Technology should lead us to God

Fr. Roy Cimagala

LEST we be overly charmed by the allurements of the new technologies, we have to strongly remind ourselves that technology, just like anything else, should lead to God, and with God to everybody and everything else.

There’s always a danger to be carried away by the many advantages and conveniences the new technologies give us such that we end up getting self-absorbed and self-seeking. We need to be guarded against this clear and present danger.

Technology should lead us to God because first and last it comes from God and also belongs to God. It is a tremendous expression of God’s power and wisdom and can be a powerful way of giving him glory and truly serving others and the common good. Sad to say, we can see many instances when technology is used against what is truly good for mankind.

We have to remember that whatever contribution we make in discovering and inventing it can only spring from God’s laws of nature. The raw materials and our creative power involved in making it actually come from God. The very least thing we can do is to acknowledge first of all this fact and to be most thankful.

This duty can be difficult nowadays because of our secularized culture that ignores God in our human affairs. And that’s why we need to exert effort to strongly and abidingly remind ourselves of this fundamental truth.

Then, of course, we have to know how our technologies can glorify and serve God and everybody else. We need to cultivate the keen sense of how we can make our technologies play along the providence of God.

They just cannot be used and enjoyed in any which way, guided only by the criteria of practicability, profitability, popularity and the like. This is sadly the prevailing mentality and attitude, and we just have to know how to overcome and change it.

Right there in the homes and the schools, the proper attitude toward technology should be imparted and continually reinforced. We cannot deny the fact that nowadays there are many factors that tend to undermine a healthy human and Christian technological culture.

Everyone should be taught that everything, including our technologies, should be offered to God. The technical requirements involved in their use should be occasions for prayer and sacrifice, and not just for our intelligence and talents to get stirred up and hopefully develop. We need to overcome precisely this secularized mentality.

It does not mean that we erase the distinction between the sacred and the mundane, the spiritual and the material, the natural and the supernatural. We actually cannot erase these distinctions because they have their objective basis. But neither should we forget their inherent connection and relation.

Let’s see to it that we remain truly human and Christian as we immerse ourselves more and more in the technologies. What can be observed, sad to say, is a trend toward getting less and less human and Christian the more technology is used. We should correct this anomaly!

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com