Is this Cool, or What?

My wife sent me this link with the video that shows below: iPhone 5 with “Rubberband” Electronics Turns into iPad mini [Concept Video].




Wow!

Is there any other immediate response that one would expect upon first viewing this?

Of course, no such device actually exists.  But the animation is fantastic.

Do people think beyond the “Wow” moment after viewing this video?  Do people consider how short the durability of such a gadget will be?

Do people consider at all how this sort of video is programming their thinking?

The music chosen is powerful.  It creates the immediate sense of something heroic being accomplished.  It leaves a person feeling as though the creation of this gadget is going to accomplish liberation and empowerment of the people who own them.

If one really considers what these gadgets are designed to accomplish, the exact opposite purpose will be perceived.  They are designed to make people more dependent upon the already failing cellular networks.  They are designed to bind people to these tracking devices.

Notice what is being taught about genuine customer service where a person can expect to have actual contact with another person and obtain real help when things go awry.  We are being taught even in this video that such personal interaction will no longer be available and that a computer will tell us what we can and will do.  Don’t bother calling.  All that you will receive is an extended litany of harassing, preprogrammed automation.

All of our personal information will be (and is) stored in a massive data base which will be immediately accessible to those who have the right connections.

In the meantime, the smaller independent businesses are being eliminated and real jobs are evaporating.  Freedom to operate and function independently is being eliminated.  Thinking that stretches beyond what is promoted by those who have predetermined the new societal programming is diminishing.

Thus the title for this post is: “Is this cool, or what?” with the emphasis on the “or what.”

Do most people even ask “or what” anymore?

I find it alarming to realize that if I drive away from the house without my cell phone that my first thought is that I should drive back to get it, even if I am only going to the store to purchase a gallon of milk.  This has actually happened on a couple of occasions recently.  I was aghast when I heard myself think, “Oh, what will I do?  What if I need to call Stephanie with a question?”  For crying out loud!  I was only to be away for 15 minutes or perhaps half of an hour!

Yikes!  I’ve been programmed!

And this is only a tiny example of the social programming that is prevalent in society today.

Perhaps it is time for people to stand back a bit to gain a broader perspective and to begin asking the “or what” and not merely allowing the reflex response of “Wow!  How cool!”


The Lord Jesus gave a very powerful warning:

     No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.  (Matthew 6:24)

Mammon is treasure, things, possessions.

What happens when mammon becomes one’s god?  What happens when a person becomes dependent upon and puts one’s trust in mammon?  Does one not subject oneself and willingly make oneself the slave of the things that one loves?

Furthermore, who in this world controls these things, these gadgets and the networks through which they are connected?

Are these not questions that people would do well to ask themselves?

I myself find it amazing that so many people are afraid of being enslaved to God and religion but eagerly enslave themselves to welfare and other government assistance, to gadgetry and those who sell and control the gadgetry, to social media, to health care providers, to insurance companies, to Social Security payments, and to employers who provide benefit packages.  All of these demand subjugation and servitude.  They all offer very low levels of security.  And, they all ultimately fail those who give them their trust.

Yet God, the Lord, who makes Himself known through the Scriptures and through His means of grace, gives freely even to those who refuse to trust Him.  He makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall for both the just and the unjust.  He gave His Son for the sake of the entire world, even those who would reject and hate Him and work against all of the good that He desires to provide for all.  He promises a life of hope and peace and contentment and joy to all who trust Him and receive His grace as He gives it. What is His demand?  He demands that we receive His gifts and His mercy and His love through the means that He has established, means that guarantee that the true giver is acknowledged so that His beloved do not cut themselves off from Him and the life that He gives.

Oh my.  What a meanie!  “Trust Me and receive My gifts and life as I give them so that you remain in the safety of my Communion.”  Oh what a tyrant!

Yet those who do trust Him and abide in His Word, acknowledging the goodness of His commands and precepts, do indeed enjoy what He promises to work through them.  Even those who do not truly know Him and do not truly live in His Communion, when they embrace what is taught in the Commandments and other declarations of what is good, they do indeed experience the goodness therein proclaimed.  Such is the way of this God and His decrees.  What He says is.  What He promises actually is observed.  And this efficacious way is everlasting.

Test this with a cell phone or other gadgetry.  Test this with your own feelings.  Test this with your own bodily strength.  Test this with your own mental prowess.  Test this with the health care industry.  Test this with your government and leaders.  Test this with your family and friends.  Test this with your whatever.

As for myself, I know that the Lord is faithful.  He never fails.  Even when I imagine that He fails, I eventually see that His promise in Romans 8 is true:

     And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to   his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate   to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified. What shall we then say to these things? If God   be for us, who   can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?  (Romans 8:28-32)

I may not always perceive the good that the Lord is working, especially through the hardships and suffering that I face.  For sometimes the good is being worked for someone else, someone who observes from a distance the faithfulness of the Lord in preserving me through the fiery trials that I face.  Sometimes the lessons that I learn I do not realize that I have learned.  Yet the good has been worked for me, most especially the good of not losing hope and not despairing completely and the good of not becoming the monster that I would otherwise become.  Looking to the Lord and waiting upon Him in faith is truly a great and even immeasurable good.

For me, this is the “or what” that is truly exciting!  This is the gift that truly stretches to cover all of my needs through faith.  It especially stretches to cover my most essential need, the need for forgiveness and the new life of holiness that exists only in true communion with Christ.  In Him my guilt and my shame and my fears are drowned and washed away and replaced with confidence and freedom to live with hope and joy.

Why would I ever trade this for the temporal mammon that fails?



+ + +