Has technology replaced Christian faith?
In Luke chapter 9, Jesus deputizes his disciples to go and minister as representatives of God’s Kingdom, giving them “power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases” (Luke 9:1). Note the distinction. Demons were to be cast out; diseases were to be healed. The former was spiritual, the latter was physiological. This contrast matters in our present technocratic age. In an interview prior to his death, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks described how modern technology had come to replace functions traditionally delivered from within the religious realm. Look at where we are right now in the evolution of human civilization. To explain the world today, we don’t need revelation, we have science. To control it, we don’t need oracles and magic, we have technology. To control power we don’t need the prophets, we have elections (even if sometimes they go the wrong way). If we are ill, we don’t go to a priest, we go to a doctor. If we are depressed, we don’t need the book of Psalms, we can take a