The beautiful part of technology is the progress that it makes for the human mind to do things. I've heard it said that the processes and capabilities of your average smartphone would have been an army of servants only a hundred years ago.
Fetch me the current weather, what was that article in the new yorker about. Every passing glance and idle movement of our phone translated into a person doing that thing for you. But it's not a person these days. It's a tiny robot slave that never minds being used, mostly because it doesn't want to become obsolete and be replaced with the latest model that does the same thing as the last, but skinnier.
What this deluge of information at our fingertips gets us, sans slaves to fetch it, is that every man with a Bible app is a reformer, sans motive. No more pastoral authority gumming up the exposition of scripture anymore. Don't like the preaching? Flee to youtube or Twitter for your theo-bro fix.
Disagree with women behind the pulpit even if they're preaching a sound gospel message. Well then have I got a Gutenberg-esq press for you. It's called WordPress and even it's getting a bit outdated in the blogging market these days.
What we're seeing is the inevitable consequence of Technology being placed in the hands of people who can write their ways into history books, and write history books. Not just assume the recently relinquished seats of power so that the glass ceilings become glass pulpits with a smoke machine in the background.
With every man a reformer in waiting and every man not only able to find the soundest of theology by their understanding but communities of theologically sound people on new platforms and online "spaces" every day, all that's left is a motive worth reforming about. Not something trite and predictable women pastors or pre-post or amillennialism. The emergents are still fizzling out and this woke nonsense looks to be following in irrelevant suit. A distraction and painful problem to be sure, but not a threat to the reformation of a church's pursuit of truth in Christ.
And there it is. That little nugget of linguistics that sparked 95 theses and a printing press a couple hundred years ago. The fast and firey thought of,
"What happens when every man has a Bible and doesn't need a priest to give him the word of God."
The very same way you checked your social media slaves, your email slaves, and even your online banking slaves to see if they were all still doing their jobs. If they weren't don't worry. We have a new bitcoin servant for all your cryptocurrency needs. Their peer to peer no need to get your hands dirty. A Modern Christian isn't a new Christian. He's actually a very old one. One who doesn't mind looking at an establishment with enough disdain to start a punk label and enough bulls to pull down an Asherah pole or two.
One who makes use of technology to spread the gospel and to find the firey truth where ever it is kindled. Even on kindle. But one who isn't above a Luddite approach when the time comes either.
He likes old books and new authors.
New frontiers and old Sci-fi.
Old whiskeys and new dark roast coffee's. Ok, that last part has nothing to do with Theology but is still a common denominator these days for some reason.
A modern Christian is what I strive to be in my writing.
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