For my children.

I was in Darty recently (a French analogue to Best Buy) with my kids.  We were looking at a Sony TV, oohing and aahing over how svelte it was.  As we stood there, two realizations hit me.  First, TVs look cool today.  I mean, really cool, as in, scifi hadn't the foggiest clue when I was young just how cool the TV itself would someday look.  Thirty years after my birth, they are barely recognizable as family members to the gigantic CRTs of yesteryear.  Second, I realized how much things have changed that play on the television now versus thirty years ago.

That realization was much more depressing.

I grew up watching a lot of the same stuff that my dad grew up watching.  The Dick Van Dyke Show, Hogan's Heroes, Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy.  I also was able to enjoy the golden age of Disney television programming with shows like Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, and Talespin.  I would sprint home from  school to catch Bill Nye the Science Guy, Reading Rainbow, and the live action show "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?".  Saturday nights were PBS nights, where we would match wits against David Suchet's perfectly-realized interpretation of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot while feasting on burritos.

MTV was, of course, on the air when at that time.  There was definitely still trash to be found, but my parents didn't have cable, and they didn't let us watch whatever was on or whenever we wanted to.  From the age of about nine onward, I was allowed to watch Bill Nye, Reading Rainbow, and Carmen Sandiego for "free", but all other TV had to be consumed on Saturday or Sunday.  I could earn an hour and a half per week by reading 200 pages of approved books and another hour and a half by reading 200 more pages.  Family movies didn't count towards my time, and later I could swap movie time for Nintendo time.  My mother would get our reading goals from the teacher for the BookIt! program and then go into school and tell our teacher to triple our requirements.

In short: my parents were pretty smart.

We try to do the same.  We try to ensure that our children never watch a movie that we haven't seen already.  We try not to use the TV as a babysitter (I failed miserably at this while my wife and I were both in language school, although then I had the kids watching a lot of French TV, so at least it was educational...right?).  When we got the kids a tablet, I removed any method for them to access the internet, leaving the only apps on it the Kindle app (with public domain classics like Tom Sawyer and Anneof Green Gables, using MY login) and an audio player with Librivox books.  We refuse to allow games to be installed on it.  We refuse to use the Google Play store.  We hold our children to minimum reading times every day and I expect those who can write to give me book reports.  We discuss their books around the kitchen table.  And yet, I worry.

I worry that they will not be able to distinguish truth from culture.  I worry that they will live in a way that sees them staring into a screen more than looking a real person in the eye and having a connection.  I worry that they will buy into the literal and figurative crap that is being served on phones, tablets, media players, PCs, consoles, televisions, and virtual reality displays.  I worry that, like me, they will someday be caught off guard by pornography or that they will lose their ability to focus on tasks because they have trained their brains to operate like a web browser with 35 tabs open, always consuming, rarely creating.  I worry that they will live virtually while virtually not living at all.  I worry that they will not value privacy or modesty or honesty or legality and that they will freely give away their lives and the lives of their loved ones for convenience and social acceptance.

And so, here I sit at 2 AM, worrying.  However, I really do believe that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and that it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness.  I also believe that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.  The answer is in Scripture and the Holy Spirit.  It has to be, or God is a liar and my life is a sham.  So, over the course of a few blog posts, I'm going to prayerfully and with humility try to find the answer to the question: what is the foundation for a Biblical theology of technology?  Please pray, think, and converse with me as these weeks go by.