Article September 20, 2010 Issue

KEEPING PACE WITH TODAY'S TECHNOLOGY

Rick Dearborn

Last month, spirituality.com featured an online chat with Rick Dearborn, Director of Digital Media at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. He is also in the part-time practice of Christian Science healing. This chat has been edited for readability. To listen to and/or read the whole chat, go to spirituality.com/chats/technology.

How can we help someone through prayer who is obsessed with computer games and has lost the ability to focus and interact normally?

The important thing to ask ourselves is, "What are we focusing on, and what are we identifying with?" Often, people who obsessively identify with something are trying to find a way to feel connected in their lives. They may not feel connected with people, but might feel connected with devices. Mary Baker Eddy in her book The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, said, "To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science" (p. 160). So the only connection we have to focus on is that connection with God. And anyone who has an obsessive, addictive situation in their life, really, is seeking God in some way. They're just looking in the wrong direction.

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