Spirituality and technology, if personified and shut in a room together, would kill each other by staring contest to the exclusion of all bodily functions. Spirituality would stare with a high nose and higher consciousness. Technology would probably not think to do anything else but stare until commanded to do it. Neither would back down until they croaked.
And yet I love them both, so I will sit here until they either become exhausted or notice that I am watching them. At times, their fierce stares seem to waver into a warm desire to work together for humanity's benefit, and I worry about being discovered. But most of the time they glare. I don't even try to hide my voyeurism anymore. In fact, want some popcorn? I'm sitting down to replay some of my favorite techo-spirit clashes:
I. Moral Market Watch
Recently I heard a tv commercial for a Christian dating website. The tagline was “Let God choose the one for you.” No, thanks. What kind of matchmaker would the traditional Christian God be? Would He put down his lightning bolt and pick up a little black book? Would he read through that long survey about so many dimensions of your personality - for each person? Wouldn’t God already know the results of the survey? Then why have people fill out the survey?
And then how would you know which one God had chosen for you? Would an angel appear behind your date’s left shoulder some night at dinner and give a glowing thumbs up? Maybe there should be an app to show divine approval or disapproval of one potential partner or another. Given humans’ imperfect judgment, this would seem an important part of an online Christian dating package.
Yet why stop there. It would end the stare-down and curb a lot of fruitless debate if technology and spirituality could team up to communicate God’s commands directly. You send a text: “God, should I give my money to charity A this year? God responds: “Like.” You send a text: “God, I just used my position in high profile investing firm B to make a foolproof stock purchase.” God responds: “Dislike.” You: “Pancakes for dinner?” God: “Dislike.” Macaroni and cheese? “Like.”
All of the technological aid already available from apps, however, might also soon drive the almighty into the job market. Using apps, people can: discover their location in the wilderness (GPS), find estranged friends and family members (Classmates.com), learn about the eight wonders of the world (Wikipedia), sign petitions for marriage equality (Moveon.org), choose baby names (babynamewizard.com), experience revelation on a self-help forum (beliefnet.com), and light up their field of vision (with a flashlight capability built into the iPhone.) Apps seem to have the spiritual market cornered, and the stare-down continues.
Then again, maybe all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Maybe apps are holy little convenience-wells sent by a God of the future, dropped into phones from a golden stork that circles the world reciting prayers in all languages.
From what I’ve seen, I don't think so. I think spirituality and technology are engaged in a sweat-drenched battle for our dependence.
To prove it, let me tell you about a group of pioneering techno-nuns:
II. The Fall of Sister Francine
II. The Fall of Sister Francine
Once upon a time, there was a community of nuns living in perfect harmony with each other and their surrounding community. They made their own clothes, their own food, their own soap, their own shoes, their own jam, and their own joy. They even kept bees and sold honey to their neighbors.
Yet, as is true with all groups of high achievement and good repute, there was a tortured soul among them. Sister Francine kept an iPhone stored under her pillow at night. During the day it rested in her simple wooden desk’s drawer. The Abbess forbade all technology from the convent; the limitless information it provided would infect their sweet and humble ways with all the complications of modern life.
But Sister Francine couldn’t stop herself. After a silent community meal, she would go to her room and watch youtube videos on her phone with the volume turned off. She looked up the latest stock quotes in Tokyo. She browsed the app store for hours, downloading the best free ones she could find; if she didn’t pay, it wasn’t a sin.
Coincidentally - or perhaps not - one of the apps she downloaded provided medical information. For free, she got info about symptoms, current research, treatments, and emergency advice for most of the world’s biological ills. Coincidentally, Francine risked toting her phone to the garden one day. (The trailer for the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie had just come out.) Some said the Abbess had a heart attack before seeing the phone, others that it came directly after. None disputed that Francine’s app, which advised her to run inside, grab two aspirin, and throw them down the Abbess’ throat with water, saved the Abbess’ life.
Severe in both her discipline and her generosity, the Abbess then ordered that each of the nuns receive an iPhone. The local community, hearing the story of Francine’s app-enabled heroism, happily contributed to cover the cost of bringing the nuns into the modern age.
At first, it was beautiful - the nuns balanced their industriousness with the fun of phones that knew more than all of them combined. Some confused the “vibrate” setting with the conviction that a bee had wandered into their bedroom at times, but otherwise they were happier than they had ever been. The Abbess surveyed her beloved community thriving, and smiled at the fruits of being open to change.
Then Francine became troubled again. Her Sisters had slowly stopped smiling at each other - world news is “so depressing,” said Sister Ann. Sister Patty gave guests only half of a hug as they entered the monastery, too engrossed in Angry Birds to use both arms. The mittens knitted each year by Sister Nancy contained odd patterns, if you could call them patterns. Sister Holly left her phone out in the rain one night, and threw a cooking spoon toward Sister Natalie’s head when she found out it had stopped working. Sister Natalie forgave her. Worst of all, however, the Abbess had set up a profile on a Christian dating site, “just for kicks,” she said. Francine found a laptop abandoned in the prayer hall one day, and saw one AbbFabgrl7’s About Me section: “ROFL, chilling 24/7 w/ m sztrs 4 Life, FTW. IMHO, G*d is d gr8est & ppl r sinfell. OTOH, WWJD?”
Knowing that God would, if nothing else, be unable to understand all of the Abbess’ acronyms, and possibly think the sisters had all lost their Way and started typing in tongues, Francine resolved to return things to the way they were before. She told the others she was going into a season of deep ascetic prayer, bought a bunch of trail mix, and shut herself in her little room until she had developed a talking hologram of Jesus that would appear to the sisters during one of their communal meals. Eight months and three days later, the moment arrived at a Sunday evening silent meal.
The hologram came. It told them they had strayed. The sisters put down their phones. They listened. The impassioned Jesus figure continued on for minutes, citing scripture, referencing current events and recent natural disasters as signs of impending doom. He walked from table to table talking at length, and ended with a prayer for their return to their prior simplicity. Francine crossed her fingers as he faded while floating toward the ceiling in the center of the room.
Silence fell upon the room. More silence. More.
Sister Ruth broke the quiet, and encapsulated her community’s evolution to modern faith, in a simple statement: “Relax sisters. The real Jesus is my friend on facebook, and he looks nothing like that guy.”
