Plundering the Postman
by Rick Saenz, a friend and, ironically, computer geek

Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves To Death is a highly valued book around the Highlands Study Center. It has spurred us to jettison broadcast television, and to critically examine our dependence on mass media. The central message of the book "that public discourse has become entertainment, making us a silly and trivial culture" is one we apply with gusto to the broad evangelical church, using it to highlight the dangers inherent in turning worship into an entertainment.

But revisiting that topic here would be too easy; I might as well ask the editor for a small barrel, a large fish, and a .44 Magnum (all of which, I'm sure, he could supply). Worse, the target would be much too much them and not nearly enough us. Neil Postman has other things to tell the church, a few of which may have the power to interrupt our own dogmatic slumber. Let us turn to one.

Postman's next book was Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, not as tightly constructed, not as cleanly argued, not as easily digested, but one that grappled with a much deeper truth. It warns us that technologies of the written word, alphabetization, the stirrup, the mechanical clock, the printing press, the telescope, photography, television change the cultural landscape in unexpected and often detrimental ways, and that our modern view of technological progress as an unqualified good is foolish and dangerous.

We miss the role that technology plays in the modern church because we confuse technology with the physical mechanisms it employs. Technology is simply the application of technique, particularly scientific technique, in pursuing a goal. Thus Postman also identifies as technologies the IQ test, report cards, opinion polls, and business management. To these the church can add at least the following: Charles Finney's "new measures," such as the anxious bench; Sunday school; revivals; church youth programs; crusades; the four spiritual laws; discipleship programs; covered dish dinners; parachurch ministries; cassette tapes; small groups; retreats; quiet times; note-taking during sermons; new Bible translations.

Not all technologies are bad; and any given technology is not all bad. The availability of Bibles in the vernacular may lead to denominationalism as it encourages individual interpretation of Scripture; but who would cure that problem by returning the Bible to the priests? On the other hand, Postman points out that a devout Roman Catholic like Gutenberg might have hesitated in developing his printing press had he known that it would eventually undermine the authority of the Roman Catholic church.

The inventor of Sunday school might have had similar misgivings had he foreseen its eventual effects. Sunday schools were originally an outreach to the children of pagan parents; for a Christian father to send his child to one would have been a public abdication of his responsibility to instruct his children in spiritual matters. But a century later fathers are pressured to abdicate that responsibility to a Sunday school teacher, that the program might be supported and their child receive "quality" instruction. Many fathers are glad to comply. The small group movement has produced an equally unexpected result. Promoted as a mechanism for recreating community in a society bent on destroying it, they instead support and encourage the destruction of community by alleviating the more painful consequences of rootlessness. Robert Wuthnow documents this (approvingly) in his book Sharing the Journey; a friend confirms it when he tells me he is willing and often eager to relocate, knowing that as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous he will feel at home anywhere once he finds and joins a local group.

Postman cannot say why we have come to be so uncritical of technological progress, and so he offers no remedy. Can the church offer a reason? I think so. In his Choruses from The Rock, T.S. Eliot says that men "constantly try to escape I from the darkness outside and within / by dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good." What is the purpose of these technologies, these systems dreamt of by men? Escape from the darkness. What is the false hope that leads us to chase fad upon fad, heedless of the damage done? That we may stumble on one so perfect that our goodness will not be a factor in its success; that it will save us despite ourselves.

The world can do nothing but cling to this false hope. But we in the church know better, if we will but remind ourselves. There is only one source of perfection, and we must look to Him for the system, the technique so perfect that our own goodness is not afactor. And of course there is one, and it is exquisitely simple as well as perfect: believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

What directs our gaze towards Him we should treasure, and what diverts our gaze from Him we should treat as rubbish. And so we should not incorporate a technology into our life uncritically, nor despise it for being a technology, but evaluate and weigh its potential benefits and drawbacks, and then decide as a church whether its acceptance will bring glory to God and blessings to His people.

Will encouraging a quiet time lead parishioners to a deeper relationship with God or offer one more works-based checklist to complete, with badges for the diligent? Will another Bible translation edify God's people, or foster partisanship? Will churchwide covered dish dinners bring parishioners closer, or redefine fellowship as waving and smiling at those outside our circle as we join our usual group of friends?

An uncritical view of technological progress has made faddishness a hallmark of the modern church; every few years another new technique for spiritual progress is promoted and embraced, while we rarely examine the effects of fads gone by, much less deal with their harmful residue. May Postman's alarm ring in our ears, and rouse us to the difficult and uncomfortable task of identifying the harmful technologies we have embraced, and jettisoning them.