89 thoughts on “Technology”

  1. Ha, This is so funny and so true. This cycle goes way back and can be applied to more than just technology. Do any of you remember when using Power Point in a church was questionable? Or a projector for the music rather than a hymnal?

    Also “Don’t surf porn or Calvinism” should be quote of the month! 😆

    2. I agree with Mark. This template can be used with more than just technology. Just apply it to any new fad, new style, new “latest thing” that catches on.

  2. I still hear from the pulpit “maybe you should just throw your TVs to the curb”. Because, you know, it takes us away from being as holy as the preacher. Of course there are the hay-mens all around.

    Unless you only use it to watch fox news 🙂

  3. It generally elicits a positive response when I subtly point out that the piano was not accepted in church a hundred years ago, since it was a saloon instrument. Not so much, though, when I let that sink in for a moment and then ask what they think will happen with the guitar in a hundred years…

    Strangely enough, fundamentalist churches have been on the website bandwagon for a while. They still make sites that look like Geocities and Angelfire; maybe that’s their way of being separate from the world in this age of Web 2.0.

    1. The piano was a big one for me. Actually all of church music history was a big factor for me leaving fundy land. But the piano especially because I remembered growing up and hearing about the guitar as if it were invented by Satan himself. Then I remember the acoustic guitar coming into fashion, but boy would you ever hear bad things about the electric. Then I learned about the history of the piano and how recently it was the evil instrument. Now you aren’t a fundy church without it. That is when it hit me. We are just repeating the same history over and over and over again. That, and *so* many other reasons was a huge turning point for me. I was done fighting useless battles doomed to repeat easily learned history.

      1. “I was done fighting useless battles doomed to repeat easily learned history.” I SO agree! We’re supposed to be ambassadors for Christ, and yet we spent so much time arguing about pianos, guitars, drums, neckties, jeans, etc. I don’t want to spend my life quibbling over nonessentials! I want my focus to be Jesus!

    2. “the piano was not accepted in church a hundred years ago, since it was a saloon instrument.”

      I just said almost those exact same words last night.
      And don’t forget, neck ties were once (maybe 100 years or more ago) considered too flashy for church. So much for the “olde tyme religion”!

    3. Good point Josh. We can take that one step further and say that the piano introduced equal temperament tuning vs the just intonation that was widely accepted with the harpsichord and previously. ca 1700’s. In fact the establishment of well-tempered tuning was a pivotal point in the acceptance of the 12 tone scale – (western music) which had been in various stages of development for the last 300 years 1400-1700. And yet, somehow, fundies have latched on to 25 hymns written between 1890-1937 as the only things they’ll sing.

      1. Well you know, Joe, the major scale was divined by God himself. In fact, the harmony is based upon the triad (trinity) so we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is the music we shall hear in heaven itself. Anything else, especially from any other culture, is a perversion of nature itself.

        I’m reading an interesting book about music cognition. The more I read it the more I realize it would likely have been strongly discouraged as reading at BJU.

        1. “Especially from any other culture”

          lol, so true! Because we all know that the more like Christ you become, the more like us you will look!
          🙄

      2. Equal temperament is the DEVIL’S WORK! Just intonation is the only tuning system the LORD approves of! 😛

    4. And I don’t really like Mark Driscoll, but he maid a very valid point. This is what he said, “Everyone contextualizes. It is just a matter of to what date.”

      Oh how true this is. The fact is that we cannot worship exactly like they did in the in Acts even more so for old testament times. So we have to choose. We have to contextualize to our day. “Liberals” do it to a way more modern time, but even Fundies look down right liberal compared to the Amish. Everyone contextualizes. That was another salient point in my departure. Realizing that “Old Time” was completely relative (to sound post modern) was a huge epiphany.

      1. “The fact is that we cannot worship exactly like they did in the in Acts even more so for old testament times.”

        Mark, do you mean my burnt offerings are meaningless? 😀

        2. What? You don’t think Christians should have to sell all their property and contribute it to be shared equally among the entire church? Well, I think this rule should be reinstated! Especially since I don’t own any property…

  5. You forgot Step 4: Denial

    They use the new technology to delete any proof of step 1. Change is bad but the appearance of change is worse than the appearance of evil.

    😛

  6. Ahh yes. I remember my old church with the use of powerpoint for hymns, messages, etc..

    I still know people who think powerpoint is evil.

    1. Me too. Ex-pastor was always against power-points–churches who used them got scathing judgments such as “user-friendly,” “compromising,” and “modern.” It was probably just because we couldn’t afford to have our own power-point, but that’s beside the point. 😛

      1. Well our new one still condemns powerpoint under “all that modern stuff” along with worship leaders and P&W music (I never got the worship leader hate: doesn’t he do the same thing as a song leader?) And they can very well afford it if they wished.

        In the old times everyone merely repeated words after the song leader: and you don’t see that upheld anywhere. And yet words on a screen is soooooo contemporary and worldly!!

    2. The new guy doing children’s church uses power point for the music. What??? And my large poster boards of hand-written choruses aren’t good enough for him? I’ve been using them since 1986! 😀

      1. Like my adorable set of shoe-shaped posterboard with the song “Do you know, O Christian, you’re a sermon in shoes?” Can power-point really match that? LOL

        2. I remember LOVING those Stop and Go signs – when I was six years old in the (dare I say it?) 1970s!

    3. We have people at our church, when we have songs on the powerpoint, who refuse to sing, b/c they don’t want to sing something on the screen.
      At least we pay the fees for the copyrights to display the music. 😀

  7. I still hold to the old truth that if we women were to really buck the feminist cultural trend, we’d never shave. I am thankful to be under my father’s covering so that I do not have to worry with things like ‘hellevision’ and ‘college’. Both of those things are to blame for the falling away of millions around the world.

    3. Surely thou jesteth? Praytell what century ye be from? Dost thou not know the date whence we be in history? Verily, thou dost know about advanced techonology. Thou dost shun “hellevision” but thou dost make use of the internet. Dost thy fathers’ covering not include Satan’s gateway to the pornographic dark arts?

      2. Thank you for answering in a way similar to the beautiful King James Bible language. I don’t know why we ever moved away from speaking in such a manner. It is so genteel. It reminds me of long skirts, hard pews, and homebirthing.

        1. Verily! Thou art a true fundy from old path stock. Pray thee continue to make comment which wilt cause our bowels to shake with joy. 😉

    5. Sarcasm detector malfunctioning. This is either brilliant satire, or… well, I don’t know what else.. reality?

      No shaving? What IFB church endorses that. Or what western culture, christian or non christian? (no offense if you are from a culture where women don’t shave). I’d like to see Hyles endorse a no makeup rule. Some of the girls from that college that I have seen have got that foundation caked on an inch thick.

      1. @exIFB: reread the part before the clause about never shaving:

        I still hold to the old truth that if we women were to really buck the feminist cultural trend, we’d never shave.

        Given that fundamentalists tend to treat feminism as the other F-word, I think it’s safe to say that comment was not serious.

        1. Never mind; looks like I mis-read it, too. 😳 Oh well. My point remains; I still think it’s satire.

      2. My Mom went to HAC and she always told me that when I went to college I would start wearing more makeup and spending more time on my hair because the upper classmen would help me to look more polished or something. I think she still wonders how I got through four years of Fundy U. without coming around.

        1. I am sorry that your parents forced you to attend college. I hope that you were able to focus on a Home Economics study course so that you could be a “help meet” to your future husband, Lord willing. If not, then the courtship period would have been plenty of time to catch up.

      3. Women shaving is a ‘slippery slope’ for the weaker vessel. It is an obvious precursor to short skirts, dating, and heavy petting.

  8. Wow. I thought about sending you this idea this weekend. I was visiting my parents over Labor Day and while I was checking out something on their living room computer, I remembered that 15 years ago when I was in high school, I wasn’t allowed to touch a computer because the internet was full of porn. That’s all it was.

    Now they have a high speed connection in their living room. I thought about Control-Ding this web site but I didn’t.

      1. I am not a fan of profanity at all, but doesn’t this device cause you to notice the words just as much as if they actually said them? “Oh, I know what he really said!”

        1. Of course it did. But don’t try to explain that to my fundy parents. I’ve got two brothers – we all have small children now. I’m Calvinist, one brother is into the Joel Olsteen prosperity gospel thing and the other attends a less fundamental fundy church, and honestly doesn’t adhere to fundyism.

          Thanksgiving and Christmas are really fun.

        2. Amen Ken

          It comes form the OT Law mindset that says ‘touch not, taste not, see not’ rather then the more complete concept of both the Old and New Testaments that ‘it is not what comes into a man that defiles him, but what comes out’.

          Calling out and focusing on every sin around you dose not help your spiritual condition – I believe it hurts it. We are to fill our minds with Christ.

          As an illustration of this, it is disturbing how obsessed most fundamentalist men are with sex (more so then many in the world), and it is in part due to their noting wheather or not every individual girl is covering enough of herself.

        3. How true, how true! Friends of mine are impossible to watch TV with. They serve as their own TV Guardian. Whenever there’s “language” or a little skin, he says, “Oh, man!!” and switches the channel. It might be several minutes before he goes back. By then, we’ve lost lots of the plot and I think we are all left sitting there thinking about what horrible thing was said like it’s burned into our brains. Although they watch very little broadcast television, they have a huge library of movies and re-watch them often, mostly old westerns and classics but some new ones, too. It’s funny, though, that they know right where the “language” is and hit the mute button seconds before the airwaves are turned blue. Seems to me that it’s easier to just ignore the bad words rather than dwell on them like we don’t want God to hear them or see us hearing them. These folks are dear friends and are really quite cool, though large part fundy. They are not above going to see a movie in a theater once they have researched the ratings and reviews.

  9. And when the kids who are protected from ever having to make a good choice because they are all made for them, yes, when those kids break out of jail, they have no idea how to make good choices.

    1. You are right. I think that is why so many ex fundies go off the rails entirely-they have never made a choice before.

      I know it was very difficult for me when I first left fundyland. If all of that nonsense was no longer going to control me then what should?

      1. I was in my early 50s when I broke free, and I still had a hard time not getting totally derailed. I was so angry, hurting, and terrified.

        1. I do not think that many people understand what it is like to leave fundyism. We are not just switching churches, it is much deeper than that. We are changing the entire structure of our lives.

        2. I forgot to say this: I know that it must have been tough to leave fundyism if you had been in it your whole life. It was very hard for me and I am quite a bit younger. I hope that God has sent you healing.

        3. Thank you, Apathetic. The healing is coming. God has used my Anglican church to help me find the new normal. I’m about three years out now, and counting. There is life after fundamentalism for those who are willing to step out.

          My mom, who died from Alzheimer Disease last spring, attended our Anglican church for a couple of years until she could no longer get into and out of the car without difficulty. Although a long-time Fundamentalist, she only said one thing about the Anglican church. The first Sunday, she did a lot of looking around, but not much talking. The second Sunday our priest greeted us as we walked into the church, and she looked at him up and down in his alb. As we walked into the church she looked up at me and said, “I’m a Baptist, you know.” I smiled at her and said, “That’s okay, Mom. They let Baptists come here.” (In fact, probably a third of the members are former Baptists.) After that, she just settled in, and thoroughly enjoyed the liturgy.

          It takes time, I think, and there are flashbacks occasionally (I never listen to any of the YouTube sermons that Darrell posts all the way through). But, I will never mistake manipulation and intimidation tactics for anything else. :mrgreen:

    2. I call it the Day of Reckoning. There will come a time in almost every Fundamentalists life when they will suddenly find no rules being held over their head and they are suddenly faced with the taste of freedom. At first it will just be to stick the big toe in water, but eventually they’ll have to make serious decisions and that is why they’ll have to decide for real what they actually believe. Now for some it comes sooner (HS graduation) for others they delay it with undergrad or grad at Fundy U. Some delay it forever by going into “full time Christian service”, but that day will come and I find that all that Christian HS and Funy U serves to do is delay the inevitable. Unfortunately I don’t believe they prepare you well for it.

  10. I made it all the way through the 50s w/o TV. #1 we could not afford it, and #2 all the preachers were dead set against them. Then slowly, the evil started creeping in and sticking its nose under the tent. But those who bought them had a ready answer:
    “We only watch the news and Oral Roberts.” 😛

  11. Did anybody mention texting yet? I know old people in general (and I do mean in general–so, please, no old folks jumping on me here) hate and fear new technologies, so it’s no surprise that the old fundy guy I work with is very uncomfortable with the whole idea. You can tell he thinks it’s frivolous and is probably contributing to the downfall of the English language. But does he also distrust SMS because he’s a fundy? I’m almost sure that must be the case. Does anybody else know fundies who hate all things cellular or even consider them diabolical?

    1. Bob,
      “texting” utilizes strange, archane, (dare I say pagan) symbols that when put together, convey “thoughts” and “ideas.” These “communications” travel over time and space via a transfixing hand held device (why, you can barely take you eyes off of it, sound familiar? Amen?). Whose thoughts and ideas are these? Well, I assure you, they are NOT God’s…

  12. ahhh the triad – you know the 3rd of the chord wasn’t used until the 11th and 12th century because is was considered to “provocative” apparently it allowed for to much emotion to be felt and expressed. early monks sang in unison to avoid it, then backslid into singing in octaves, then in 4th and 5ths. They were able to hold out for 1000 years but when we added the 3rd the whole world went to hell. We taught the common man to read and then he could study the bible himself. look out!

      1. Or maybe even to the Simpsons…oh wait, are they part of the HBO/MTV genre that we aren’t allowed to watch yet? My bad.

  14. Step 2 is always the most awkward. Many of those using it for ministry are still dealing with the guilt of using the tools of the world. Fathers are having problems with explaining to their ‘rebellious’ children why they are not yet allowed to have any fun using the evil technology that their church is already using in ministry.

    Ahh what a tangled web we weave.

  15. Also, even though the technology may be actually used, the terminology for such use must be different. Since movie-watching is now allowed, the two-hour uninterrupted pre-recorded program is to be called a “film.” The difference in terms will help the young fundy recognize the difference between the worldly use of technology, and the pastor approved use. :mrgreen:

  16. LOL, I was thinking of asking you about this, Darrel, but didn’t know where. All of a sudden, all of the people I grew up with in Fundyland are now on facebook. Even my brother-in-law who graduated from HAC and still has a Juno email address just joined FB. So, I guess it’s on step 3 finally? I just find it funny how they have collective amnesia about how bad it was in step 1, LOL! I think what contributes to final acceptance is that people just get desensitized to it, and no matter how much preaching from the pulpit about the “evils” of whatever, the congregation is still out there doing or using it. So, the pastor resigns himself to it and realizes “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em”, except make sure you’re not using it for evil…

  17. I remember at my Fundy U, one of the VPs getting up and preaching against “DVDs” in a sermon. He admitted he didn’t know what they were but suspected that they were a way to “privately watch movies.”

    Not long afterward the college’s text book company announced that they were ditching their school video tapes in favor of the much cheaper DVD.

    I laughed a lot.

        1. “that industry” is also responsible for alot of the technological advancements in all things internet 😮

  18. This was a decade ago, but there was a guy (in TX?) who had a nice little business exorcising possessed computers.

  19. Love the evolution of this in the music of fundy churches. Songs MY non fundy church were singing 10 years ago are now being sung (on PowerPoint) in my parent’s fundy church – never thought I’d see Twila Paris get copyright cred in that church! Even though they use PowerPoint for singing they still ordered brand new hymnbooks b/c too many old schoolers were absolutely not going to sing while looking to the front of the church! No sir!

  20. This reminds me of when I tried to show my parents that CCM wasn’t as bad as they thought. They eventually came around and now my mom is always the first one in the family to get the latest Casting Crowns CD 😉

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