There she lay behind my desk, sleek and sexy, humming softly. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on her. I had been introduced to her a year earlier but hadn’t taken much notice at the time. In the last couple of weeks, however, she had consumed me with passion. I couldn’t keep my mind on my work. My fantasies were running wild.
Finally will power was overcome. I closed my office door, and in spite of my wife’s warnings, I yielded to one of the most powerful attractions of contemporary pastors. I became utterly infatuated with my personal computer.
The idea of buying a PC seemed innocent enough at first. Wouldn’t it simply be an upgrade from my electronic typewriter? But gradually, dispassionate logic turned to moral fervor, especially when I considered how it would benefit others.
I would type my own correspondence, agendas, and proposals and thus free my secretary for other tasks. I would use a data base to make a mailing list-a certain help to our newsletter editor. The financial secretary’s life would be greatly eased if I kept a spreadsheet of our church’s finances. And clean, polished manuscripts promised coherent delivery from the pulpit. What congregation wouldn’t appreciate that?
Yet all those arguments paled when compared to one: it would save time! The computer would eliminate many repetitious tasks, and (dare I believe it?) I could do more calling and spend more time with my family.
Yes, as a minister of the gospel, I was morally obligated to purchase that computer. Naturally, I prayed before I made the momentous decision, and I took God’s utter silence as permission to proceed. In a couple of days, a new Kaypro 4 with twin 396K disk drives, packaged with WordStar and D-Base 11, lay on my desk beside a Brother HR-15 printer.
After four tumultuous years, my affair with PC has settled down. She’s been good to me in many respects. She frees my secretary’s time. She helps polish my preaching. She spares me many repetitive administrative duties time and again.
But she has also led me into many a temptation, and I’ve succumbed to every one.
Perhaps these temptations can only be resisted after much prayer and fasting (abstaining from the computer). But simple awareness of the lures of the personal computer can help. There are, in sum, seven principal sins caused by computer obsession.
Profligate writing
The new computer owner immediately notices the ease with which words flow on a word processor. Because we can neatly erase what we don’t like and quickly rearrange what we do, we feel free to put down anything that comes to mind.
Unfortunately, that’s exactly what most of us do. We are lured into the notion that writing is easy. Taken with the spontaneity of our output (not to mention its length), we don’t erase much; we only rearrange-until we become bored with computer fiddling. A local pastor whose newsletter column usually filled three-quarters of a page doubled his output when he began using a word processor.
We novices, therefore, might do well to remember that the finest speech in American political history, the Gettysburg Address, used only 268 words; that Psalm 23, perhaps the most comforting statement ever written, is composed of a mere 113 words; and that the most eloquent prayer composed, the Lord’s Prayer, contains only 71 words. And this article . . . well . . . was written with a word processor.
Computer abuse
Because the PC makes writing much less painful, I quickly was tempted to completely replace pen and pencil-a special temptation for those of us with horrible handwriting. So I began writing grocery lists, personal telephone directories, and things-to-do notes with the computer.
Like most novices, I failed to notice that even if the computer is on, I still must call up the word processing program, create or call the particular file, type it up, close the file, ready the printer, print the note, tear the page from the printer, and finally (!) tear the silly edges off the computer paper. Jotting the thought with pencil and paper appears an obvious solution. But not to the initiate.
Nor have I found the computer good at creating detailed outlines or addressing individual envelopes. Very simply, the computer is not the best tool for many writing tasks. The old-fashioned typewriter, pen, and pencil are still faithful friends.
Programming mania
Although not a problem for some owners, programming mania can become acute for addictive problem solvers.
For most repetitive tasks, a computer requires a “program,” a set of instructions telling the computer what to do. Many fine programs can be purchased to keep track of mailing lists, membership statistics, and finances, but often a church finds packaged programs don’t meet its particular needs. The compulsive pastor with but a smattering of computer programming may take that as a divine directive to write a program-for the sake of the church, of course.
I had already written a program to type mailing labels for our newsletter when a new challenge confronted me. The publisher of our pictorial directory needed the names and addresses in a different order from our mailing label list.
No problem, I thought. I would simply adjust the label program and out would come the new address list. Hundreds of adjustments and dozens of hours later, the addresses finally printed out as needed. Of course my secretary, using her typewriter, could have retyped the list in two or three hours.
Speed demonology
I will avoid theological arguments concerning the existence of “speed demons,” but there is little doubt among computer users that some unreal force soon refashions their minds and reorders their sense of time.
For example, my printer types fifteen characters a second, which translates to about 120 to 150 words per minute. In light of my usual pace of fifty words per minute, I was thrilled when I first bought it. I soon discovered, however, that my printer was the slowest model on the market. Simply knowing that some can type up to 160 characters per second (1,400 words a minute!) frustrates me. My printer takes forever to print a document.
That’s not the worst of it. My word-processing program takes three seconds to load on command. Every time I call it up, I grit my teeth because during two of those seconds the company logo flashes on the screen. I’ve heard there’s a program that can eliminate those two seconds. I know my life will be measurably happier when I find it.
Frankly, I have yet to be exorcised of this demon. Even prayer and fasting subject it only for brief interludes.
Equipment greed
With the onset of speed demonology comes equipment greed. Once you discover the lethargy of your equipment, you yearn for something to make it faster. So I want to add: quad-density disks, which store more information on diskettes (meaning less need of disk swapping in the middle of a task); a hard-disk drive, which eliminates the need of diskettes altogether; and RAM disks, which halve a computer’s response time. Or I could simply junk my entire system for the state of the art.
Of course, in the computer world less time means more money. Significant improvements start at $300 and often have no foreseeable end. And when caught in the throes of this sin, I waste considerable time thumbing through computer catalogues, desperately recalculating my finances, and dreaming about the flush that will come when I have one and a half more seconds every morning.
Perfection obsession
Because I can make documents absolutely perfect, perfection has become a standard rather than a goal. I’m no longer content with mere excellence.
So, when a letter comes out with one misspelling, the entire letter gets called up, corrected, and reprinted. If I leave something out of an agenda, ditto. The examples proliferate with the wasted paper and time. I increasingly expect to end up with documents looking as if they were printed during the millennium.
Computer world-view
This sin demonstrates most profoundly the hold a PC can finally gain. It usually begins with an innocent thought: You know, in many ways the computer is like the life of the Christian . . .
Soon you find yourself describing the invocation as “booting up for worship” or prayer as being online with the Bulletin Board Service in the sky.” And when you find yourself paraphrasing sacred Scripture-“I may be able to speak in the tongues of men and in computer programming language, but if I have not love . . .”-know that your soul is in dire straits.
To sum up, my colleagues, these are the seven most powerful sins known to the computer-age pastor. But there is hope. After all, God’s grace is sufficient to forgive even high-tech sins, and God’s power can help us overcome even electronic principalities and the powers of the PC.
Nonetheless, we must be on our guard against the wiles of the computer. Input the program of God, place it in the disk drive of your being, use his control-key commands to guide your . . . Oh no! . . . May the Big Mainframe in the Sky have mercy on us all.
-Mark Galli
Grace Presbyterian Church
Sacramento, California
Copyright © 1988 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
