Is the Smartphone
more Useful than God?
Process Theology in a Digital Age
A life-long friend in another city is bed-bound and on oxygen due to a terminal lung disease. He can take only nine steps before being out of breath. His smartphone is his link to me and to many others. We constantly text each other, share photographs, and talk on the phone. We are "together" through the smartphone. Despite my own reservations about the role of smartphones in human life, I am grateful for the way it facilitates our relationship. We are holding each other in loving ways, by a small device we hold in our hands. Is the smartphone more useful than God? It depends on what "useful" means. But I do know that God can work through the smartphone.
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Approximately 7 billion people around the world own smartphones. They function in people's lives as an:
- Alarm Clock
- Appendage of the Body
- Best Friend (Constant Companion)
- Bridge to the World
- Calculator
- Department Store
- Distraction
- Enemy of our Better Selves
- Health Monitor
- Impenetrable Maze
- Memory Bank
- Note Taker
- On-Demand Entertainer
- Personal Assistant
- Portable Encyclopedia
- Purse and Wallet
- Room of your own
- Substitute for Face-to-Face contact
- Swiss Army Knife (practical tool with many functions)
- Telephone
- Tempter
- Therapist (cure for loneliness)
- Time thief (takes us away from time better spent otherwise)
We find many of these things useful and many of them addictive, often at the same time. That's why we don't give up our smartphones. Can God do any of these things? No, says open and relational theology. There are things God can't do.
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Open and relational theologians say that God is "open and relational" in a loving way. God, they say, is an inwardly felt lure for the flourishing of life and a receptacle for all the world's joys and sufferings. God is not embodied in space and time, like a smartphone. But God is inside any living being that can feel its surroundings on its own terms, with a perspective of its own. We don't know if the smartphone is a sentient being of this kind. But we we do know is that God can work through things that are embodied.
Human beings are examples. On occasion human beings, too, can be open and relational. At least we can mediate God's love. We help others flourish. And certainly the more than human world - plants and animals, hills and rivers, trees and stars - can mediate the luring presence and love of God. Anyone who has loved a companion animal, or hiked up a gorgeous mountain, or sat in the presence of an ocean, knows what it is like to find God in nature.
So how about forms of technology? How about smartphones? Can they mediate the lure of God, even if, like mountains and bodies of water, they don't have feelings of their own.
If so, they would join other forms of technology that have transformed life and consciousness: the printing press, for example. It made the Bible, the Qur'an, and Torah available to countless numbers of people who might otherwise have had to rely solely on scholarly elites. I myself have a Bible on my smartphone. I carry the Bible in the palm of my hand. My point is that just as we interact with the natural world, so we interact with the technologies we create, and this interaction changes our lives. We create the technologies and they create us.
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It would be a mistake to think that technologies are unnatural. "Nature" means the entire web of mutual becoming and inter-existence: organic, inorganic, microscopic, macroscopic, terrestrial, celestial, actual, and virtual. Artificial intelligence is no less natural than human or animal intelligence. Machines and technologies are no less natural than beaver dams and ant hills. Not all forms of "nature" are healthy; and many are dangerous. But they are natural.
The printing press (15th century), the telescope (17th century), radio and television (20th century), the internet (late 20th to early 21st century), biotechnology and genetic engineering (21st century), and artificial intelligence and robotics (21st century) are among the new technologies that have made and still make a huge difference, And before them were myriad other forms of technology: the wheel, pottery, horticulture, the plow, writing, the arrow, the sword, and the bullet. The technologies we create help create us, for good and ill. The aim of God is to inspire us, inwardly, to create technologies that are good for the world and for us. What God seeks is a world of mutual flourishing.
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Three of the more recent technologies mentioned above converge in the smartphone. At face value, smartphones are internet-enabled devices, providing access to the web, social media, and various online services. They extend the reach of the internet by making it mobile and always accessible, thereby enhancing and complicating the impact the internet has on human consciousness. However, they also embody the spirit of radio and television by enabling the streaming of audio and video content, and they draw heavily on artificial intelligence through personalized recommendations, voice assistants, virtual shopping, and advanced security features. In the palm of our hands we carry a large portion of the future that we are creating and that will create us: the internet, biotechnology, and AI.
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Our "digital dilemma" arises from our deep dependence on digital technologies which serve multiple needs and but are ambiguous in their impacts. Consider the smartphone. It extends our senses and capabilities, shaping interactions, perceptions, and identity and yet many of us spend more time with it than is good for us, replacing and perhaps eroding our capacities for face-to-face interactions, patience, deep listening, time with others, time with nature, and time with ourselves.
We might speak of these technologies as neutral objects, devoid of agency, and then say that everything depends on how we "use" them, but in truth they are not neutral and they are not devoid of agency. At least they are not devoid of capacities to influence us, to act upon us and inside us, in ways that transcend our agency. They may not act intentionally and as conscious beings; but they do act, and in that sense they have agency.
How might we partner with digital technologies, smartphones for example, without becoming so dependent on them that we lose our souls in the process.
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I asked my smartphone for advice, using an AI app, and it gave me these suggestions. My very asking of the question, and its response, are an example of partnering.
- Set Boundaries: Establish clear limits on smartphone use, such as no phones during meals, family time, or before bed. Use app timers or focus modes to help manage usage.
- Mindful Usage: Be intentional about how and why you use your smartphone. Avoid mindless scrolling by setting specific goals for your phone usage, like learning something new or staying in touch with loved ones.
- Prioritize Face-to-Face Interactions: Make an effort to engage in more in-person conversations. Schedule regular meetups with friends and family, and be present during these interactions by keeping your phone away.
- Digital Detox: Regularly take breaks from your smartphone. This could be a few hours each day, a full day each week, or even a week-long retreat. Use this time to reconnect with yourself and your surroundings.
- Engage in Offline Activities: Cultivate hobbies and interests that don't involve digital screens. Whether it's reading a book, going for a hike, or practicing a sport, these activities can provide a healthy balance to your digital life.
- Reflect on Your Relationship with Technology: Periodically assess how your smartphone usage affects your well-being. Are there areas of your life being neglected? Make adjustments as needed to ensure a healthy balance.
- Use Technology for Good: Leverage your smartphone to enhance your life positively. Use apps that promote productivity, learning, and well-being, such as meditation guides, language learning tools, or fitness trackers.
- Practice Digital Minimalism: Focus on the essentials and reduce digital clutter. Uninstall unnecessary apps, turn off non-essential notifications, and streamline your digital environment to reduce distractions.
Its response was entirely dependent on the question I asked it; but its response was helpful and relevant to many forms of digital technology, including AI. The idea of partnering with the smartphone, and developing, as it were, a "relational" approach to it.
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It is arguable that the smartphone is more useful than God, because smartphones offer immediate and tangible benefits that impact daily life in practical ways. They facilitate instant communication, provide access to vast amounts of information, and enhance productivity with various tools and applications. Additionally, smartphones combine multiple functionalities—such as cameras, navigation systems, and health monitors—into one portable device, increasing their overall utility. They also support social connectivity, offer entertainment, and provide emergency assistance, making them reliable and indispensable in modern life. While the concept of God provides spiritual and moral support, the observable and consistent utility of smartphones in addressing everyday problems positions them as more practically useful in contemporary society.
The counterargument is that God is not even supposed to be "useful," and that the very idea that God ought to be useful is symptomatic of a technology-driven society, where everything is reduced to a commodity or a tool for convenience. God is a divine companion and friend, a loving presence, the ground of being, a cosmic guide, moral compass, source of peace, and, so process theologians argue, an everlasting repository for all things valuable.
Is God useful? Not in ways that the smartphone is useful. But God is useful in the ways just mentioned.
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There is still another way God may be useful. Perhaps God is useful in empowering us to follow some of the suggestions: for example, entering into digital detox, setting boundaries, and practicing digital minimalism as needed. Perhaps God is something inside us that helps us get perspective and act in ways that avoid addictions, including addiction to forms of technology that might otherwise become idols not icons.
The smartphone can be an icon when it functions to improve the flourishing of life and an idol when it becomes an object of addiction. Perhaps God is within us as a lure toward the respectful and liberating appreciation of icons.
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O Lord, free me from addiction to my smartphone. Let it become a means by which I help create a more loving, just, and joyful world. Let it also become a way that I get to know myself better. That I discover the depth of my own psyche. And let it become a way that I get to know You better.
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I do not know what role smartphones will play in the religion of tomorrow. They may disappear or become embodied in our brains. They may have shorter life spans than we realize, given the depths of the evolutionary process. But all things have short life spans in the cosmic scheme of things. People, hills, rivers, trees, and even stars die in time. The Earth will pass away. Teilhard de Chardin proposes that the universe is evolving into something much more than we can understand: a cosmic Love. And this evolution is God's evolving as well. Ilia Delio speaks of the not-yet-God. What role the smartphone plays in this evolution is not at all clear. Sometimes angelic and sometimes demonic. But we humans, too, are both angelic and demonic. Our lives are valuable in their own right, but they are also part of something more. Are smartphones more useful than God? Are we more useful than smartphones? We do not know. We live and move and have our being in God, yes, but also in uncertainty. The key is to hold onto our smartphones with a relaxed grasp.
- Jay McDaniel