Whether you feel overloaded by all the information that’s coming at you, or are thrilled by the opportunities it presents, you’ll find some solid spiritual tools to work with in this lively, fast-moving chat. Rick Dearborn says the important thing is to keep everything in balance. He notes that even Jesus, who was out healing people every day, took time to leave the crowds and spend time in prayer. And he says we have a right to have that balance also.

Rick responds to questions about how much technology we actually need; how to overcome the feeling that one can’t work with technology; how to deal with computer viruses; and how to conquer addiction to computer games and other influences. He also comments on questions about technology’s effectiveness in business and on working with employees who are resistant to it.

A theme that runs through the whole discussion is the importance of loving God and loving your neighbor. Rick discusses how letting these inform your decisions will bring balance and harmony to your work with technology.

The transcribed text has been edited for clarity.

Rosalie Dunbar: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. My name is Rosalie Dunbar and I’ll be your host for the next hour. Today we’ll be taking questions on the subject, “Keeping pace with today’s technology” and our guest is Richard Dearborn. Rick is a Director of Digital Media at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois, and is in the part-time practice of Christian Science. Rick, do you have some thoughts to get us started?

Rick Dearborn: Sure do, Rosalie, and again, thanks for having me, really appreciate being here. This is a topic that’s very close to my heart. You know, we think today that digital media is something new and that we talk about being the digital age, but that’s really not the case. A lot of people don’t realize that the very first digital medium that we ever had was the telegraph back in the 1800s.

Rosalie: Good point.

Rick: And that really changed everything, because that was the first time when people could find out information immediately. And that was the beginning of the age we’re in now. I read recently somewhere that back in those days, as compared to now, a person in those days would be exposed to about the same amount of information in one year as we experience every day in one week. That’s a lot to deal with, isn’t it?

Rosalie: Yes.

Rick: But there’s two sides to that. One is, we might feel overloaded, like where we’ve got all this stuff coming at us all the time, but it’s also wonderful. We’ve found wonderful new ways we can communicate with relatives and friends in far-flung places, and it also helps us know better in the world what needs to be prayed about every day. Keeping this all in balance, we have to discover whether or not these tools are things that we would use as tools, or whether the tools use us. And I think that’s primarily what we’re going to talk about today. It’s how to keep all of that in balance. Over two thousand years ago, Jesus had to deal with pretty much the same issue. He was out in the multitudes every day, healing thousands of people, but even Jesus, periodically, had to retire from the crowds to go up in the mountains to refresh himself spiritually by communing alone with God. And it’s really about our connection with God that’s the most important thing in our lives. And that’s what we’re going to talk about—how to find that balance between all this information and entertainment we get, and maintaining that balance of our connection with God.

Rosalie: I think that sounds wonderful, and we have some people with some questions so we could get started. This is from Julie in Bellevue. She says: “Could you share an experience with helping someone through prayer who is obsessed with computer games and had lost ability to focus and interact normally?”

Rick: Well, I think the important thing there is we all have to ask ourselves, “What are we focusing on, and what are we identifying with?” I think people who obsessively identify with something are trying to find a way that they feel connected in their lives. And they may not feel connected with people, they might find they’re feeling connected with devices. But I think to the degree that we learn to identify with God, we don’t lose any shred of our identity, we actually find it. My favorite statement that Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, made in her book The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, she 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 it’s really all about what we decide we’re going to focus and think about, and really, the only connection we have is that connection with God. And anyone who is seeking an obsessive, addictive situation in their life, really, is seeking God in some way. They’re just looking in the wrong direction, and all we have to do is wake them up to where the true sense of God is, and cause that change to take place.

Rosalie: How would you do that?

Rick: Well, I think the important thing is to sit down with an individual like that, and show them that really they are an expression of God. Their source of information, their source of goodness, comes from outside them. It comes from God, and that they are in fact—Jesus said the kingdom of God is within us, and so we are the very manifestation of that kingdom of God. And I think that unless one realizes that, one feels that they are completely influenced by things that are going on around them, swirling around their human experience—the technology and so forth. And we have to learn to find that time to be quiet, to disconnect ourselves from some of these things periodically, and find that way to identify with our true identity as the image and likeness of God.

Rosalie: One thing I was thinking about as you were talking is what Jesus said about loving your neighbor as yourself. In a situation like that, where you’re online playing games, in a way you’re depriving yourself of your neighbor, in the sense of interacting with other human beings and being conscious of what’s needed in the world, and ways that you can do good in the world. Do you think that sense of love for your neighbor could help lift someone out of that obsession?

Rick: Absolutely. I think that’s what we’re really seeking. I had a relative once that was addicted to alcohol—my grandfather, actually—my grandmother went and expressed the situation to a Christian Science practitioner, and the Christian Science practitioner said, “Why, the dear man. All he’s doing is looking for love and looking for God. He’s just looking in the wrong place.” So absolutely, we all desire that connection and love. When we find these connections through inanimate devices, that results in reclusiveness or inwardness. Man is desired to express outwardly, not inwardly. I think to the degree that we define that expression of love to other people, and learn to nurture and develop that, we develop that sense of expression and outwardness.

Rosalie: Now this is from someone in Indiana who says: “I use my cell phone as a phone, an alarm, and just recently I have learned how to text, which I do very infrequently. I don’t want to be on Facebook because I don’t want to be bothered with it time wise and socially, it seems too public and overbearing. Because of this approach, do I have a problem that needs to be healed to further my spiritual progress?”

Rick: I don’t think so. I think we all struggle with those issues. I struggle with them, too. What do we decide, do we want to take in, or not take in? I don’t think so. I think it’s simply a matter of making choices in your life of what fits your lifestyle and what’s important to you. But again, the important thing is maintaining that relationship with God and that relationship with other people. You mentioned before that Jesus said love for God and love for man—to me, that’s what I call a two-pronged approach to love. We look at God, it’s like looking at the light to get the light, and then we look away from the light, and see and express it out. It’s a two-step process. And I think however one finds to do that is fine, whether one decides being on Facebook or not is important to them, I think that’s their own choice.

Rosalie: Now this is from Alice in Seattle who says: “Hope you will share lots of specific instances of how prayer has helped you with technical problems.”

Rick: Well, gosh, I face them practically every day. One instance I think that happened to me some years ago that was a hallmark in my experience was—this is a long, long time ago, probably twenty-five years ago—I was studying to get a commercial broadcasting license, which in those days was a very challenging thing to get. I had spent many months studying for this license, and had all the study guides, and you had to make an appointment for your examination and go down to the FCC office, federal office. And I made that appointment, I went down to sit for that exam. As I went through the exam, I found many questions on that exam that I absolutely knew nothing about. At first I was very frustrated because I thought that I had had all these wonderful study guides and question guides, and how could it be possible that there could be material I didn’t know? But here I was sitting there, I mean I was face to face with the reality of this: If I couldn’t answer those questions, I would have failed the exam. So I just put my pencil down—I’d been working a couple of hours already—and I just got quiet and listened to God. And I said, “Father, help me here.” And I realized, as the reflection of God’s Mind—as God being Mind and man being the reflection of Mind—I possessed all that intelligence that God had. Now, here’s the interesting thing. An answer did not come to me and flash into my mind, but an idea of how to proceed did. And I would think, “Well, work the math this way.” So I took my calculator out, and I would work something, and then it would say, “Now, try this.” And I would work on that, and pretty soon I would get an answer that was on the paper. So I put it down. And I went through all these questions, and I felt as if God was there with me, taking me by the hand through these questions. Again, the key thing was I didn’t get the answer—didn’t flash into my head—but the way to get there did. And later, I finished the exam, I passed it. I was thrilled, I went back to where I worked, and talked to an individual who had a more advanced understanding than I did, and described these questions and I had gotten every single one of them perfectly right. So that gave me a confidence that we can never be in a situation where we don’t know what to do, whether it’s technical or otherwise, that if we really get quiet and get into that still place, that closet, where we can really hear God’s voice, we can get the answers we need.

Rosalie: You know, I think that your comment about quiet is really essential. I remember someone telling me that she worked at a place where at the end of the day they were all kind of, “We want to get out of here. We don’t want to be here anymore.” And they often ran into computer problems right around then, as though their own feeling of “I want to get away from here” had an impact on the equipment. I wonder if there is something to the mental frame of reference when you’re using technology?

Rick: Well, I think so. And this is the thing, technology tends to make us become very frazzled sometimes, when the computer doesn’t work or you’re in a hurry. I think computers cause us—and technology causes us—to maybe work a little faster than we might otherwise, and then we become dependent upon it. But then when those things break down, we get frustrated. And I think we do need to learn to keep our thinking clear. In fact, one of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, is this concept which I call “digital thinking.” That when we work with computers, of course, a computer processes—any digital device, it doesn’t matter what it is that uses digital—works with ones and zeros, or yes and no answers. And so it breaks every complex decision down into a series of yeses or nos. And when we work with these devices and have to operate them, I think that this forces us to think that way, too. We start reasoning more in a yes and no kind of way instead of working from inspiration. And I found a lot of times that when there is a technical breakdown somewhere, and I’m trying to go through all the yes and no—did I do this, did I do that?—then when I get quiet, and look to God for inspiration and for spiritual insight, often a surprise answer comes, that instantly solves the problem. So, yes, we do need to get away from that digital thinking and turn toward more spiritual thinking.

Rosalie: Now this is from someone in Spain. It’s a little bit of a complex question, so if you need me to read it again, I will be happy to do so. “Now with the name search on Google, it looks like we’re not able to decide with whom we are sharing private information, since so many things connect without our knowledge. Do you think we can pray in order to be visible to the good—those who truly need to get in touch with us—and become invisible to those with harmful intentions?”

Rick: Well, I don’t think you can necessarily pray to tell a computer how to think differently, because it’s processing information, as I say, in a digital form of a way, but you certainly can change your thinking in ways that would impact others that relate to you. I remember an experience once in a branch church I was a member of where an individual broke into that church in the middle of the night, and tried to steal some things. Because there had been so many wonderful members of that church that were praying for the security of that church, that individual sat down and decided—and he’d been a lifelong criminal evidently—and changed his ways in that instant. Now no one was specifically praying for that individual or knew this was even going on, but the reason we knew all this is that the next day we found everything laid out on a table, when someone came back into the church, with a note written on the table saying that this person realized their line of thinking “Just take from other people” had been wrong, and that this experience had completely changed them. So absolutely, when we hold good, Christly thoughts, and see other people as they really are as the image and likeness of God, even if we’re not thinking about them directly, then anyone that comes into our experience can be impacted for good by that.

Rosalie: I’m not sure we can respond to this question, but I’ll read it to you anyway. It’s from Joyce in Fayetteville, North Carolina. She’s saying that: “Technology is ever changing, ever new, ever perplexing, or so it would seem.” And her question is: “How can I run an Internet business and not be up to date with all the social networks, paypal, affiliate systems, and the like?” And, while we can’t provide her with technical information, I wonder if you had some spiritual thoughts that might be helpful?

Rick: Well, I think it’s hard to not be involved in an online business and not have to know those things. I think, too, that business is all about, to me, expressing love. It’s all about—you know, you have an idea for something that’s come to you, that’s a good idea, and you want to share that to the benefit of other people, so those other people benefit from that, and they express their gratitude to you by writing a check. So it really is an exchange of love, an exchange of spiritual ideas. And sometimes we’re forced to think, “Well, if we don’t do this one little thing here, or that one little tweak, or add a social network thing here that we’re limited in some way.” But we all know experiences of people who have said, “Well, I came to you because I just felt you had something that would meet my need.” The same Mind that we are trusting and using, is the same Mind that our customers our trusting and using. And that same Mind can inspire them to find us, just as much as it can inspire us to find them, without necessarily having to have every little technical thing worked out.

Rosalie: You’re talking about, of course, the Mind that is God.

Rick: Absolutely. In Christian Science we think of Mind as one of the synonyms of God, and God as being the divine Mind. And if man is the image and likeness of God, then man is the very expression of that Mind.

Rosalie: And I think, too, spiritual inspiration plays a role here, because there are times when it’s almost like solving a puzzle, where you need to meet a certain need, and you try the first thing and that doesn’t work but it leads you to the next thing, which leads you to the next thing. That spiritual inspiration can guide your customers, but it can also guide you to figuring out just what technology you need, and maybe a partnership with someone else or something that would make it more affordable or more practical.

Rick: And again, that’s exactly what happened in my experience with that license examination. It was as if—I had confidence in the fact that I was expressing God’s Mind, and that my intelligence came from God. And so I had confidence in that, and had confidence that my inspiration came from God, and would lead me down pathways that I really had no idea that they even existed. When I trusted that, and put aside my fears, my frustrations, which were clouding my vision from being able to see that—it took me a couple minutes to settle down to get to that point, I really was frustrated—but when I did that, it was wonderful. And that become a landmark experience in my life.

Rosalie: Yeah. Now, Em in Atlanta says: “How much technology do we need to embrace to feel like we’re keeping in touch, without being overwhelmed by information? How do we decide which technology to use?”

Rick: Well, that’s a question, I think, that’s going to continue to be a challenge to all of us. They say that technological growth is exponential, which means it builds on itself and gets more and more and more. And there are new technologies coming in—the smart phones and wireless, and things like this—that make that process even more challenging. But again, I think we have to look at those things, and I would look at each technology and decide what is this doing to help me maintain my relation—we talked about the two-step process of love, loving God and loving man—and I would look at these things and say: How is each one of these things helping with that process? There’s a lot of things that we do with technology, that we do simply because they’re there, and we’re thrilled with them. But then we think, “Well, what did that do?” Like I have a brother who lives overseas, and he’ll send me a text message and he’s in a taxicab in Hong Kong, and I think, “Well isn’t that interesting that we can do this?” But sometimes we’re not really saying anything. We’re thrilled with the fact that we can do it, not with the fact that we’re actually communicating something. So I think that’s the deciding factor we have to make, is always get back to what are we doing that’s related to love? and make our decisions on what things we want to use, rather than just use them because they’re there.

Rosalie: I’m just thinking as you were talking about the impact of technology on the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but especially Iraq is what I’ve read the most about, where they’ve been able to stay in touch with their families and their children and so forth. So there are areas where technology is really a huge blessing, and actually brings a great deal of comfort, as compared to just fooling around as you were talking.

Rick: Yes, I’ve heard, too, that there are thousands of troops overseas that are getting their online degrees, and getting college educations in between their activities over there when they have down time. They’re able actually to log into schools in the United States and get their degrees. That’s a wonderful opportunity for them.

Rosalie: Right. So there are lots of different ways that technology is very productive and useful. Dwight in Boston says: “My wife recently said I should call a Christian Science practitioner instead of using e-mail to get more of a feeling of inspiration. I have previously had excellent results communicating via e-mail. Do you think there are more effective ways to communicate inspiration and bring about healing? Can healing come from a text message?”

Rick: I think it can. Being a part time practitioner myself, I would say there’s often a time where there’s a level of communication that can go on over the telephone, or even better by sitting across from someone. We talk about body language, we talk about other things going on, and sometimes there are insights that the practitioner may pick up on of things that they can be of assistance to the patient with by being either in sight of them, or on the telephone—you can hear a nuance or maybe a fear in someone’s voice, or something like that. So certainly it can be done electronically, but I think we need to be open and consider all the options.

Rosalie: I think that’s true. Em is back with us, she’s from Atlanta, and she’s got a comment about the online gaming question. She’s pointing out that you actually do interact with others in online games. “They are talking in a microphone, and typing messages to others, while playing in the online game. They may feel that they have more love and sharing going online than in their own home. My suggestion would be to just continue to love that person, and provide as much love around them as possible, and God will talk to them to see that they have love around them right in their own home.”

Rick: That’s correct. There are a number of games where you put a headset on, and you might be becoming friends with someone in a different country, for example, that you’re playing against. And that might be a wonderful form of interaction and friendship. For example, we have one of these games at home—that I’m sure a lot of the listeners have—that’s called Wii. And we can get on there, and play tennis, and you can actually play tennis with a relative—and that’s fun to be able to do. So, yes, I think we do have to take those things with a grain of salt, and realize that there are always new avenues for doing these things. But, again, it’s what we do with them, and it’s that filtering process that we have to go through there to decide: What is the real motivation here? Because there are people that, even in that mode, do become obsessed with things and do lose touch with a sense of humanity and reality with the world around them, that I think can find a better form of connection there.

Rosalie: Right, and also some people have even lost their jobs because they’re so addicted to the games, which is an extreme case, but still.

Rick: And marriages too, we hear about people that get involved in this Second Life game and pretty soon they’re married to someone online, and they’re living a fantasy life online. In fact, I had a friend of mine recently that I said, “What are you doing these days.” He said, “Well, I’ve been designing buildings.” I said, “I didn’t know you were an architect.” So he sent me a link to Second Life and showed me the buildings he was designing online.

Rosalie: Yeah, it depends to what degree you get involved in it, I think, and also, as you were saying, the motivation behind it.

Rick: Yes, absolutely.

Rosalie: Joanne in Boston says: “As a young person, I’ve grown up with technology, but I’ve never felt very comfortable with it. In fact, I’ve always thought of myself as someone who struggles with technology. How can I pray about this?”

Rick: Well, I think, like any discipline, there are people that relate to certain things and people that don’t. Someone might be a very accomplished photographer, and someone else would pick up a camera and wouldn’t know what to do with it. But that doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with someone. But again, I think that we have to always—I think people often tend to, in their own lives, center on things that they feel they’re good at, and avoid their fears. And I think that when people get older in life, often one comes face to face with having to deal with some of the things that maybe they have put aside. We deal with this a lot in the college where I work, where students often who feel they are afraid of technology, and then when they’re put into a technical environment it causes them to realize new qualities about themselves that they didn’t have before, and to come out of themselves, and to trust more in their abilities, and shall we say, kind of like a cross training. You can train to be good in a variety of areas. And I think sometimes, it’s good for us to do these things because it forces us to develop different patterns of thought, and to trust more in God, and to feel more confident that we can do more than just a few things.

Rosalie: Well, I think that trust more in God is a really good point because I would never consider myself a technological genius, but I have found that, as I’ve been able to really trust divine Mind to lead me step by step, and to keep me from panicking— mostly—that has really had a big impact on my ability to perform technological practices, so to speak. And I think one of the things is that you sometimes feel like: Well, everybody should be able to do this, therefore I should be able to do this just as easily as my friend Sam, or Tom, or whoever. But we all have a different learning curve. When PCs came out—now we’re talking back in the age of dinosaurs here—I had a very hard time adjusting to learning how to use a PC, and so forth. But once I got it, from there on I never looked back, I never had a problem. So sometimes there’s a wall of resistance, maybe, or whatever you want to call it, that makes it hard to break through to the benefits that you can get from it. But it’s really worth persisting, and being patient with yourself, and if you have a good friend who can sit with you and help you, that’s even better.

Rick: Well, I remember a relative once that said, “Oh, I’m never going to get a computer. I don’t need that.” And so we bought this relative a gift over Christmas that allowed him to get on the Web using his television. And about six months later I get a clipping from the newspaper in the town where he lived, where he was kind of the resident expert on getting on the Web now, and people were coming to him for how to do it! And now using computers is an important part of this person’s life. I think it has to do, too, trying to look at this from a spiritual perspective, is we develop in our mortal mind thinking, our thinking that tends to think that it’s something separate from God, and that it is limited, and that it develops certain patterns and ways of doing things that it feels comfortable with. And I think one of the advantages of learning something new, whatever it is, whether someone feels they’re not artistic and they decide to take up painting, or you feel you’re not technical and you go take a computer class, is that it causes us to change the patterns of our thought to realize we’re all capable of much more than we think we are. Often, to find those connections, it has to break through a barrier that often might require some prayerful work to get to that point.

Rosalie: That’s exactly right, as it was in my situation. Your comment—I’m going to do a little commercial here—one of the advantages of being computer adept, and liking to be on the Internet, is that you get to visit spirituality.com and christianscience.com to see the articles from the Christian Science Sentinel and The Christian Science Journal and The Christian Science Monitor that are on Christian Science, and also to explore The Christian Science Monitor Website, so there’re lots of benefits of getting some ability to be on a computer and on the Web, and also to even think about writing an article for the magazines. So that’s the end of my little commercial, but really computers can open up a world for you of exploring, and spiritual growth, particularly through visiting christianscience.com and other Christian Science Websites. Now this is from Robert in England: “There have been many times when I’ve literally sat at the computer, staring at the screen on Facebook or YouTube, waiting for something interesting to happen, for hours on end. This seems to drain my time, but whenever I try to do something different I always end up back at the computer. Do you have any thoughts on how I can work on this seeming addiction?”

Rick: Well, again, I think it has to do with the need for learning how to discipline one’s own thinking. A lot of times we think that our human thinking—what we call in Christian Science our mortal mind, which is a belief of a mind separate from God’s Mind—that we should let it do whatever it wants to do. It can run wild and we have no control over it. But this is exactly the opposite. What we have to do is to learn to gain control over our own thinking, and discipline—just as one might buy a little puppy, for example, and that little puppy, he runs around wild and gets into a lot of trouble. And so we teach that puppy to do certain things, and that puppy becomes happier because it becomes disciplined. We have to think of our thinking almost in the same way—almost like it’s something separate from us that we have to tell it what to do and take control of it. And this is one of the greatest freedoms that man has, is the ability to control one’s own thinking. It’s the simplest freedom, really. And I think that we can choose what we resonate with. The computer never calls to us and says, “Come over here. We need to do this, or sit down and do this.” I think it’s when we have those free moments when we have nothing to do, out of habit we’ve learned to pick these tools up. And I do it too. Ask my wife. I get a free moment and I grab for my blackberry to see what’s going on—right? But what I try to do is remind myself, OK, instead of trying to relate to that, maybe I’ll use this moment for some time for prayer to connect with God. And I find that when I do those things, those are much more memorable moments, and that wonderful inspirations that come from those times, then if I’d chosen just mindlessly to carry on as usual, shall we say.

Rosalie: Right. And I think that’s a—one of the things that’s very important, actually, that you’ve brought up is this ability to keep your thoughts on God, and to turn to prayer instead of drifting. In fact, the more that you can do that—especially if you’re struggling with an addictive thing like what this gentleman is talking about—that’s going to help you a lot. It can be the Lord’s Prayer, for example, or if you’re a Christian Scientist you may be familiar with the Daily Prayer. Those are all prayers that are ones that you can turn to when you find yourself mentally drifting. Just start to say the Lord’s Prayer, and focus your thought on that, and that is turning to God. There’s a lot in that prayer that will meet your human needs, and will also give you a feeling of peace and activity. And since it’s the prayer that Jesus gave us that really meets all human needs, it will meet whatever need you have, that may be bringing you to face a computer and expect to find your answers there.

Rick: Can I add something to that, Rosalie, before we go to the next question?

Rosalie: For sure.

Rick: Back to the statement I made early that’s my most favorite statement that Mrs. Eddy makes, “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” (My., p. 160). What she’s saying there—look at this—it says “to live . . . to keep your . . . consciousness in constant relation with the divine.” That means you devote your entire life to it. You live to do that.

Rosalie: Right.

Rick: And then it says “in constant relation.” It doesn’t mean: Well, in between times on the computer, or when I’m off the phone, or maybe in commercials when the TV’s on. We try to do that constantly, even while we’re doing other things. And it says, what’s the result of this? We individualize infinite power.

Rosalie: Right.

Rick: We embody all of God’s power in our experience. So what we want to do is try to find out how to do those things, while we’re on the computer, or while we’re doing other things in our life. And I love the statement, too, that Jesus makes in the Bible. He says—he’s telling a story to someone else—he says: “Thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” (Matt. 25:21). I think what he’s saying there is, if we become faithful and rulers over our own thinking, we become rulers over everything else. And that’s what we have to concentrate on.

Rosalie: Now Jenny in Northville, Michigan has a question that I think you’ll enjoy answering. She says: “How have you used Christian Science while teaching others how to use various forms of technology?”

Rick: Well, Jenny, that’s a great question because I also have taught from time to time on the college level—media classes—and have to introduce people to things that are very fearful to them. I think the idea there, is a sense of getting them to understand that man is unlimited—that man is not, again, limited by one’s sociological experience. I think that’s an important one—we think that we are socialized by what we are exposed to humanly, and we’re socialized by God, really. And so, one will say, “Well, I’ve never been exposed to turning this kind of a knob. How could I possibly be comfortable doing that?” Well, we can, because we realize man’s unlimited nature. If God is infinite and unlimited, man is the reflection or expression of that, therefore man reflects that same unlimited sense. It’s funny, in our radio station studio here where I work at Principia College, there’s a student who was struggling with this, in fact, in the studio, and I came in a couple days later and she’d put a sign up on the wall that said, “Let go and let God.” That sign was put up there a year ago, and it’s still there. Everyone relates to that. And she really learned a lesson that technology forced her to get out of herself and make a connection with God, that she might not have otherwise in another experience.

Rosalie: Right. Sue in Montana says: “How do I work with those who want nothing to do with technology at the business?”

Rick: Could you repeat that again? How do you relate to what?

Rosalie: Just a second. Let’s move on to another question, and I’ll get back to that one.

Rick: OK, all right.

Rosalie: This is from Debby in Minnesota: “In our area we have experienced two ministers being removed for Internet porn, and a local superintendent of a high school victimizing students. Technology is often involved. How do we protect churches and schools when parents are fearful about sending their children there? How do we restore trust?

Rick: Well, you know, somebody said once that a sin is something that one feels one needs to do in secret. And I think the Internet allows us a degree of privacy sometimes that makes us feel we can do things in secret that we might not be able to do otherwise. It’s a very tempting thing for people. But again back to this experience that my grandfather had when he was addicted to alcohol, and my grandmother turned to a Christian Science practitioner, and the practitioner said, “Why, the dear man. He’s only looking for God, but he’s just looking in the wrong place.” Quite often we find that when these people do make a turnaround, they often turn the other way, with the same degree of vivacity and energy that they put into the wrong type of thinking, they can often channel that into the right type of thinking. In terms of protecting one’s self from one’s school because one might not know when somebody is doing something in secret—when a principal is, or someone, that there might be activities going on that you might be putting your child in that you’re not aware of—all we can do is pray about it. Just as that experience we had, I told you about in the church, where the burglar was healed, our correct thinking and doing metaphysical, prayerful work for our, say the school where our children go every day, taking time to see everyone in that school as being only the reflection of God, as not being tempted by material sense, by these types of things, and trying to see the perfection in everyone involved in that school—the students, the staff, the administrators, the faculty. That can have a healing influence that might result in a healing in secret that we might never know about.

Rosalie: I want to mention that we did have a chat on Internet pornography—“Freedom from addiction to Internet pornography” that I’m not finding right at the moment, but it was relatively recent. Oh, here it is—“A way out of addiction to pornography and cybersex” and that was on March 30. And you might want to check that one out, also, to get some further ideas on this particular subject. Now back to Sue in Montana: “How do I work with those who want nothing to do with technology at the business?”

Rick: OK. Well, first of all, just from a human standpoint, you have to ask whether or not that technology is essential to what they have to do, and it sounds like maybe it is in this case. I mean it’s the way we all work nowadays. It’s hard to find a job where you don’t have to touch a computer, or use a cell phone, or something nowadays. But I think again it’s that idea of getting people to understand that this is not something to be feared. It is something that can broaden their perspective, if it is mixed with a spiritual sense of things. In other words, you can’t just say, “Well, I’m going to force myself—you can—to do that, but the more advantageous way to do it is to say: Understand man’s unlimited nature, and the fact that man can benefit by expanding one’s sense of how one goes about your business. Certainly, Sue could do this with the people she works with. She could appreciate and understand the inherent, unlimited, spiritual nature of the people that she works with, as she works through this process with them. I’m sure that can result in a breakthrough with those people of being more receptive to these things.

Rosalie: Another thing that I was just thinking about is the childlike nature that all of us have that is open to something new. None of us, no matter whether we’re ninety or we’re twelve, can be deprived of that childlike innocence that really can be open to new thoughts, and doesn’t have to be burdened by fear of technology, and so forth.

Rick: That’s a very good point, that childlikeness, that’s a good one. In fact, I know of a family recently that for some reason or other they had to change their cell phone providers, and so they all went down—the whole family, four of them—to the store, and bought new cell phones, and they picked out all the individual ones they wanted. Well, they came home, and they were trying to get these things programmed, and the address books, and what ring tones did they want to use. And the father of the family was a very technologically astute guy and he was really struggling with just getting his phone to work, passed it to his son, who was I think in the preteen years, and within about ten minutes the son had programmed all the phones in the house, and had everyone’s phone working. [laughter]

Rosalie: There you go.

Rick: So what’s the difference there? Are we assuming that a child is more technologically intelligent? Of course not. I think the issue there is that there is no fear about it. And that maybe they’ve been exposed to it in ways before that the other person hasn’t—but it’s defusing this fear and, again, connecting with that infinite sense of one’s being and identity. We don’t lose our identity by giving up these false beliefs that we hold so strongly onto. We gain our identity by connecting with the infinite.

Rosalie: Well, I think you’re making a really important point there, because you’re basically, to me, what I’m hearing is that sometimes people say, “Well, I would never do that.” The I that they’re talking about is someone who is rejecting technology because they feel above it, or it’s really masking fear, or whatever. But that I is not really them, in the sense that each of us can be willing to allow our lives to expand, as they’re inspired by God and by Spirit to do new things, don’t you think?

Rick: Absolutely. And I think this is one of the challenges that age brings is that one—we’re all faced with this—you kind of go through life and decide what you do and don’t like and what you’re comfortable with and not comfortable with.

Rosalie: Right.

Rick: And so you become more focused on that, but a child isn’t like that. A child is open to any new idea, and any fun thing that comes along, and there’s a need for us to get back to that sense of that childlike spirituality that’s just more open to things.

Rosalie: Now this is from someone who isn’t telling us who they are or where they’re from, but they say: “Sometimes I answer e-mails too soon, and then I realize that I could have had time to think more. How do you pray to keep from reacting so soon, so that I can ponder and reflect more in order to get the right answer?”

Rick: Well, I think we all face that challenge. All of us have probably gotten an e-mail and popped something back and then regretted it the next day—that oh my gosh, wish I’d had more time to think about that. I think one of the challenges of technology—we’ve talked about digital thinking, we’ve talked about the desire for connection, and another one is this sense of overload, but I think that comes from a sense of immediacy. There’s something about the instantness of it that is compelling, that makes us feel: “Oh, that thing just beeped on my screen. I better respond to that right now,” and the other person on the other side is expecting the same thing. So we get into that sense of immediacy. But that gets away from this stillness. Another one of my favorite Bible passages is the one that says: “Be still, and know that I am God” (Ps. 46:10). And that stillness requires that frequently we have to tone down the rush of daily activity. We have to ratchet that down, and find those times to do that, and sit back and be willing to really think about—because popping off an e-mail to get it off one’s desk is not the objective here. The objective of an e-mail is to communicate ideas. And we need to be sure that those ideas are clearly thought through, that they’re clearly stated, because it’s not simply, “Oh, let me hit the reply button and get this thing out of my computer.” What are we communicating? And, for me, what I try to do, it’s my goal, is to try to put as much love into everything that I can possibly do. So often I’ll fire off—I’ll get it ready with a very black and white businesslike e-mail and I’ll think, “Well wait a minute, now where’s the love in that?” And quite often we can’t do it on the spot. I’ll have to put it down, and come back an hour later. And I’ll say, “Good grief. How did I ever think I was going to send that?” And I try to infuse that spiritual sense of love back into it. How am I communicating? How am I expressing good that is going to cause good to be in this other person’s experience? And just slow down, and take the time. It’s all about communicating love, it’s not about flashing off e-mails.

Rosalie: Right. And that gets back to what we talked about earlier about loving your neighbor as yourself.

Rick: Yes, absolutely.

Rosalie: Now, Ginny in Tucson, California, is asking: “Is there a difference between a virus in a computer, and in our body? Shouldn’t we know that there isn’t anything that can interrupt our health, or use of the computer? Thank you very much for these talks.”

Rick: Well, that’s a difficult question because a computer is an inanimate, physical object that doesn’t appear to have any life in it, whereas a human person does, and therefore we can take metaphysical action on those things. I don’t know. That’s a good question: Can you pray a virus out of a computer? I don’t know. Maybe you can. I’ve never tried it, not to say that it couldn’t be done. However, I think we can certainly pray about the people who create those viruses. And we can know that someone who is obsessed with that kind of behavior that is destructive, not only to humanity and to everyone in companies—and it’s very costly—out of a sense of maybe trying to gain notoriety. Why would a person do that? Obviously it’s to gain a feeling of connection, or maybe it’s a feeling of empowerment or whatever it is. Again, it’s mischanneled thinking. They’re resonating there with the wrong sorts of things, and we can always pray about that. And I think we could also pray to know that when there maybe is something that comes up on our computer that we can be alerted to it, that we can be inspired to know that something harmful might be in our presence, and be alerted to find remedies to get that solved. So I guess that’s the way I would approach it.

Rosalie: Well, I think, too that there’s a kind of spiritual intuition. Actually, this was about a year ago I guess, I got a message on my computer that there was just something about it that didn’t feel right. And I had clicked on one part of it, and it was saying, “Take the next step.” And it was just like: “Take the next step, take the next step. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, take the next step.” Everything inside me was saying, “I don’t think so.” And so I closed it, and then I got in touch with our IT people, and they said that was good, because if you had taken the next step it would have done something bad to your computer. And I think that trusting your spiritual intuition if something does come across your computer that doesn’t look right, don’t ignore the mental warning, because that’s really, in a sense, God speaking to you and protecting you perhaps from some possible danger to your computer.

Rick: That’s true and we’ve all seen examples of all kinds of protection like that, where someone might be driving, and the inspiration would come to “Make a right turn here” or something like that, and by doing that maybe they avoided some situation that would have been disastrous to them.

Rosalie: Exactly.

Rick: We can be protected from those things. You know, God is with us all the time. We’re not connected with the computer, we’re connected with God, spiritually. What Jesus referred to as being “instant in season, out of season” (II Tim. 4:2)—or was that Paul, I don’t remember who—

Rosalie: I think it was Paul, but still, it’s true.

Rick: Again, it’s this idea of being in constant relation with the divine. And, again, it’s disciplining our own thought, and deciding what we’re going to do with it, what we’re resonating with. We have a constant decision on our mind to resonate with what God is telling us, or what the false, mortal picture is telling us that always leads to inharmony. And resonating with God always leads us to harmony. So that’s the constant vigil, I think, is how can we stay in constant resonance?

Rosalie: Right. Now Ted in Westport, Connecticut, says: “I’m sort of a nerd. I sometimes encounter anger when I try to explain and teach about how to use technology. How might I overcome this anger before it appears?”

Rick: Well, I’m a nerd, too, you know. I get accused of that all the time. And I know exactly how you feel. But, again, I think it has to do with that love. I think it also has to do with digital thinking. I think when you work with these devices that are making, again, these yes and no, on and off decisions all the time, it forces us to think that way too, to be able to solve these problems and work with these devices. And so, when someone comes to us with a question that might be instead of a black and white question, it’s a grey question, if you know what I mean, it’s something that requires a little more thinking and inspiration than a yes or no answer. And I think sometimes when we are used to working with these devices, we become very impatient, and that, to me, is a direct result of what I call digital thinking. And that’s harmful, that’s not good. That is not inspired thinking. That is not Godlike thinking. That’s mechanical, human reasoning type of thinking. And I think that we need to—how can one anticipate that? I try to work with the statement, “Be still, and know that I am God” all the time. And to work with that, always be stilling down my own mortal sense of myself, my own sense of I, and relate to the real I, which is God, which is never angered, it’s never impatient. And, also, the person that you’re dealing with is just as much the expression of God as you are. And they’re looking for to move ahead with something that will benefit their life, and we have to approach that with love and patience and grace. And I think grace is the key word there.

Rosalie: I think it really is. This is from Joyce in Fayetteville, North Carolina: “Wow, this is very helpful. I never thought of the two-wayness of business—love the customer, love the seller. How do you overcome world thought about business as intimidating, technology as difficult, frustrating, technology as for the young, not the old?” We can take that in parts if you want to.

Rick: Well, let’s go back to the first one. I like to think about it like it’s like a beam of light. If we think of God as being like the light source that is just unending, and that light is warm and useful and wonderful. And it comes out—and I like to think of the light that actually comes out of God, as being the Christ. It’s the force of that light to do good. Well, that light is of no use, unless it’s manifested and put to work someplace. It’s just like an electric motor isn’t any good unless you plug it in to the electricity. Well we all know that when light hits an object it is manifested and now seen by us. You cannot actually see a light beam passing through the air. What you see is when it strikes dust particles and then moisture and things in the air. So we have to remember that that’s what our job is, is to express that and to constantly remember that it is that two-way process. We have to look at the light in order to express it out. And I think that’s what business is all about, to get back to her first point there, that when we realize that that’s what business is, it’s simply the expression of Love. It’s looking for needs that need to be filled, and finding an idea that can meet that need, and that person rewards back by writing a check, which is really an expression of Love. So what was the next part of that?

Rosalie: Now the next part is: “How do you overcome world thought about business as intimidating, technology as difficult, frustrating, technology as for the young and not the old?” And I’d just like to say we have another question about this whole question of technology as frustrating, and for the young and not the old, so we have a couple of people who are interested in that particular aspect of things.

Rick: I think it’s frustrating to us because, again, it’s this issue about someone that might feel that they are, let’s say, a mechanical person, and they’re told to pick up a paint brush and do something creative, artistic. It’s what, to mortal sense, is called right-brained and left-brained, and that a right-brained person can’t do a certain thing, or one or the other. But God is not right-brained or left-brained—right?

Rosalie: Right.

Rick: God is just Mind—perfect, complete, entire. And we, as God’s expression, aren’t right-brained or left-brained, or we aren’t black and white or grey or any of these things. We express the entire Mind. And the fact that we feel we only express a certain part of that, is our own limited sense of ourselves. Or maybe someone in school told us, “Oh, you’re no good at that, you’re good at this.” Or, “Why don’t you work on this instead of that because it’s easier for you.” But in fact, we’re capable of all of it. And so I think that we—I see these things as a vehicle—we see that here at the school where I work all the time, where non-technical people come in and they see that is a vehicle to break through to a better understanding of themselves and their relationship to God.

Rosalie: And it’s not really age related, is it?

Rick: No, it’s not at all. I think we talked about that with the children. I think it only becomes age related, seemingly, because I think as we go through life we become more focused on what we think we like to do, or we feel comfortable with. But we hear all the time about—I heard the other day about a woman who was 95 years old that just got her Ph.D. So certainly, I’m sure at some point in her life she said, “Hey, I’m going to do this.” And she might have been eighty-five years old when she decided to go back to school. These limitations are—well, you know, they’re not even self-imposed, Rosalie. They’re imposed by a belief of mortal mind, or error, we call it in Christian Science, or even to be more specific, malicious animal magnetism. It’s a belief that an inharmonious thought comes from outside us, and can be imposed on us. And I think to the degree we realize these are not our thoughts, because our thoughts are God’s thoughts, they’re good thoughts, they’re harmonious thoughts, they don’t lead to frustration and limitation, they lead to things being unlimited. And throw these things off, and not associate with them as being our thoughts, and therefore being part of our identity.

Rosalie: Right. I think also—this is just based on my own experience—that if you are having difficulty learning how to use a computer or are serving in a Reading Room and you can’t seem to get it, one of the things that I’ve found really helpful, myself, is to pray for the right answer. Not, say, directly pray for someone to come and help, but to be provided with what you need. Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (p. 494). And that can lead to somebody coming in who loves computers and loves you and is happy to spend time with you, or it can lead you to feel, “Well, I think I’ll just try this,” and working it out on your own. Sometimes when you are feeling intimidated or frustrated by something, it’s hard to ask for help. But divine Love is there to lift off that resistance, and also to open the way for the answer to be there. It really is a law: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need.” And that can include the right use of technology, don’t you think?

Rick: It does. And I think the key to that statement is that it’s Love that meets the need.

Rosalie: Right.

Rick: It’s not the fact that you found the right button to push on your computer. It was Love, divine Love, God’s love, not just the human, mortal sense of gushy human love, it’s divine Love that leads you to, not what button to push—because even if you’re pushing buttons on your computer, it is a higher purpose you’re using that computer for. You’re using that to communicate with someone, or to accomplish something good in business or to—whatever it is—you’re using it as a tool. And so Love is the entire process from front to back. That’s why “Divine Love always . . . meets every human need” because every human need is only for the same thing. This is the thing I like about that. Divine Love could not meet the need if the need weren’t for Love. So that implies by that very statement, if you look at it like a formula, and turn it around backwards, the need is always just for one thing—for Love.

Rosalie: Right. Now David in Ohio says—and he’s put this in quotes: “ ‘Digital native’ is often used to describe those who are comfortable with technology. As ‘digital immigrants,’ the rest of us are obliged to learn the language of the natives, aren’t we? How can we accept any limitation that we are somehow not suited to learn and use these tools? Social media seems particularly well suited to facilitate meaningful discussion and sharing of Christian Science teachings.”

Rick: Well I agree, and I was just thinking about a concept I use a lot, this idea of the gold and the dross. If you find some gold ore, and you want to purify it, it doesn’t even look like gold when you find it necessarily, you have to put it under high heat. And what it does is it burns off the impurities. I have a friend who visited a gold mine in Africa and they laid out for her different gold bars, and there were ones that were dark and ones that were light. The ones that were light were of purer, more expensive gold, but the person pointed out, it’s all gold. Why does the purer bar cost more? Because they had to use a higher temperature, and more energy, to get it to that point. I think the beauty of this is that we all have that pure, perfect gold in us, that spiritual identity, and each one of these experiences, including making the transition to being a digital native, is a process of turning up the heat, shall we say, to burn off some of these impurities. But the gold was in there to begin with. It’s not like we have to become a different person, any more than a computer geek doesn’t want to be an artist, perhaps, or whatever it might be. And they might feel just as frustrated by doing that, as an artist might feel in having to use a computer. But what we’re doing is we’re burning off that dross constantly, and that’s what the process is, and we have to look forward to these opportunities rather than resist them. And the beauty of it all, of course, is that the gold was always there, always gets purer, and the only way we get burned by the dross is if we continue to hold onto it. If we let it go, it doesn’t burn us.

Rosalie: That’s very helpful. Now Robert in England has a question I’m just not sure that we can answer here, but here it goes: “On my e-mail server, junk e-mails are being sent from my address to everyone on my contacts, and many people I do not know. I have no control over this. It seems like my communications are being controlled by somebody else. And this is annoying for me, and could harm the recipients of these spam e-mails. Is there any way in which I can think spiritually about this issue?”

Rick: Well, from a purely mechanical standpoint, there are viruses out there that do that very thing, that get into your computer and that use your e-mail system to send spam e-mails to your friends and other people. So I think the issue there is to use your spiritual intuition to be led to know what you need to do to correct this situation. And I would start with being sure, I like to pull all the way back, what I call rewinding, and start back with really being sure that you’re seeing the person who might have created this virus in their true spiritual light, seeing them as they are as the image and likeness of God, and then really working to be sure that you are led by inspiration for the right person to call, the right program to get, so that you don’t have to spend months drilling around in your computer, and that all of your friends have to suffer for this. That you can be led to the right solution very quickly to get that resolved.

Rosalie: That’s helpful. Now Jean in Tennessee is asking us about age again, in the sense of returning to that topic that we’ve been covering. “How do you combat the sense of age and the inability to keep up with current technology? I feel that I’m going to be sorry I haven’t learned to text—that I won’t be able to communicate when I’m older.”

Rick: God doesn’t age, and really we have existed as spiritual ideas from the beginning of time, therefore we’re already an infinite number of years old. There is no human sense of age that we have to experience because we are spiritual ideas of God and we are expressing that agelessness of God. There are countless stories of people who break out of that sense of limitation and fear about themselves, and are able to do wonderful things at any human sense of age. Mrs. Eddy says, “Man[hood] is its eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun” (Science and Health, p. 246). And one should look at maturity as an opportunity to develop wisdom, to develop a higher sense of spirituality, rather than being a sense of limitation or curtailment, or any of those sorts of things. And I think it’s just an attitude that one takes, and again, it’s saying yes or no, and deciding what one’s going to resonate with. And we can always, always, make the choice, and we always have the freedom to resonate with the Christ, and what God is telling us. And God is not telling us anything to do with age.

Rosalie: This is interesting. This is from someone in France who says: “Thanks for pointing out what you call ‘digital thinking.’ I find sometimes it would make us like robots and kill our humanity. I understand that we should defend our loving intelligence in order to relate to people and solve issues.”

Rick: Well, that’s exactly the crux of it, and I’m glad that he saw through to that. I don’t think God, as infinite Mind, thinks in terms of just yes or no answers. God just thinks, and it is. We are, basically, ideas in God’s Mind. God thinks about us, therefore we exist. I think he’s gotten to the essence of what I’m trying to say here, is the human tools force us to think the way that they have to operate. I don’t think that people probably back in the 1800s thought that way as much as we do about things. They didn’t approach problems in that way. They approached them more from inspiration. Look at the way the Native Americans did, the indigenous peoples of any country who were not faced with—had few technologies, and had to work totally on inspiration and looked to sermons and stones and things like that. They were more spiritually-minded about how they approached things. So, yes, we do have to do what we can to avoid this sense of digital thinking.

Rosalie: Well, I think that’s great, and The Christian Science Monitor magazine recently had an article about digital thinking in one of its weekly issues, also. So there’s a lot of coverage of that right now. I’ve got two other resources I’d like to give you before we part. The question of the week was recently: “Technology can give instant communication, but it can also distract us from what’s important. How can we pray to find a balance with technology?” And if you go to the spirituality.com home page to the question of the week, and you click on “read past questions” you’ll be able to see the responses that site visitors have provided to that question. And it’s a pretty nice selection there. And then the Christian Science Sentinel will be producing an issue on September 27 that relates to technology, and that will have articles about how people have prayed, and how technology can be helpful, and approaching it from a spiritual standpoint. So those are two resources that are coming your way. So we’re really grateful to all of you who have joined us, and Rick, I’m especially grateful to you. Do you have some final comments before we close?

Rick: Well, I’d like to summarize again, I think that Jesus said when he was on the Sermon on the Mount, he said, “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly” (Matt. 6:6). And Mary Baker Eddy said in Science and Health: “To enter into the heart of prayer, the door of the erring senses must be closed. Lips must be mute and materialism silent, that man may have audience with Spirit . . .” (p. 15). And I think that’s the essence of what we’re talking about here, today. These are wonderful tools for communicating, for building relationships, for accomplishing more than we could ever have imagined even a few years ago, in terms of reaching out to people and just getting more things done every day in a more easy manner. But we have to remember once in awhile that our connection with God comes out of quietness and solitude, and we have to be willing to take those times, turn these things off, and be willing to find a balance between the two of them. I think that would be the essence of what we’re saying here today.

Rosalie: Well, thank you so much for being with us, Rick. And I’d just like to say to those who might have tuned in late, today’s guest was Richard Dearborn, who is in the part time practice of Christian Science and is also Director of Digital Media at Principia College in Elsah, Illinois. Our next chat will be on Tuesday, August 17 at 2 p.m. when Sarah Hyatt, a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science, will respond to questions on the subject, “Looking for inspired answers to developmental disabilities like ADHD?”