These days most technology is complex and changes quickly, but technological change also comes at a lower level. Do you remember baling wire? I do. Bales of hay used to be held together with wire. The resulting bales were heavy and hard to handle. Even wearing thick gloves the wire hurt your hands. The real genius of baling wire, however, was in the other ways it could be used. If you’re old enough, you may remember someone saying something like, “His car was held together with baling wire.” Baling wire was replaced with twine, which still had other uses, but not as many as baling wire. Today duct tape has replaced baling wire and twine as auxiliary technology. You can fix almost anything with duct tape, and just last year the astronauts repaired a hole in the outer skin of the space station using duct tape.

Three-in-One oil is another example of low level technology changes. When I was young, every family had a can of it. Even though it had many uses a can lasted a long time, almost as long as the bottle of hot sauce in the refrigerator. It has been supplanted by WD-40, which has a myriad of uses, but even it has been partially replaced with silicone spray. Since the movie My Big, Fat Greek Wedding came out, Windex has also been giving WD-40 a run for its money.

We can even trace technological change with respect to the Bible. In the Old Testament God’s word was recorded on parchment scrolls. The early New Testament Church instead used book-like codices; this was a fairly major technological change, for it enabled the reader to directly access a specific passage. Probably the biggest technological effect on the Bible was the invention of the printing press. Before, Bibles were few in number and expensive. Afterwards they were relatively inexpensive and widely available. Coming just before the Reformation, it enabled its ideas to be quickly and widely spread. Literacy rates quickly increased, resulting in broader personal knowledge of the Bible.

The motivation for the title of this blog occurred one Sunday evening, when I said to Paulette, “I have Bible Study tomorrow afternoon. I need to go charge my Bible.” I read my Bible on my iPad, and I love it. I can change type size and font, toggle between the NIV translation and The Message, quickly search for related passages, and read study guide commentaries from a sidebar. Supposedly you can even highlight passages and make personal notes, but that seems to be beyond me.

All of these technological changes have helped spread God’s word and made it easier to understand, but it does not replace something critical – the role of individual Christians and the Church. Reading the Bible and believing are different things, and Christians reflecting God’s unconditional love through their love for Him and others cannot be replaced by technology.

Jim