talking after their first "romantic" encounter, and Palmer is telling her about His passion for God, Ellie recalls attending Sunday School as a child. She would ask tons of questions, hard questions, lesson-stopping questions that break up the carefully crafted moment the teacher had prepared. Questions like "Where did Mrs Cain come from?" The pastor eventually contacted her father, and asked him to stop bringing her, because she was "disrupting" the Sunday School. As she said this, I uttered a word which is not fit for print. That teacher had betrayed their calling.

Ironically, the reason I loathed Carl Sagan, the author of Contact and Demon Haunted World, was because the latter book made me question my faith. Put me in a three-month tail-spin, actually. Yet it is the very ability to question that allows us to learn and grow.

Most of us church people don't like questions. We fear that if we can't answer, then it means God doesn't have the answer, or can't answer, and so we cast aside those who ask good questions.

But my God is bigger than my questions. We fear that questioning God is heresy, the kind of thing that gets you struck by lightning or something, We point to stories in the Bible (somewhere) in which people who test God are killed.

But then there's the honest seeker. Gideon. He questions God not out of arrogance, but submission and humility. And God honors him with a sign. And that's the difference. Not approaching God in arrogance and pride, thinking our questions void His existence, or that we are owed an answer, but in humility and honest seeking, knowing that the Answer to all good questions will lead us into truth, if we will let Him.

So don't fear the questions. Ask them. Not to me, per se, though I'll be glad to ask them with you. Let's join together, and take them to God. Be willing to live in the tension of not-knowing-and-yet-still-believing. And trust that even if we don't get to know the answers, our questions will still lead us to the Answer.

May God bless our humble questioning, remove our pretense, and bring us into honest truth. Amen.