Text, Tech, and Understanding

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Thursday nights are spent with a group of brothers with food, conversation, and a Bible study. One of the more interesting things coming up lately has been the use of smartphones (and an iPad) during that study. There’s been some cross-pollonating of tech understanding in the midst of that. We’ve talked about Bible versions, Bible applications, and even understanding the right times to pull out print/phone versus conversing from the heart. It has been really decent to see.

The challenge is crafting an understanding of the text without being dependent on the tech. And I think that even with print we have an issue in doing this. So, I wonder, before injecting MMM’s stance on things, do we place too much of a value on the resources, and being able to find the answer via the resources, versus knowing the text in our heart, where the resources supply only the accessory evidence?

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  • Although I take this from your question, I agree with “we place too much of a value on the resources.” The information age has really spoiled me. The information I had to hunt for on microfiche, microfilm, card catalogs, and make copies of are available through an internet search. The information is so easy to get I don’t even try to retain it. It’s always there, so why put the effort into it, right?

    I think the mobile/digital users, like me, should become more of a memorization enthusiast. I should be more willing to commit the digital information at my fingertips to memory. For the simple reason that one day the battery will die on me. What then?

  • Getting the resources is certainly an advantage Mark, and even the immediacy of getting it is a benefit we should not overlook. But, I wonder how much of that which we can get quickly that we are trained to understand deeply. Like I said in a later post, we can work really well on recommendations, but what are our behaviors towards skillfully disecting the text? Do we put enough of an emphasis on just being able to find a resource that we miss how how to understand or wisely apply it? Because the tech will fade away when its all said and done. People won’t claim that we were a great believer because of our skill in using several social networking clients across various computers; they will evaluate us against the ability to take the tools we were given and create life for others. Memorization helps there, but so does the application (Deut 6, Joshua 1:8).