Technological Promise and Moral Reflection

Yesterday I stumbled across a piece at NPR called "'Sexting': A Disturbing New Teen Trend?"

I think that this is an important, though disconcerting, piece about the impact that technological change and development has on our society. N and I have had an ongoing dinner conversation about the boons and banes of technology with a couple of wonderful friends of ours. Last night, as we were talking about this article and reflecting on a previous conversation we'd had about the strange reality of Facebook, we began to think some about a very important question: How is our technological advancement outpacing our ability for moral reflection? Do we place so much pride in technological development that we cannot proactively think through the ethical implications of the very things that we create? (Now, that said, I do understand that most moral reasoning develops by hindsight reflection on things that have happened, but I don't think that is necessarily the best approach to moral reasoning and development.)

Here is one of the problems that I see, when our technology so outpaces our thinking and reasoning regarding its moral and ethical possibilities and pitfalls, we begin to allow the technology to become a, if not the, major shaping factor in our lives. In my opinion, this is an especially big danger for those of us who have grown up in particular Christian traditions that have not instilled in us the ability to reason theologically about morality and everyday life, but have instead based moral righteousness on two or three big pet ethical issues (primarily substance abuse and things that happen below the waistline).

As my friend J said last night, we are at a time where certain things can happen that were never possible before. All respect to Qoheleth, but J is right. These are new things under the sun. But that does not mean that the skills necessary to navigate these waters are completely new. Rather, we need to learn to move beyond a "pattern" reading Scripture, at least in the way "pattern" has been idolized in my particular Christian tradition, to what Stephen Fowl calls an analogical ethic based on deep reflection of our experience in light of the story of Jesus. This would move us beyond the false assumption that there is a simple one-to-one, black-and-white correspondence between Scripture and our own experience to the need for deep and ongoing reflection about the things we are engaging.

Now, fighting my inner temptation to write too much more, I simply ask these questions:

• What does it mean to be morally virtuous in our technological age?
• How is our technology shaping the ways we live and understand ourselves and others?
• What avenues do you have in your congregations, small groups, of among your friends for deep reflection on what it means to be human, to live in community, and to imagine a fully embodied morality?
  
• How can we begin to empower people in our communities of faith with skills needed for deep moral reflection?