Odds and Ends

Commandments Concerning Technology

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When the bounds of thy habitation shall widen and the size of thy television shall likewise become ginormous then shalt thou listen to words of these commands that thy use of technology be not very naughty in our sight.

And the adoption of a new technology shall be on thuswise: firstly thou shalt fear it above all things and shall shew unto the faces of the congregation how that this new tech shall be used for laziness, and for lust, and for the rise of the one-world government. And thou shalt verily condemn those early adopters as the spawn of Satan and the purveyors the prurient. So shall thy wisdom be established and all the congregation shall fear mightily in that day.

Then when a day, and a week, and a year and time and half a time shall pass thou shalt verily make allowance that this new thing might be useful for missions. And then shalt thou make haste to use it for thy bus ministry, and thy youth group, and thy missionaries and thou shalt verily find the son a church member of suchlike as will work for no pay and shall verily press him to service to make it all work for this newfangled technology is complicated and the Lord loveth free labor.

And when this technology shall be embraced by thou and all thy house and thy deacons and thy deaconesses (Note: apparently not actually a thing Ed.) and such shifty persons as hang around the back of the church playing with the sound equipment then shalt thou forget in that day that these things were once ill spoken of and shall flush it all down the memory hole. So shalt thou put the Old Paths onto the Information Superhighway and so shalt thou profit.

Independent Baptist Book of Everlasting Rules and Requirements, 640(k)

posted from my iPhone 7

103 thoughts on “Commandments Concerning Technology”

    1. Note: That was said in the sing songy voice of one who has achieved king of the hill. 🙂

  2. So, Darrell, is this a picture of how you’re accessing the internet these days? Sorry, couldn’t resist.

    2. And lo I looked throughout the land. And I found not one faithful who didst still use the 5 & 1/4 floppy.

        2. That’s what I’ve been tellin’ ya.
          I’m not old enough to have cut holes in punch cards, though (except that we did vote that way in Texas for a while).

  3. Thou shalt be wary of those minions who shall endeavor to establish unto themselves a kingdom in the room of video, lest they insert video clips of animals leaping upon their kind, as did Melissa in that Nancy Grace incident. Thou shalt berate them lovingly in public, lest they succumb to the evil that dwelleth within technology and do not thy bidding.

  4. I always noticed the church electronics were behind the times, but the pastors all got new iphones the day they came out

    1. What’s REALLY rage-inducing is when you are trying to work in a ministry using old, broken equipment that is literally being held together with duct tape and prayer, and you ask the church to purchase newer equipment and you get denied because of the new building program. Then you get told that you can use a nicer piece of equipment that belongs to the church, however, you must kiss the rear end of the asst. pastor’s wife and get HER permission to use said equipment because SHE uses said equipment for music lessons to make extra money.

    1. Who is that guy and who does he think he is…?
      I’m sorry, but I literally feel sick to my stomach and had to quit a couple minutes into it.
      Getting ready to google more about him…
      Hoping it’s a joke!

      1. Ooookaaaay…. Sorry, but it wasn’t a bad dream. That guy is for “real” and I’m floored that someone like that calls himself a Pastor.
        I heard a lot of ridiculous sermons growing up, but I wouldn’t have sat through anything like that in my life. With that many men in the room, I can’t believe one of them didn’t stand up to that man. My husband sure would and we would have walked out.
        But, we also wouldn’t have walked “in” that kind of church to begin with. !!

  6. Back in the 1900s when the internet first came out. My old fundie church got a Windows 95 computer which had internet explorer included. Several people in the church threw a fuss over it having “Internet”. The (free) accountant proceeded to delete IE from that computer, essentially breaking the computer.

    I was the “free labor” that got called in to fix the problem. I made sure to wash off any porn bits that may have fallen off the internet super highway before approaching the pastoral PC.

    Upon arriving I passed by the school (also in the basement), a cute girl turned around and looked at me, it was her first day, and she received demerits for turning around to see who was coming in the door. We later got married and finally got out of that mess.

    Anyway, back to the computer. I fixed it for free. I did get a lecture in the office of the MoG for blaming the church accountant for doing that. Maybe I should have just said it was Satan and left it at that.

      1. Like I said earlier ^^… If my husband had been in that congregation and heard that “pastor” talk to those poor people like that…… Not even gonna finish.

        1. It is sad how cowed everyone is. Why is there no one to confront these pastors and show them how they are erring from the humble, loving shepherd they are supposed to be?

        2. Where have all the real men gone, and where are all the MOgs?
          Where’s the text-wise hurcules to deny the rising odds?
          Where is my white piano playing preacher boy?
          Upon his fiery soap box?
          At night when I sleep,
          I toss and I turn,
          And I dream of what he might scream…
          I need a preacher!
          I’m holdin’ out for a preacher till the rapture comes.
          He’s got to mean, and he’s to be raw,
          And he’s got to be fresh from the Bible College…

  7. And when thou dost relent and thy heart grow weak and thou dost allow a computer to be installed thou shalt in no wise grow lax in the pursuit of holiness. Thou shalt require that all computer screens shalt face public areas and that all thy minions shall hand over their watchwords to the pastor for he answers for your soul.

    Thou shalt be required to allow the pastor to read your Book of Face whenever he so desires for this is good and a never ending source of sermon material. Wising up and friending your pastor on a decoy account is of great naughtiness.

  8. When thy undershepherd doth make a total ass of himself by declaiming against something he read in The Onion thou shalt in no wise rebuke him by sending him a link to Snopes for thus is the church brought into disrepute.

    1. Nah, the church is already in disrepute, it’s just that the members are too isolated to notice they are separated in a bad way.

    2. Nah, the church is already in disrepute, it’s just that the members are too isolated to notice they are separated in a bad way.

        2. On the other hand, duplicate posting does get the numbers up, haymen? In other news, I was counted twice in Fundystan every time I was pregnant. So there we have the precedent for being counted twice.

  10. Amazing!! I have friends in a super fundy place that just THIS year were “allowed” to get Facebook by the CEO. Thus this is spot on.

    1. I have heard at least 2-3 sermons preaching against Facebook, yet within the past year, the MOG and every member of his family now has a Facebook account! Guarantee you that if I were to ask about it, and ask why Facebook is no longer evil, I would get the “Well I never said Facebook was bad PER SE, just blah blah blah” and be looked at as if I were the crazy one, and making things up.I ignored my MOG’s friend request because I heard he used Facebook to spy on the church members.

      1. The reason a fundy pastor will get a Facebook account is to spy on his minions, I mean his members.

      2. My wife came from a church like that; her uncle/pastor would preach against fb yet his entire family had fb accounts… He’d use his daughters’ and wife’s accounts to look up church members’ pages for sermon illustrations (I was one of those illustrations a few times… I say that very proudly).

    2. My pastor has never allowed anyone to get a Facebook account.
      Reason: Nobody ever thought they needed to ask her; they just did it. She didn’t mind.

  11. Fortunately, I can honestly say that while growing up in a small Fundy church, I didn’t hear ALOT of bashing of technology or other crap like that ,that are made into entire sermons instead of preaching on things that actually count in the Christian life. It could be cuz my dad (the pastor) didn’t know much about technology, so he didn’t have much to say about it one way or another I don’t think. haha. But now, in our modern world where technology is present every where, and evangelists, pastors, missionaries, youth workers, etc. all take the liberty & advantage of technology, one thing that drives me insane is how they still have the nerve to preach against things like women wearing pants, CCM music & other like topics, screaming out about how we are not to be involved and do things that the world does. yet they all just LOOOOVE their modern technology. whatever happened to being separate in their minds? and especially when such modern day luxuries can lead them to such ghastly sins as pornography, time wasting, lusting & a whole boat-load of other temptations. Sometimes the inconsistency just makes me want to scream!! Sometimes I have to really work hard to keep my mouth shut, when I’m with my fundy family on my husband’s side, as well as my family ( a fundy pastor’s family).

    2. I hear ya. I understand…completely!!! Sometimes I wish we could reveal who we really are on the internet and really VENT here….. It would feel so good.
      Too many people lurking with big mouths!

      1. In the interest of doing just that, let me be the first to use my entire name as my screen name. If anyone has a problem, I don’t mind at all discussing why I don’t use a KJV, don’t vote Republican, and disdain the kind of organizations so humorously lampooned herein.
        Who else will out themselves?

  12. Whenever this was argued growing up, I would ask why we didn’t all just become Amish. Much like socialists rarely actually want to move to Cuba and make $20 a month, Fundys don’t REALLY want to live this vein of nonsense that they preach.

    To most older pastors computers and the internet are magic technologies they’re not familiar with. So they know they can never control it. For that reason the people they want to control must shun it.

  13. The commandments are my favorite part of this blog. If they were all put in a book I would pay serious money for it.

  14. Ahh, the days when disks were truly floppy: my childhood. I actually used the truly floppy disk up through junior high and the smaller disks in high school. We got Internet, dial up that I loved to tie up the phone with, my freshman year in high school. That was 1996. My dad was and is still is into computers and he’ll be 68 next month. He was a electrical engineering major and a Computer minor. Yes, a Computer minor. I grew up with this stuff cluttered in parts of the house. The memories.

    What about tape drives? Remember zip drives? And twenty pound laptops?

    1. And I wandered throughout the land, and wondered, Is there a man (or woman) who canst remember Iomega 10 MB external drives? Tho I never didst own one I didst make money on their stock in the 1990s.

      1. Oh, yeah, I sure as heck remember them.
        I had a 20 mb external drive, but I don’t remember the brand. 20 mb seemed like a huge amount of memory at the time.

        1. My first computer had 3.5″ 1.44MB floppy disks (oh, how I lusted after the 3.5″ 2.88MB floppy disks that sadly never took off). My next computer, a quantum leap in performance, had an Iomega Zip drive that took 100MB disks. That was so much space I could hardly use it all!

        1. Yep, they had “Trash 80s” at a place I worked in the early 80s, but I didn’t use them much.

    2. I had to take a compusci course for my gen eds back in the Dark Ages. The requirement was to write a program and the magic had to be saved to a cassette tape. That was back in the day when gasoline still had lead in it.

  15. I just love the Independent Baptist Book of Everlasting Rules & Requirements. Especially cuz it needs to be updated about every decade.. sometimes earlier, with new rules & regulations as to how and how not to do stuff in the modern world. And Btw, they all have Bible verses to back them up! (Even though they are taken out of context, we don’t care to mention that. =) )

  16. Writing & posting this from an iPhone 7 hath verily revealed the nature of the threat of SFL unto me.

    1. I wondered about this – was this posted from the future? I thought iPhone 6 was the latest? But I don’t pay much attention to Apple, so maybe I just don’t know…

      1. You are correct. The 6 & 6+ were just released in Sept. There’s not even rumors about what the 6S next year will have, or the 7 in 2 years. 🙂

        2. If there is truly another iPhone 6 coming, then we know assuredly that Apple is of the devil whose mark is 666. We have long suspected this because it was an apple that caused Eve to lead Adam into sin in the garden, and women continue to lead men into sin with the Apple.

        3. Tiecey, that makes far more sense than you know, esp regarding anyone who’s had to deal with an Apple. 😀

      2. That’s what i was wondering too. just the other day, we were in Best Buy, and my husband was looking for the Iphone 6 and I could’ve swore it was the latest version. lol

  17. If thy church hath a web site, thou shalt ensureth that it hath been fully constructed, and that important information is not omitted. Verily, thou shalt also hath various fonts and colours so as to confound thy potential visitor who mayeth wanteth to vist thy wayside chapel while he traveleth, so that he shalt not forsaketh the assembly of the saints on the Lord’s Day. Thou shalt also includeth “KJO” in large, KJO type lettering so that the web reader doth know thy church is pure.

    1. Thou shalt also upon thy website post lengthy inscriptions concerning the veracity of the KJV and the stench in the nostrils of the Lord Almighty caused by those who pervert the god- breathed words penned within the holy pages of the only Word of God KJV by transcribing words which convey the messages of the Lord in a manner which is understandable to all.
      Thou shalt inscribe this message in rainbow font without regard to punctuation, for punctuation is a man-made construct intended to confound the mind of the holy man of God.
      Thou shalt in no wise summarize these arguments into neat bullet points, for God is not the author of bullet points.
      Nor shalt thou use paragraph breaks for these are an instrument of the devil intended only to allow the reader time to consider the logic of the previous paragraphs. Logic is an abomination.

  18. The MoG at my former fundy church regularly preached against technology of any kind. Never mind that for a while there were members of the congregation that made their living as IT professionals. He did not care if he directly insulted them and their way of making a living, he had a point to prove. The Internet was of the Devil, computers were the breeding grounds for all the ills against the MoG’s straight line of upright Christian thinking. Really, it was the worst mind control tactic employed, because most of us wimmins had Facebook and would regularly have discussions about the bad preaching on FB messenger later that Sunday night. Besides, he was afraid of sites like SFL, which were better than any sermon that the MoG could ever preach (sermons were often sprinkled with passages from Sword of the Lord.) Iphones were also a favorite subject to condemn. All the more reason for me to conveniently forget my Bible at home while we were still attending. reading my iphone Bible directly in view of those who could see. Sadly my iphone version was KJV.

    So glad to be outta that place.

    1. Glad I got out of there right before the whole internet explosion took place!!!
      I do remember a couple horror stories about internet affairs…Literally, demonic horror stories were told in the church…stuff that would make your hair stand on end…
      Looking back, I hope they were just making it up!

  20. I was a lucky girl in that I had my first personal computer (an Apple IIC+, tyvm) about a quarter of a century ago. We had an Atari 2600 (this was cutting edge, people!) gaming system (I was the queen of “Coconuts.”) I even remember playing with those old punched cards that my dad had to use for his computers at work — and that had to be at least 30 and probably more like 35 years ago.

    But even my technologically advanced family had its limits — woe unto those who got cable for they were certainly destined to HELL!

  21. I remember when the computers in the high school computer lab didn’t have hard drives. I remember the days when clip art was manipulated with scissors and rubber cement. I used to type PSAs for the public radio station on a massive old Selectric II.

    I love, love, love how easy it is to find an answer to any question, from the details of Mexican Spanish to the date of the earliest known flamingo fossil. But I kind of miss the days when it was possible to fix most of the technology in your own house or office with a screwdriver.

    1. I miss starting my vehicle with a screwdriver … gotta love Chryslers of a certain vintage.

    4. … But don’t keep us in suspense, Jenny–
      How old is the earliest known flamingo fossil?

      1. There actually aren’t any flamingo fossils, although a nest of eggs resembling flamingo eggs dated to 18 million years old was found in the Ebro Basin in Spain. However, the nest in which the eggs were found was significantly different from the flamingo and resembled the nest of modern grebes.

  22. My past fundy pastor wasn’t against technology, but I remember the day I sent him a link to a blog I thought he’d appreciate. A couple days later I stopped by the church office for some reason, and he came out of his office and said, “I wish you would have told me that it would take up 30 pages when I printed it!”

    Yes, he printed it. A blog.

    1. I’m always amazed at how few people know there are “Print Preview” and “Print Selected Text/Pages Only” faetures on their computers.

    2. hahaha! that’s so funny! i’m just imagining his face as one page after another comes pouring out… haha =)

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