Slave Drivers

Blogger Tim Challies recently posted about technology. It was picked by by Breathe, a network of Christians looking at how we can live more simply in our hectic Western world.

It is an excellent article, highlighting how technology designed to be our helper has in fact become our slave driver. The ubiquitous mobile phone, small enough to fit in your pocket, calls for our attention, our desire, our life, leaving us short when it comes to living real life.

Tim is absolutely right to point out that it is not the technology itself that is bad, just the way we relate to it. He does not advocate a mass trashing of mobiles, but says that ultimately we must be self-disciplined in our usage.

Paul talks in Romans of slavery. It forms a strong image of how we can become tied up, unable to break free. Paul goes on to explain that in Christ we can be set free, things can be restored to their proper role, their correct perspectives. From then on, it becomes a question of who or what we give ourselves to.

Maybe, from a mission perspective, mobiles thus become useful again: as an illustration of how easily we humans can become snared in something which, in theory at least, should have been be all good.