NEWS FEATURE: Theologian Looks At the Negative Impact of Technology

c. 2000 Religion News Service HOUSTON _ Theologian Rick Gaillardetz worries that the genie of technology has escaped its bottle and threatens to enslave Christian as consumers. According to Gaillardetz, techno-wizardry _ from the Internet to the microwave _ can undermine family relationships and personal spirituality, and speed the vanishing sense of community once common […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

HOUSTON _ Theologian Rick Gaillardetz worries that the genie of technology has escaped its bottle and threatens to enslave Christian as consumers.

According to Gaillardetz, techno-wizardry _ from the Internet to the microwave _ can undermine family relationships and personal spirituality, and speed the vanishing sense of community once common in American life.


As Gaillardetz, who teaches at the University of St. Thomas School of Theology in Houston, tells it, he came home from work one day and realized his life could become an electronic odyssey of cell phones, portable computers and Nintendo games. He had seen it happen to other people.

So he decided to explore how technology was reshaping life and how Christians might know God and love each other in the midst of all the distraction.

His exploration involved a lengthy search, a renewed commitment to quality time with family and friends, ongoing theological conversations with colleagues, and eventually a new book. “Transforming Our Days: Spirituality, Community and Liturgy in a Technological Culture” (Crossroad) is really a lay theological manual for Christians with questions about technology and faith.

“There are certain areas of our life in which we legitimately say, `This is silly.’ I don’t want burden or effort here. Devices aren’t bad,” Gaillardetz said.

“We can say, `I want a car. I want a cell phone. I want a dishwasher.’ The danger is that the overall message is: In every area of your life this (technology) is a good thing. So we say, `I don’t want to sit around a table telling stories. Let somebody do it on TV for me.’ `I don’t want to go to the effort of learning to play an instrument. Let somebody give me the music on a CD.’

“Or, `I don’t want to go through the effort of encountering God in an active life of worship. Let somebody package the worship experience and hand it to me, ready on demand, through cable television, the radio, some self-help manual.’ ”

Technology often is blamed for such contemporary social ills as broken families and youth violence, he said. Americans’ uncertainty in the face of such problems is reflected in popular culture. Country singer Tracy Lawrence croons that the planet would be safer and saner if the “world had a front porch like we did back then.” The theme song for the old TV sitcom “Cheers” conjures up similar images with the lines, “You want to go where everybody knows your name,” Gaillardetz said, the lure of a familiar bar and familiar folks who feel like family.


This longing for human community is so widespread that Gaillardetz’s friend the Rev. Lou Brusatti even hears it in the confessional.

“I’m finding more and more (in confession) people talking about cyber-sex and wasting time on the Internet in chat rooms and avoiding human contact,” said Brusatti, dean of the University of St. Thomas’ theology school.

People turn to the Internet as they once turned to their next-door neighbors. “It has to do with the longing for community and the longing to be in relationship without having to work at it,” Brusatti said. “The longing for intimacy without any consequences.”

Virtually all technology promises consumers a commodity with little effort, Gaillardetz said. In his book, he offers three main insights to avoiding such pitfalls:

Consumers must avoid “technologizing basic human engagements out of our lives.”

God is a God encountered in ordinary life.

Christians learn the scriptural truth that God is love in familiar activities, even ones as simple as bagels over breakfast with a spouse or swapping greetings with a convenience store clerk.

Living those insights means cultivating daily “attentiveness to God’s grace,” he said. Church participation helps believers do that.


Church activities remind believers that serving others is serving Christ, he maintains. Church liturgy and ritual promise transformation, helping Christians see daily activities in a new way.

“What is a Eucharist? It’s a sacred meal,” Gaillardetz said. “We believe that as we attend to God and one another in this ritual meal, God comes to us. … By faithfully celebrating that sacred meal, we become transformed in our capacity to encounter God in the ordinary meals of daily life.”

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In his book, he draws from the work of social philosopher Albert Borgmann. But Gaillardetz’s ideas echo the teachings of Catholic contemplative nuns and monks through the centuries. His ideas segue into the awareness-centered spirituality of such modern masters as Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Han. Both traditions stress living, prayerfully, in the moment.

“Rick says, in the past there were no atheists because we attributed everything to God,” said Sister Carol Mayes, pastoral associate for adults at St. Cecilia Catholic Church in Houston. She works with Gaillardetz’s wife, Diana, the church’s pastoral associate for family ministry.

But people today are “starved for a spirituality. Now we are not back where we were before, but we still desperately need God and need to make sense of our world,” she said.

Gaillardetz owns a computer, a microwave and a VCR. He doesn’t recommend discarding technology, but using it judiciously.


“I grew up on an Air Force base in a military family. I thought of being a pilot. I worked my way through college … at Motorola, supervising a shift that was responsible for testing microprocessors.”

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An expert on questions related to authority in Roman Catholicism, Gaillardetz gets paid to teach theology, interpret church tomes and reflect on the substance and tone of papal pronouncements.

Gaillardetz, also a husband and the father of four boys, learned the truths he writes about in his newest book in his own home. Overdependence on technology could mean the loss of what he calls “engagement” _ something vital to his family.

Find the holy in the ordinary, Gaillardetz recommends.

He does this (it) with his own kids. Every couple of weeks he creates homemade pizza with 9-year-old twins David and Andrew, Brian, 5, and Gregory, 3.

“We get flour everywhere. One day, the older boys are slapping the counter and there’s clouds of flour going up and they’re laughing hysterically and they’re slapping the counter again. It’s not a scene you script.

“On another occasion, I’m in there washing dishes, and Brian and Greg, our younger ones, are in there thinking they’re helping me. One of them picks up a pot and puts it on his head.


“The other one goes and grabs a pot and puts it on his head. They’re like two rams, running into each other. Bang! Falling down on the ground kind of dazed. Getting back up and running into each other again. Bang! Again, I’m looking at this amazed. It was a moment of delight, joy and grace.”

DEA END HOLMES

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