This month's reflections are from InterVarsity chaplain and Chesterton House board member Christian Anible:

Five years ago, as we were saying good-bye to the twentieth century and still laughing over the Y2K scare, I was still fiercely declaring my intention never to own a cell phone. I refused to accept an electronic tether or be another of the dupes whose phone rang in the middle of an important meeting. I gleefully despised Robin Williams' grown-up Pan in Hook, allowing his cell phone to interrupt precious moments with his children, and cheered loudly when he threw the damnable item out the window to ring, forsaken, on the lawn.

Ken Myers, host of Mars Hill Audio, published an editorial that April in which he proposed, "Certainly there are times when cell phones should be turned off or left at home. Some restaurants now require guests to disable their cell phones while dining. This shows respect for the ambience of their dining rooms and honors the desire of other diners not to be forced into the role of eavesdropper." He went on to urge "that Christian people in particular give attention to cell phone etiquette. A thoughtful set of manners regarding cell phones could be a small but significant way of reducing the sum total of dehumanizing behavior in American culture."[1]

Lest we imagine that only Christians have such stuffy notions, The Cornell Daily Sun ran an editorial in which Linda Goodman bemoaned "an epidemic of cell phone usage that seems to have run rampant through the Hill." She concluded, "As I observe interrupted meals, and the lack of peaceful walks across campus I am saddened. I've even heard phone chatter coming from stalls in the ladies room causing me to wonder if we are nearing a time when privacy at any level is an impossible goal. Perhaps we will soon forget how to enjoy quiet, and what that even means."[2]

My own resolve finally flagged when one of my children was ill and I wanted to be accessible on short notice. I found the least expensive plan available and gave my phone number to no one but immediate family. It was an "emergency phone"-nothing more.

But it wasn't long before I became enamored with the ease of placing calls in tight spots. Then I started giving the number to other people in those "one-time" situations where it would be nice to be accessible.  I expect you can guess the rest of the story. Now my cell phone is my primary business line, my wife and son have their own units, and I never leave home without the little monster strapped to my belt. Yes, my friends, I've sold out.

The whole business still troubles me. In exchange for all that convenience, I have spent many hours on hold waiting for customer service in vain attempts to rectify billing and service problems, and have had plenty of unwelcome interruptions-not to mention dozens of unintelligible connections and dropped calls. And the potential for evil only expands as we get "better" at using the technology.

Last year Cornell Professor Jeff Hancock asked students to record how many lies they told in a week and the communication medium they used when they lied. The results? Subjects told lies in 14 percent of e-mails, 21 percent of instant messages, 27 percent of face-to-face contact and a whopping 37 percent of phone calls. According to Hancock, the reason students told so many lies by phone is because of the physical distance created by the phone. Simply put, it's harder to lie to someone's face."[3]

As a matter of fact, you can even join an "alibi club" in which members lie for one another. Need a way to get out of an unpleasant date? Get someone to call you with an "emergency." Want to make the old "had-to-stay-late-at-work" excuse sound more convincing? Have someone else call your wife with the bad news.[4]

I could go on about cell phones, or I could turn to any of the many other new communication or entertainment technologies so ubiquitous in our society, or how computers are changing the way we think.[5] How do all these gadgets affect our lives?

Lisa Ryan, Director of the Cornell College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Counseling and Advising office, recently told the Christian Faculty/Staff Forum that her office has seen a steady rise in students with personal and academic problems. One of the key contributing factors is the isolating effect of these technologies. Students get less and less "face time"-actual physical presence-and they're suffering in profound ways.

Which brings me back to Ken Myers's editorial. He thinks the cell phone manners he is advocating "could demonstrate the high value that Christians place on embodiment, expressed in our doctrines of Creation, Incarnation, and Resurrection." He continues,

This year's annual Upstate New York Faculty Conference, co-sponsored by Chesterton House and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, brings Dr. David Lyon, a sociologist from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario to guide us these matters. The conference is titled "Speeding and Shrinking: Living Biblically in Technology-Saturated Times." Full information is at the Chesterton House web site. We hope you can join us for a biblical exploration of matters like mobility, technology and relating, along with tentative socio-theologies of motor cars, computers, digital cameras, microwaves and, yes, cell phones.

- Christian Anible

[1] Ken Myers, "Dehumanizing Tendencies Should Be Put on Hold," Dallas Morning News, April 1, 2000.

[2] Linda Goodman, "How Not to Ring in Thanksgiving Break, The Cornell Daily Sun, November 21, 2000.

[3] Missy Kurzwell, "Ya Wanna Lie? Use the Phone," The Cornell Daily Sun, February 26, 2004.

[4] Elisa Batista, "Phone Becomes Alibi for Liars," Wired, May 14, 2004.

[5] See the remarkable article by Sherry Turkle, "How Computers Change the Way We Think" in the January 30, 2004 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education Review, available to subscribers online at http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v50/i21/21b02601.htm.

[6] Myers, op. cit.

Weekly when Cornell is in session:

Fridays, 1:00-5:00pm -- Resource Room Open Hours

Ryan Messmore, Trinity Forum Academy

Cornell Christian Fellowship

Auditorium D, Goldwin Smith Hall              

"Speeding & Shrinking: Living Biblically in Technology-Saturated Times"

Dr. David Lyon, Sociologist, Queen's University

Upstate NY InterVarsity Faculty Conference

One World Room, Anabel Taylor Hall

Register: http://www.chestertonhouse.org

Dr. Ian Hutchinson, Physicist, MIT

Graduate Christian Fellowship

Big Red Barn

Movie Night:  "Big Fish"

Cornell Christian Fellowship

Auditorium D, Goldwin Smith Hall

All Chesterton House events are open to the public.

Dale Ahlquist & Chuck Chalberg

135 Basil Hall, St. John Fisher College, Rochester

Rochester, NY Chesterton Society

Featuring Steven Garber and others

3rd Annual Summer Institute on Faith & the University

Christian Study Center, Gainesville, FL

http://summerinstitute.christianstudycenter.org

Emerging technologies, of course, do have their benefits.  One such benefit is the opportunity to subscribe to daily devotionals by email, such as Chesterton House advisory board member D.A. Carson's For the Love of God.  Carson's reflections walk through the Bible over the course of a year, always emphasizing the unity of Scripture and the history of redemption.  I have subscribed for one full year and recommend it highly.  For more information, or to subscribe, see http://www.christwaymedia.com.  Occasionally Carson breaks out in song, as with these reflections on the resurrection:

They came alone:  some women who remembered him,
Bowed down with spices to anoint his corpse.

Through darkened streets, they wept their way to honor him--

The one whose death had shattered all their hopes.
"Why do you look for life among the sepulchers?

He is not here.  He's risen, as he said.

Remember how he told you while in Galilee:

The Son of Man will die--and rise up from the dead."

The two walked home, a study in defeat and loss,

Explaining to a stranger why the gloom--

How Jesus seemed to be the King before his cross,

How all their hopes lay buried in his tomb.

"How slow you are to see Christ's glorious pilgrimage

Ran through the cross"--and then he broke the bread.

Their eyes were opened, and they grasped the Scripture's truth:

The man who taught them had arisen from the dead.

He was a skeptic:  not for him that easy faith
That swaps the truth for sentimental sigh.
Unless he saw the nail marks in his hands himself,

And touched his side, he'd not believe the lie.

Then Jesus came, although the doors were shut and locked.
"Repent of doubt, and reach into my side;

Trace out the wounds that nails left in my broken hands.

And understand that I who speaks to you once died."

Long years have passed, and still we face the fear of death,
Which steals our loved ones, leaving us undone,
And still confronts us, beckoning with icy breath,

The final terror when life's course is run.

But this I know:  the Savior passed this way before,
His body clothed in immortality.

The sting's been drawn:  the power of sin has been destroyed.

We sing:  Death has been swallowed up in victory.

-D.A. Carson

The first two verses of this poem are a meditation on part of Luke 24:1 - 8, 13 - 25.  The last two verses draw on other resurrection accounts (John 20:24 - 29; Heb. 2:14 - 15; 1 Cor. 15:50 - 58).  It may be sung to the Londonderry Air ("Danny Boy").

In December we announced that two Cornell faculty families have pledged a generous matching challenge grant designed to encourage a broad base of friends and alumni to give generously toward the ministry's vision of assisting students integrating faith with learning.  We are seeking to raise $200,000 by January 2006 in order trigger the full $100,000 matching grant.  We have currently raised just over $25,000 from individuals toward this goal.  We invite you to prayerfully join us in this fundraising campaign.  Future plans for Chesterton House begin with hiring a full-time director and increasing our level of programming, including offering classes for credit, hosting multiple reading groups, mentoring, and developing new on-line resources.  More information, including guidelines for the matching gift campaign, can be found at http://www.chestertonhouse.org/funding.

"For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men: the solution is a technique."

-CS Lewis