Don't Google It. . .

One of the byproducts of our digital age so fixated on technology is that we have become dependent upon this resource and cannot function without it.  Math has become less the answer to the problem or even the formula to get it but the tool that gives us the answer without bothering for us to think at all.  We trust the digital tools in part because we do not know any better.  We do not know if the calculator is correct or not because we have nothing to compare its answer to.  The same is true for a host of facts and information memorized in the past but now we rely on Google and soon AI.  Technology has gotten smarter but we have become more ignorant in the process.  We have all watched someone at a register paralyzed when we changed the cash we gave them after he had already punched it into the machine and been told what change to give.  There was a day, believe it or not, when a good mechanic could diagnose what was wrong with your vehicle by listening to it.  Now a computer will tell him what to do and he has become the technician instead of the master.  The same is true of medicine where technology wins out over experience, intuition, and education everyday (not to mention the arcane rules of payment!).

Are we better for it?  Some say yes.  The self scanner at the supermarket is better than a real person, right?  The AI chat or phone queue is better than a real person, right?  Is it better for us to know where to go for our information rather than to know it ourselves?  Is it better for us to cede to technology what we once knew and could do for ourselves?  The mighty Musk tells us we will all be better off when AI takes over our jobs and lives and we do nothing.  Will we be better ff?  When the day comes and I hang up my hat I will walk out the door with 32 years of institutional memory.  People think I am concerned about giving up power or control but I seem to be almost alone in worrying about the loss of this institutional memory.  Just Google it, right?  When my wife retired at the height of her knowledge and expertise as a nurse, her employer saw her as a budget line.  Is that all she was?

Sadly this whole thing has had a profound effect upon the Church.  Our people do not know Scripture, do not memorize the Catechism, do not know their hymns, do not recall great prayers or collects, and do not seem to think this is a problem.  We live in a Google age in which we do not need to know anymore than where to go.  AI pastors already dispense spiritual counsel over the internet.  Why bother with flesh and blood?  The lesson of Covid to some is that we do not need the Church or to be in worship or to have a pastor.  We have the world wide web.  Is this advancing the cause of Christ in the home or in the Church or in the world?  Does it glorify God that we know Him more by caricature than His Word?  More by what we imagine Him to be than what He has said?  Does this have consequences for us as people and as a Church?  We live in an age of Biblical illiteracy which affects us more than we know and not for our good.  Without our knowledge of His Word and our ability to discern truth from error based on that Word we are now more than ever vulnerable to that error, to the devil's taunts, to the world's temptations, and to our own weaknesses.