Don't take your iPod to church? You've got to be kidding me!

One of my e-maginary friends posted a link to this article titled, "Don't Take Your iPod to Church" in which the author begins an attempt to persuade us that using that type of technology- an electronic Bible- is somehow morally questionable.

Is he freaking out of his mind? In a follow up post, he chides

I offer special thanks to people who offered such incisive, head-in-the-sand feedback as this: “Maybe @challies should worry about people who don’t bring any type of Bible to church instead of chiding technology” or “Why don’t we just go back to scrolls and the original languages, while we’re at it?” I guess it’s not worth responding to some comments.

His thesis statement (buried in the 3rd or 4th paragraph- why do preachers have such long, windy introductions?) seems to be "A trend we see today through today’s digital technology is the exaltation of this kind of knowledge, cold facts, at the expense of more intimate knowledge. This is true, I’m convinced, when we take our iPods to church." He restates it in his conclusion, "Yet at the same time it may just be changing how we understand, perceive and gather information. We must exercise great caution that we do not lose knowledge of with our newfound ability to find knowledge about."

To really get into the meat of this guy's persuasive argument, one must go to his third article on the subject:

In a previous article I introduced Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman and their contribution to my thinking on technology. From McLuhan we learn that we cannot neatly separate the medium from the message and from Postman, an interpreter of McLuhan, we learn that every medium carries with it some kind of a worldview—that every medium carries with it “a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value one thing more than another, to amplify one sense or skill or attitude more loudly than another.” Also from Postman we learn the simple truth that “a technology does what it was created to do.” Over time we will learn what it is that a technology was created to do; rarely do we know in advance how a technology will play out. We tend to be immediately positive about technological innovation, but from these two men we learn that there ought to be a certain caution, a hesitation that causes us to look before we leap, to think before we wholeheartedly embrace a new technology—like reading the Bible on an iPod.

So let’s look today at why reading the Bible on an iPod is not the same as reading it in print.

He goes on to argue that digital media is inherently non-linear and inherently interactive. That God had Scripture committed to books (and before that scrolls and before that memory)." This takes me back to the guy's comment above about "let's go back to scrolls." Scrolls are obviously more linear than books! For the record, books are also interactive- between the author and the reader, and then the reader usually takes it then to a book discussion group or even just conversation with another. Strangely, the author is using a digital, non-linear (you can't even bring up the articles in linear form to read them from top to bottom) and interactive medium to put forth this (flat) argument. He even says "But through it all I’m seeing some great discussion and am being asked lots of interesting questions." So does he want linear and non-interactive, or not?

I will continue to take my iPhone to church. I like having 100 Bible translations available to me without having to carry 100 books. I like having my notebook there where I can't lose it, and I can search it by keyword. I like being able to open up my notes and have my Scripture there, to reference when I come here to blog about what God is speaking into my life.