As even the casual reader of this blog may notice, I love technology. I think gadgets are great and I love to play with them. I love my laptop and my palm TX and have enjoyed the benefits of both. It’s great to be able to stay in bed a little longer in the morning and check my email or read what’s been going on in the world while I was asleep. I love being able to surf the ‘net before I fall asleep at night.
I love reading about new gadgets and as I mentioned here, I loved the new iPhone. I have no intention of buying one but I couldn’t help but be awed by it, it has a strong ascetic appeal. I still like looking at it, to me it is a work of art. Well crafted gadgets have that affect on me. But even though I think it’s great and ascetically pleasing, I would never think to worship it. Unfortunately, there appears to be some who do:

I’m a very modern person. I don’t have any affiliations to traditional religion, and I don’t really feel any national loyalties. I was born in the U.K., but I’ve lived in cities like London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Berlin. It’s become clear that if I do have a religion, it’s a humanist one — a profound reverence for human creativity, for example. And if I do have something like a consistent homeland, it might as well be the Mac OS. Because wherever I am physically, that’s where I spend most of my time.

So you’ll see why, for someone like me, an Apple keynote speech is much more than a new product announcement. It’s a sermon, a series of miracles and a rousing patriotic oration about the homeland.

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Design that goes this far beyond the call of duty, and stays clear of the blanding influence of the mass market, can’t help but tap into our Aquarian emotions — stuff about utopianism, the creation of a better world. And in this sense Apple remains strongly rooted in a 1960s feeling, and a California feeling.

How sad! Though the iPhone may be a great product, both functional and beautiful, it can never bring true happiness, it can never fill the God-shaped hole in your heart. Any joy they bring us is fleeting.

When Sarah, my oldest daughter, was a pre-schooler she heard that all of our stuff would be burned up in the fire when Jesus returned and she was very upset because she didn’t want to lose her Barbies in the fire. I asked her if having her Barbies was more important than being with Jesus and she hesitantly said that it was more important to be with Jesus but it brought her great sadness. A number of years after that I reminded her of what she said and she couldn’t believe that her Barbies meant that much to her.
Our joy in the things of this life are fleeting but the joy that we experience in the Lord is eternal.