Facebook Delimma

"There are only two industries that call their customers users: illegal drugs and software."

When does technology cross the line from existing as a tool used to increase our productivity, to a temptation that drains our productivity?

The cultural mandate given to Adam and Eve in the garden (to exercise dominion over all creation) necessitated the use of tools. We cannot exercise dominion over the grass in our front yard without the use of tools, let alone the fish in the sea. When we stop looking to use technology in this way, to exercise dominion over some task, to be more productive, to further our reach, or to bring things closer to home that otherwise would not be - we would do well to take a step back and evaluate.

"Tools make it possible for our radius of fruitfulness to extend much further than it otherwise would."- Douglas Wilson: Ploductivity

Sin is inherent in man, not in tools. When we sin, however, in close proximity to a material object, we find it convenient to blame the tool - Weapons for murder, alcohol for drunkenness, slow traffic for the anger, photography for lust, the list could continue into oblivion. This makes no more sense than for us to blame the baseball bat for missing the pitch. 

Meghan and I evaluated our use of Facebook and found it to be a tool that we were no longer using to 'extend our radius of fruitfulness'. In fact, we were not using it as a tool at all. It had become something reaching out to us, begging for attention. Facebook again is not all bad, the sin is not in the tool but in the man. This does not negate the fact that some tools should decisively be placed in the back of the shed, amongst the cobwebs. 

Lawlessness

 "Your thone, O God, is forever and ever;

A scepter of righteousness is the 

scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness 

and hated lawlessness;

Therefore God, Your God, has anointed You 

With the oil of gladness more

than Your companions" - Hebrews 1: 8-9, quoting Psalms 45: 6-7

Loved Righteousness and Hated Lawlessness. Hate is not a word used in the Christian community often, especially not in association with God.  But righteousness and lawlessness are mutually exclusive, completely. In order to truly love some things, other things must be hated. But in this question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, we can definitively say it is the love that superseded the hate. We do not hate lawlessness for the sheer pleasure of it, but because it stands to destroy that which we first loved, righteousness. A general disdain however was not strong enough. In order to love righteousness, we must hate lawlessness. 

What is lawlessness? I can see several different cases. First Lawlessness could refer to breaking any myriad of laws imposed by the civil authority appointed over us. (See Romans 13 to begin the intricate discussion of to what extent we need to obey the civil magistrate). Lawlessness could reach to a more foundational level and refer to the breaking of God's law. What I think is the most fitting explanation is that lawlessness refers to not a mere act but a state of being, the state of lawlessness - The state of an individual living a life privy to no authority, with no love for discipline, who sees his own truth as the only truth, who thinks that one plus one, in fact, equals three. A person who has chosen to, in life, turn from even the most fundamental laws and refuses to believe that an XX genotype creates a woman and an XY genotype a man. For are not even the most basic laws that govern this world the creation of God? Did the apple not fall on Newton's nose because God made it so? 

The love of righteousness necessitates the hatred of the kind of thing that abdicates God's law.