This is the first part in my series on 5 life lessons that I learned from Labor Day weekend in 2005, while volunteering with efforts after Hurricane Katrina.
On that Monday and Tuesday I served in a temporary data center for a 6,000 person shelter that had been setup at the River Centre in Baton Rouge, LA. As a computer guru and web application developer, I knew that a few technology tweaks could make this data processing much more useful. It was frustrating to be there and know that something better could be done.
Then on the drive back to Illinois on Wednesday, we were listening to a Steel on Steel podcast and they were talking about how technology could possibly solve our oil shortage. I was like, “Yeah… technology can solve any problem.”
Then, suddenly, I realized what I was saying. I really did tend to think that technology can fix any problem. Technology is amazing. It can solve starvation, resource scarcity, data analysis, recovery from natural disasters, etc. It can literally save people. Or can it? Can technology fix all our problems? I sure tend to think it can if we can just wrap our minds around a solution.
I realized that much of the time I look to technology to fix us, instead of God. The world’s core problems can only be solved by God. My deepest problems can only be made right by God’s miraculous touch.
If I don’t watch myself, I start to worship technology, rather than the one who created order to our world and gave us the left and right parts of our brains in order to develop and apply technology to our worlds.
Lord, help me to rely only on you and realize daily that technology is something you created for us to use to glorify you.
How do you tend to worship technology? What else do you worship instead of God? Politics? Wealth?