This headline caught my attention as I leafed through my Sunday paper this past weekend. While my own computer and I are rather close, spending a pretty hefty portion of our days together, I hadn't really considered what an impact this staple of everyday life has had on our youngest community members. Apparently there is a considerable impact, a lasting influence we may want to redirect while we still have time.
This particular piece of technology is here to stay for a lot of good reasons. Teaching our children to respect computers as a tool, and educating them on how to work with them in productive ways, is important. But Lowell Manke, an associate professor of education at Whitenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, suggests that, " Kids ought to be digging in the ground and playing with dogs and listening to their grandparents tell stories. Computers take that time away from them." Another educator, Lucy Payne, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of St. Thomas, said, "I'm afraid if we keep pushing this technology, we're going to have a whole bunch of people who can do data entry, but nobody who can solve problems." Having managed a retail furniture store for a number of years, and struggled to train and coach many young employees in customer service problem solving, I hear these words of caution loud and clear.
My question is where does this leave us as people of faith? Do we still want to share our faith with our children? Or have we chosen a new god in technology, one to whom we are giving our children in the name of living in the modern world?
From Genesis forward the Bible communicates how God created us for community. The Lord's Prayer begins with the familiar words, "Our Father who art in heaven." Paul's letters to the early churches talk about early Christians as being brothers and sisters in Christ. Most specifically, we speak of the relationship we each have with God through Jesus Christ as the Son of God.
We also know, sooner than not, that relationships aren't always easy. Human beings aren't mass produced off of an assembly line. And while we share many similarities and we are all made up of the same basic components, we are individuals, we are unique and getting along with each other requires our understanding and acceptance of one another's humanity. If our young people's life experience is dominated by a point/click, cut/paste mentality, it is no wonder they have trouble making sense of the larger, richer worlds of feelings, communication and respect for personality quirks and differences.
It follows that understanding and living a life based in faith is likely an even more foreign concept. How do we then pass on our faith to this generation?
Basically, we have some things to think about. We carry a legacy of faith, passed down to us in trust, a heritage we want to give over to this next generation. How we do that needs to convey the truth of God's love and the integrity of the community that embodies that truth. Technology, computers especially, inform our society in ways of which we are not yet fully aware. But what we do know is that digging in the dirt teaches a child about God's planet, and keeps us grounded as well. Petting and playing with a dog evokes the blessings of joy and compassion in loving all of God's creatures. Old stories, from those who have them to tell, show us the way on our own journeys to come. We pass on our faith as we live it the way God intended, through relationships with other people. If we lose sight of that, or feel we don't have time, or think our children can get the same message reading Bible stories online, we are wrong. Reading the story of God's love and faithfulness off a computer screen is not the same as living that story among God's people now.
Computers are machines designed to make our lives easier, tools that can be applied in numerous creative and practical ways. People are designed to interact with each other, to nurture each other and simply, to love each other. We are the conduits of community and the most important way to pass on this legacy of faith.