They may be keeping us from knowing each other
October 8, 2009 (Thursday)
Ricky Skaggs sings “A Simple Life.” His song sounds like someone living a basic existence in a cabin out on the prairie until the last verse: “Cell phone when my old car dies, The Internet to show me where, GPS to get me there, Everywhere there’s satellites, Oh, I live a simple life.”
His song reveals great insight on his part. We are the beneficiaries of technology in every corner of our lives. We don’t drive Model T’s anymore; now we drive vehicles that are controlled by a computer. We never see the computer in our car, but it’s there. Look at your watch. ‘what time is it? Chances are very high that something in your timepiece is made up of solid state parts. As the song says, we have cell phones, depend on GPS data and rely daily on satellites, mostly without even knowing it. We live in an age of technology.
In the process, however, we are losing personal contact with people. Folks used to know their neighbors who lived a mile down the road, but today they don’t know who lives behind the door to the apartment next to theirs. Air conditioning has sealed us up in our caves, and communications devices relay news of the outside world, which we watch in living color with stereo sound. Oh, we live in a technological age, all right.
We simply must take control of our lives and do whatever is necessary to know one another better so that we can love one another. “A new commandment I give you,” said Jesus, “that you love one another as I have loved you.” Whatever else that may mean, it means he loved us face to face.