Plans and projects are now easily carried out with little or no hitch these days, all thanks to advancements in technology.

Technology is thriving in all areas of life and virtually in all parts of the world. Religion is also a beneficiary of this advancement.
However, the sacredness we claim to be in religion which made it special to every human who believe in existence of a supreme is fast fading away.

For instance, two of the most popular religion globally, Christianity and Islam, now have their 'holy books' in electronic form (soft copy) which makes it more accessible to anybody who wish to have them installed on thier devices be it smartphones, tablets, laptops, destktop, e.t.c. In fact, before now, some electronic devices were dedicated for these religions. For example, the old e-bible which was once popular in the early 1990s.

Now, looking at the use of phones as a Christian in church and a Muslim duirng prayers.

As a Christian.
My argument is why as a Christian would I go to church with just a phone? If am asked to raise my bible up as some preacher does, will I raise my phone up?

Below are the reasons why going to church with phone as Bible looks absurd to me;

1. Temptation to login to my social app such as Facebook, Twitter and so on and turning off my data would a way to punish myself because I see it as punishment and not discipline since the preaching is boring. A church member is meant to forget everything he has in this world and dedicate the little he's spending in the church to meditation.

2. Show of gadgets: of course, no one will claim to be innocent of this a particular time. If you claim to be innocent of show off, atleast you must conveted another person's own. Though, stealing may be far from what you feel or jealousy if you say, may be far from you at that instance but you will definitely wish to have such device.

The show off is mostly seen among students or some ladies generally irrespective of their ages. Yes, it's true. Most student would prefer buying an expensive gadgets to eating balance diet or even acquiring study materials to boost their knowledge. An instance is buying an unlock iPhone for $900, only to start begging for food to eat or borrow airtime from the network provider to make call or subscribe for internet connection.

3. The hard copy of the Holy Bible is said to be sacred but can we say our phone is also sacred like the Holy Bible.

A man who burn or tear the Holy Bible would be seen as an agent of the devil. What would be say of a man who burn or decides to destroy his expensive iPhone Samsung Galaxy S8 with Holy Bible installed on it? Most of us will call him a waster.

Do you know how many times I have formatted my phone because of one reason or the other but I cannot burn my old Bible because I have a new one.

4. The same phone some people used to watch pornography materials or what the religion negates is where we have the Holy Bible installed and still use it to pray. Lol!!

Overall, to be honest, we don't respect our phone, not to even talk of the app on it the way we do to our hard copy Holy Bible.

As a Muslim.
Imagine and Imam leading the normal Jumu'ah every Friday via his smartphone. I am very sure 80 to 90% of the congregation will murmur inside the heart.

There is no how a muslim cleric would say he want to have a quiet time with his smartphone or Tablet connected to internet without getting little distraction from one of this social network apps. If he does not, someone would call him or even this network services knows how to distract someone with their unnecessary text messages.

Conclusion.
I am not condemning the infilteration of technology in religion but saying that in the aspect of Holy Books, we may loose the sacredness of the religion to technology as the days go by.

André.

http://www.tellforceblog.com/2017/05/christianity-and-islam-have-lost-their.html