Before the dawn's light of yesterday, I penned something, well, I can confidently express that the post wrote itself—it just borrowed my fingers. Simply magnificent! It was my 2023 chef d'oeuvre. I interwove and underlined Scripture with highlights of my own life. I cast a light to the condition common to man. Brilliant! And my connection with carbohydrates and tooth decay to sin—well, it is unparalleled to anything I put to paper this year.

I had a wonderful rough draft in hand. Unfortunately...well, I got distracted. I was setting up a dev environment on Mac to see how this draft would shine. And, something went all cockeyed on me. I figured as this Mac was just wiped, just one more time through the installation circle wouldn't hurt...

And in a couple of keystrokes later, digitally obliterated was a writing that...

Just so happened to be
The best (post) in the world,
It was the best (post) in the world.

(Eh, sometimes my inner Weird Al takes over)

I nearly went back to Google. I did. You lose something and you wonder how you got it so wrong. "Bill, you are no longer a schoolboy," I lamented. "You don't just simply lose your work!"

It got me thinking: I lost it because I just assumed it was saved in the cloud. In time, we all have that expectation, that our Big Brother is ever benevolent. Our culture's take on personal responsibility is eroding with each passing year. It is always somebody else's fault.

And perhaps an argument can be made that Big Tech's influence on society shuns personal responsibility. They tell us what we should think. They tell us the shibboleths of how we can sit at the cool kids' table. They track all of our minutiae and answer all of our questions. We don't have to think, our Big Brother will let us know what we should think. We have all these wonderful tools at our fingertips, but at what cost?

I wrote a list of things that I like from Google:

• Calendar
• Tasks
• YouTube Channel Notifications
• Google Drive / Backups / file sharing / versioning
• Docs and Sheets
• Ease of moving files among my computers
• Bookmarks sync
• Phone integration
• Storehouse of my music

Sure, there is a lot more that I can identify that Google provides for its account holders, but these are significant for me.

And yet, I have some deep questions to consider over my freshly ground cup of coffee:

1. What if I develop an awareness for the calendar and the things I gotta do today?

2. What if my phone is just a way to talk to me?

3. What if I am the one responsible over the things in my life?

4. Which father's voice do I hear? Does Google bring me closer to my home with my brother, Jesus, or does it promote those who hate my brother?

And while these are good considerations and quite honestly could stand on their own, I wonder if this comes off more like a modern Amish take? Instead of getting stuck with 19th-century tech, am I just updating that to the 1990s?

I recognize that I gotta answer questions that neither my earthly Dad nor all of those who share our blood before us had to answer. And if it was just the tech...well, it's never been just about the tech. Case in point, we literally had Nazis build the American space program. What ideology makes that?

God's Word is timeless. There's nothing new is under the sun. We continue to have the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Again, here's 1 Jn 2:15-17 for emphasis:

Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything that belongs to the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one's lifestyle—is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does God's will remains forever.

We gotta be a champion of wisdom. Clearly, something like electricity or cloud space—that's all pretty neutral stuff. But that's never been the problem. It is when Google promotes things that should not be! But, if I levy that charge against them and shun further interaction, then it is not a matter of being "of the world," I can't even be "in" it! There's no escape unless I push aside some bats for "we know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. (1 John 5:19)"

Now, on the politics side, I don't buy into the front-facing facade of the wealthy's politics. That veneer serves their own economic self-interests. When "following God" proved to be profitable, our world was bent toward that end. And you got some really good schools out of it like Yale! The same can be said for those from my time at the Mug: social optimization. It wasn't about loving Jesus for some of them. And as the Mug is now a coffee distributor...still, God used the Mug for His purposes. And for me, yeah, I was higher up the optimized social ladder before the Mug in the way the world counts rungs, but I was a fool. An utter fool.

So when I see Google's little graphic of the day promoting some backwater inventor of mudpaste for the teeth, I recognize it for what it is. "Money, please!"

And again, I gotta answer questions my forefathers never answered...but did. God's principles are timeless. They began in the Old Testament and are revealed in the New. Jesus came to not abolish the Law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). That said, seeing Google through the lens of loving God and loving my neighbor, what do I do? While my Han Solo approach to life served me when I was single, now that I'm married with kids, I do what I can to put them in the best position. And it seems like using the tools of today do that very thing. And so do I put more emphasis on the management of processes than the labor thereof?

Perhaps, I ought to lay aside all of my vexation. I'm reminded of 2 Timothy 1:7

For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.

Paul goes further, highlighting in verses 9 and 10:

He has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began.

This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

When I get rattled, these words comfort me like a blazing fire that rails against the darkness of the night. I am adopted; I am chosen. God saved me from discontentment, despair, hopelessness, brokenness, the entropy of this life and Hell beyond. And He's given me eternal life—for FREE. Immortality WITH a rockin' buffet? Just wait 'til you check out the ice cream bar—a Niagara Falls of caramel praline! Hey, THAT's a good deal! For now, He slaps this sheep silly when I start wandering toward the cliff of others' destruction.

I can roll with that. Welcome back, Google.