When God Gives You A Smartphone

God bothering parents are always the best source of comic relief, if you can suspend your disgust at the abhorrent things they teach their children. I mean, the way they just draw God into everything like your comic-obsessed ex-boyfriend who thought getting to know people meant asking, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” This morning, I found a devotional Daddy who decided it was time to explain to his teenager why God hands out iPhones.

In the form of a letter to a teenager unboxing their first smartphone, Daddy Divine, starts:

God Has a Purpose for Your Phone

That is amazing! With 1.91 billion smartphones in use in 2015, how does he do it? I mean, doesn’t that get in the way of determining who will do the most bench presses at next year’s NFL combine? How does he manage to find time to help Survivor contestants win reward challenges if he’s mapping out plans for 1.91 billion smartphones and counting? Will it change the number of times God helps people find their car keys? Will he still have time to decide the winners for the Oscars? Isn’t anyone concerned he might overwork himself? I mean, if I cared about the big guy as much as all you pew-polishers do, I’d tell him to take himself for a vacay. Maybe the Caymans, I dunno. 1.91 billion purpose-driven smartphones. Wow.

Technology is a gift from God.

I’m curious, then. Why did he wait so long to give it to us? I mean, he’s still slowly trickling it down, but why the delays? Was it really necessary to wait until after the black plague and similar medical disasters to let us discover that sanitation and vaccinations would prevent and antibiotics could cure? Do you know how much easier the Exodus would have been if that lot had cars? They were, after all, God’s chosen people and he was trying to deliver them from slavery. But he delivers them right into 40 years of wandering. Do you know what a fleet of Land Rovers could’ve done for them? Seriously. What else does he have up there that he’s not given us yet? Intergalactic space flight? The cure for cancer? He’s just hanging onto it up in the sky like your best friend in first grade clinging to the remote, forcing you to watch Barney over and over and over again? And you worship this fella?

at the beginning of time, God created two people, naked and alone in a little garden, and gave them a worldwide task: to spread out across this world and exercise dominion over it.

Remember a few sentences ago when you said tech was a gift from God? Well, that very same tech that God gifted us has mapped the human genome. Through mapping the human genome with God’s gift of tech, we have discovered that there is no way we could have descended from Adam and Eve. What we have found instead, is that we descend from other primates, many, many, many years before the time of Genesis.

Christians are always paying attention when a new technology shakes the world. Every technology is an opportunity.

Except contraception, Disney movies, abortion, video games, porn, Facebook, etc, etc, etc.

Satan Has a Purpose for Your Phone

Dude, there are two motherfuckers planning uses for 1.91 billion smartphones? Here I thought Satan was busy making condoms and helping J.K Rowling write Harry Potter stories.

Adam and Eve determined they would disobey God, and when they did that, they brought sin into this world.

What with all that God-given tech mapping the genome and tossing your Adam and Eve yarn out the window, I’m gonna call bullshit on this one, too. Plus the fact that snakes, while quite hissy and sometimes rattly, simply don’t talk.

This means that every technology, including your new phone, can be used to do things that are evil.

Right? I hate spam, too!

Because this is a world caught up in a great cosmic battle between good and evil, every new technology enters into the fight.

You know, I’ve heard this before many times, and yet every time I go outside, my little corner of the world seems at peace. Even without invoking God every ten minutes. I’m not so sure this battle of yours is entirely real. I think what’s more likely is that some people are just messed up enough and indoctrinated enough to do things to other people or property, that is harmful. You know, like when flower shop owners refuse to create the floral arrangements for a wedding out of sheer hatred. Or when little girls are molested by their own Quiverfilling brother. When trusted spiritual leaders violate little boys, or when children die after their parents refuse medical treatment (more of God’s gift of tech) in the name of God. It’s less a battle between good and evil, and more a battle between reason and faith.

You will have the choice before you every day and every moment — will you use it for good or for evil? Will you use it to carry out the tasks God has given you, or will you use it to hinder those tasks? Will you use your phone to serve God or to serve Satan? Thank God for your smartphone, but plead with him for wisdom to use it well.

So, what you’re saying is, God has a plan for your iPhone 6. So does Satan. The battle begins when you turn it on. Will Satan win or will God? The decision is yours. Fully and completely yours, negating both Satan’s and God’s plan for your phone and rendering their involvement in the whole deal, ultimately useless. It’s entirely up to you, mere mortal, whether God and Beelzy have effective plans or not. Am I clear on this?

Your Heart Has a Purpose for Your Phone

Right, there are some fantastic fitness apps out there. I use My Fitness Pal, personally.

If you idolize sexual pleasure, you will probably be tempted to use your phone to look at pornography.

Haha, I love this guy’s sense of humour. Using the word “if” in regards to porn while addressing a teenager with raging hormones. Precious. Just precious.

Did you know that more than half of all pornography is now viewed on mobile devices like yours?

Technology is so great. Praise Turing!

This means that many people like you bought a smartphone so they could text with their friends and take pictures of their vacation, but somehow they ended up using it to look at pornography. They used this great, God-given technology to do harm instead of good.

Woah, woah, woah…. back the fucking truck up there, Papa-Prays-A-Lot. How is it that the phone is God-given tech, but the porn is not? And how is waxing your pole, harmful? Scientists and psychologists agree masturbation is a healthy activity that most teenagers engage in. In fact, those who are forced to feel shame in it, or that it is harmful, end up molesting their sisters. Duggar, I’m looking at you.

Use It to the Glory of God

Another God-given tech: the hashtag. #WordSalad

And now it is time to take that phone out of the box and to turn it on for the first time. As you hold it in your hand, why don’t you take a moment to pray?

I dunno how you come up with this shit!

Of course. You’ve just given a teenager a device they’ve been waiting to own their whole lives. You’ve encouraged them to open the box and cradle the precious tech in their hands…. and now you want them to put it down, get on their knees and pray to an imaginary man in the sky that they will not succumb to Satan’s evil plan for this phone, and instead follow God’s. Sure. And Tana Mongeau is adored for her well-thought-out positions on class struggle.

Then go and glorify him with and through it.

Did you check the god-given Urban Dictionary before you wrote that final sentence? Because I think you just told your kid to go beat the bishop. Looks like Satan’s got a head start, there, Daddy.

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