technology

I've been reading this tiny book containing selections from Thomas Merton's writing. Here is a quote that I thought was rather appropriate for churches like mine who sometimes fail to turn a critical eye toward technology. It reads:

"This is no longer a time of systematic ethical speculation, for such speculation implies time to reason, and the power to bring social and individual action under the concerted control of reasoned principles upon which most men agree. There is no time to reason out, calmly and objectively, the moral implications of technical developments which are perhaps already superseded by the time one knows enough to reason about them."

"Action is not governed by moral reason but by political expediency and the demands of technology--translated into the simple abstract formulas of propoganda. These formulas have nothing to do with reasoned moral action, even though they may appeal to apparent moral values--they simply condition the mass of men to react in a desired way to certain stimuli."

I wonder how much of our worship services are just Christianized forms of manipulation--trying to get people to react in the desired way to certain stimuli. I wonder if many of us could articulate how the Spirit acts differently, much less articulate how we are to worship in light of the indwelling of the Spirit.