I
enjoy using an iPad. It is, in my opinion, one of the most impressive devices
yet invented. In one light-weight, travel-sized tablet the user has everything
at his fingertips. That includes not only the typical social media apps that
every user has on his smartphone, but also countless tools that have
characterized the laptop or even the home television.
And
yet I am finding that cutting-edge, 21st-century technology is subtly but
quickly changing important, even indispensable aspects of Christianity. Consider
just one example: the ever-growing tendency to substitute a physical, visible
Bible (remember . . . the ones where you lick your finger and turn the pages)
with a tablet in the pulpit.
To
clarify, I am not against pastors using a tablet in the pulpit for, say, sermon
notes. Rather, I'm concerned about replacing the physical Bible with a tablet
in the pulpit. As the pastor enters the pulpit to bring the Word of God to the
people of God, no hard copy of the Bible is to be found in his hand, gracing the
top of the podium, visible to the entire congregation as the book at the center
of attention. Instead, the congregation sees a tablet. While this may seem
harmless enough, I believe there are several potential dangers this subtle
shift generates.
Different
Message
First,
the tablet as a replacement for a hardcopy of the Bible sends an entirely
different message to the congregation. Yes, this tablet contains the digital
text of the Bible, but visually that tablet represents so much more. It is an
icon of social media and a buffet of endless entertainment. Ask my children.
The sight of an iPad screams instant access to Sesame Street on Netflix. For
the adult, the tablet is an immediate window into his or her social life. As
advertised, the iPad is ESPN Magazine, a Visa card statement, decorating ideas
on Pinterest, hotel reservations in Hawaii, the latest college football scores,
Adele on iTunes, directions to the nearest Starbucks, instant tracking of the
stock market, and, oh yes, the Bible, alongside thousands of your favorite
e-books.
In
contrast, how simple, and yet profound, is a hardcopy of the Bible, perhaps
leather-bound and worn from constant use. Carried by Pastor Steve into the
pulpit, this large, even cumbersome book, reveals he is ready to bring to the
people a message from God himself. In short, a print copy of the Scriptures in
the pulpit represents something far more focused and narrow: a visible symbol
of God speaking to his people, the master Shepherd feeding his flock.
Biblical
Illiteracy in the Pew
Second,
the tablet may, oddly enough, unintentionally and indirectly encourage biblical
illiteracy in the pew. This no doubt sounds shocking. After all, how could a
tablet that provides us with gobs of biblical research tools, a digital manuscript
of the Scriptures, and countless other resources create a culture of biblical
illiteracy? One of the severe limitations of a digital text, as you sit there
with your iPhone or smartphone, is the unnecessary task of passing by books of
the Bible as you find the sermon text. When the preacher says, "Turn in
your Bibles to . . . ," the layperson simply clicks on a link or enters
the text into a search box. As a result, I am increasingly discovering as a
professor at a Christian university that students do not know where books in
the Bible are located, let alone how the storyline of redemptive history
develops. Many laypeople do not possess the ability to see the text in its
context. Consequently, these old-fashioned, basic, Bible-learning skills are being
lost.
Even
secular scholars, such as Nicholas Carr (The Shallows) and Mark Bauerlein (The
Dumbest Generation), get this when it comes to reading a book digitally. As
John Bombaro explains, these authors, and many others, conclude that we have
adopted a "truncated approach to texts, with no peripheral vision of what
the next page holds or orientation to the linear progression of the entire
text," which only "trains the mind's learning plasticity to think in
pragmatic, detached, fragmented ways." Therefore, when it comes to
Scripture, we have lost by abandoning the printed text a "linear
progression to the total story," since "digital texts militate
against a big-picture perspective and comprehension of the whole story of the
Bible."
Flesh
and Blood
Third,
the tablet may undermine the spatio-temporal nature of church. When a member
stands before the congregation, reading the sermon text from a tablet, there is
something missing, something lifeless at play. Again, John Bombaro observes,
"Digital texts are ephemeral; they are ontologically diminished."
There's no "there" there, Bombaro laments.
Surely
this should rub us wrong, as physical beings who gather together as an assembly
in a tangible place. We see with our own eyes a standing, breathing minister preach
about a God who is, yes, invisible, but is really with us as Lord of space and
time. This God has made himself known by sending his own Son in flesh and
blood.
Visual
Reminder
Fourth,
when the spatio-temporal nature of Scripture is replaced with a digital, even
ephemeral, cyberspace text, there is an awkward inconsistency at play given the
physicality of baptism and the Lord's Supper. In the lineage of the
Reformation, evangelicals have long affirmed at least three marks of the church
and means of grace: the proclamation of God's Word, baptism, and the Lord's
Supper. Why not perform a baptism in private or take the Lord's Supper alone?
There is an essential corporate dimension to these somatic means of grace, as
the church witnesses the gospel in the waters of baptism and together partakes
of the flesh and blood of Christ represented in the elements. The materiality
of these means visually remind us that we are accountable to this gospel and to
one another.
Likewise
with God's Word. The Scriptures, preached and read, teach us, reprove us, and
train us in righteousness so that we are equipped for every good work (2 Tim.
3:16-17). If baptism and the Lord's table become lifeless when we disintegrate
their materiality, do we not risk a similar danger when we remove the
spatio-temporal presence of the Word of God for the people of God? And should
an unbeliever walk in for the first time, would he know that we are a people of
the book?
Nonverbal
Communication
Fifth,
when the smartphone or iPad (or name your mobile device) replaces a hardcopy of
Scripture, something is missing in our nonverbal communication to unbelieving
onlookers. When you walk to church, sit down on a bus, or discipline one
another at a coffee shop, a hard copy of the Bible sends a loud and bold
message to the nearest passersby about your identity as a Christ follower. It
says, "Yes, I am a Christian and I believe this book is the Word of God
telling us who we are and how we should live."
If
you don't believe me, take a physical copy of the Bible with you on your next
plane flight, and when you sit down next to your neighbors place the Bible on
your lap for all to see. Notice the reactions; you might as well have shared
your social security number with the whole plane. Typically, for the person on
your left just the sight of the text makes them uncomfortable, defensive, and
reclusive. But for the person on your right, it may instantaneously create a
conversation that leads to the gospel. My point is simple: if we, as
Christians, abandon the physical text in our own assembly, what is lost when
this text does not warm our hands in front of a lost and dying world?
No
doubt, my warning touches an uncomfortable and irritable nerve. To insult our
use of technology is one of the seven deadly sins in the 21st century.
Technology infiltrates and saturates everything we do, and therefore defines
everything we are, for better or worse. But is this subtle shift changing the
way we read the Scriptures? Is it ever-so-quietly removing the visual
centerpiece of the local assembly? I think so. And while I never imagined I
would have to say this, I close with the following admonition: Dear pastor,
bring your Bible to church.
Matthew
Barrett (PhD, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is assistant professor
of Christian studies at California Baptist University (OPS), as well as the
founder and executive editor of Credo Magazine. He is the author of Salvation
by Grace: The Case for Effectual Calling and Regeneration (forthcoming,
P&R) and co-editor of Four Views on the Historical Adam (forthcoming,
Zondervan). He also edited Whomever He Wills: A Surprising Display of Sovereign
Mercy.
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