Congratulations on reading this first sentence—you have moved past the title! Not everyone who receives our publications takes the time to read them, but apparently you do! New technologies excite and fascinate us, but as I have mentioned from time to time, they also change us—and in ways that we do not always recognize or that are for our good.
Over the last generation, our world has turned more to visual images and sound and away from reading and writing. Radios changed how we received news and how we were entertained, as families huddled around console radios listening to their favorite dramas and comedy programs. One of them went down in history.
On Halloween morning, 1938, Orson Welles awoke to find himself the most talked about man in America. The night before, Welles and his Mercury Theatre on the Air had performed a radio adaptation of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, converting the 40-year-old novel into fake news bulletins describing a Martian invasion of New Jersey. Some listeners mistook those bulletins for the real thing, and their anxious phone calls to police, newspaper offices, and radio stations convinced many journalists that the show had caused nationwide hysteria. By the next morning, the 23-year-old Welles’s face and name were on the front pages of newspapers coast-to-coast, along with headlines about the mass panic his CBS broadcast had allegedly inspired (“The Infamous ‘War of the Worlds’ Radio Broadcast Was a Magnificent Fluke,” Smithsonian Magazine, May 6, 2015).
We may laugh today, but it was no laughing matter to millions at the time. With radio we have to fill in mental images, but movies and television do that for us. With the rise of television, everything from sitcoms to dramas, from sporting events to wars, was brought into our living rooms. No longer did we need to travel away from home to cheer modern gladiators in the Coliseum.
Computers and smartphones continue the trend away from reading, serious analysis, and mental acuity. It is all laid out for us in headlines, sound bites, and pictures. Entertaining? Yes, but at what price? And that brings me to what you are doing right now—reading.
The Need for Focus
Serious reading is giving way to fast-paced visual images and headlines from increasingly suspect sources. While a newspaper opinion page may present two sides of an issue, social media now force-feeds us what an impersonal algorithm thinks we are interested in, whether it is good for us or not. Media executives want to keep us engaged on their platform or device for as long as they can, to promote more money-making ads. These programmed algorithms care nothing for truth or for what is good. We are merely subjects for marketing.
Dear brethren, we must understand how these technologies are transforming us day by day and year by year. They are changing the way we receive information, though it all appears so innocent. Yet most of us believe we are immune to the problem. It doesn’t affect me, many think. But consider which we find easier: To read the Bible, a booklet, or an article—or to watch a Whiteboard, a Viewpoint, or even a sermon? Human beings will, by nature, take the easy course when given a choice. And, for almost all of us, it is easier to watch or listen to something than to sit down, read an article, and actually put forth the effort to look up the scriptures it cites. Or am I merely projecting my own weaknesses onto you? I doubt it.
This is not God’s world but Satan’s, and he directs its course. He subtly turns whatever might be used for good into something used to destroy. We are swimming in his world, and his leaven is everywhere. We must therefore evaluate how these technologies are changing the ways we think and act, as they surely are. Leading up to and during the Days of Unleavened Bread, the question must be asked and honestly answered: “Is it for my good or not?”
We continue to produce new telecasts, Whiteboards, and Viewpoints, and we hope that all of you will keep up with them as you are able so that you remain invested in how God is working through His Church. Frankly, though, these visual presentations are primarily geared toward an outside audience in an attempt to reach them where they are. Our hope is that our audience will progress to more serious study—reading the Bible, our articles, and our booklets.
Even our audio and video sermons may contribute to laziness. It is one thing to listen to something as we go about our business—mowing the lawn or doing dishes while wearing our earbuds—but quite another to sit down with the Bible and look up the cited scriptures. Please do not misunderstand: Many of us do listen to sermons while relaxing or doing chores, and there is nothing inherently wrong with that. At the same time, I hope that we do not consider that to be of the same worth as giving a sermon our full attention with a Bible open.
It is easy to go through a day occupied with busywork. As many of us know, controlling the amount of time we spend on receiving and answering email and texts can be a daunting task. It is only too easy to open up our messages and spend literal hours on them. Yes, we were busy, but what did we truly produce?
The same is true with our spiritual life. It is easy to be busy, but how much growth takes place? Do we listen to audio files or watch video programs to make ourselves feel as though we are checking a box, when the quality of our efforts is lower than it could be? And, if we do read, do we engage in thoughtful contemplation to learn from what we have read?
We Must Do Our Part
I am not throwing stones at any of you—I mention these things primarily because I see how easy it is for me to deceive myself, and I am striving to help all of us see how Satan is directing the course of this world and how none of us are immune to his devices. He takes things that are good and turns them into instruments of destruction. That is what he is—a destroyer.
There was an article in the previous Living Church News issue titled “Why the Church?” Understanding that topic is crucial for us. When Mr. Herbert Armstrong told Worldwide Church of God members that he thought as many as half of them did not get it—and later that he thought only 10 percent of us got it—he knew what he was talking about. History tells us that his estimate of only 10 percent was closer to the truth. That means almost 90 percent did not get it!
Human nature does not change—apart from God’s Spirit working in us. We all want to believe we have God’s Spirit, and that is likely the case, but simply having God’s Spirit is a different matter from stirring it up daily. How many thousands in the Worldwide Church of God thought they “got it”? We are saved by grace—God’s unearned pardon—but we must also do our part.
Thankfully, God looks at our efforts, not just our total accomplishments. He knows our frame—read Psalm 103. We all fall short in many ways, and I do not write this to put anyone on a guilt trip or to contribute to the idea that you may not make it. What I am trying to express is that we cannot allow our current technological world to control us; we must control it. Use it, yes. Let it direct our steps, no.
Satan wants us to become spiritually lazy so he can control us. It is up to us, with God’s help, to overcome our naturally lazy tendencies. We must learn to think, to analyze—and to do so means we must learn to exercise self-control. We must never lose sight of the big picture.