I purchased something online recently and was watching the tracking on the package. First it told me that it would arrive on Friday; then it said the delivery date was unknown; then it said Friday again; then it said it would be on Monday; then, you guessed it, it was going to be Friday again; next it was going to be Tuesday. It did not arrive on Tuesday. Yesterday (Wednesday) it showed up. All of these changes took place over the span of just a few days. I will not name the company, but it begins with something that sounds like "fed" and ends with something that sounds like "ex".
It is truly amazing that the world wants us to trust what it does. It keeps making new technological devices and tells us how great they are. The world wants us to be completely confident in her inventions. In true Big Brother fashion she says "be a good citizen; buy more". Some things we have to buy in order to survive in this crazy world. Other things we can do without (and really should do without). Yet, the real question is, how much do we trust the world's inventions?
A godly wisdom would say never to trust the world completely. It would tell us how important it is to be thankful for all the good that God allows to have in this world (yes, even a few of the technological things). Yet, wisdom would also tell us to remember that we live in a fallen world, and that means that everything at one time or another will fail us. We get frustrated when we give our technology the same confidence that is only to be given to our Lord.
I have no idea whether it was some algorithm on a computer or if there was an actual human trying to calculate the delivery of my package (though it was likely the former). It was, however, a great example of what we can expect from a pridefully aggressive effort to create more and more technology: failure. Some machines are pleasant to have (like motorcycles!) but many of them only draw us away from obedience to God. Let us keep all of them (even the good ones) in a proper perspective. They are mere machines; only God Himself is perfect.