93.  What We Have Lost in Our Digital Paradise

Context:

As diversion from an incredibly intense Conference, I started to read what I thought was a science fiction novel only to discover it was a romance! 

The heroine, sole daughter of a fabulously wealthy, widowed, defense contractor, was an outrageously best-selling romance author/aerospace specialist!  Our hero was an airborne Odysseus--an  Air Force Major flying cutting edge air frames!

The story of how these two met, quarreled, were separated, rescued, and eventually fell hopelessly in love was cliche, and quite improbable--but wonderfully entertaining. I wrote the author to say he was decades too late with his sweet and sentimental tale.  When he asked me to explain, I sent him this: 
          What We Have Lost in Our Digital Paradise

I came upon a book today;
A story of romance.
With a princess and a hero, 
And a fate not left to chance. 

It was sweet and sentimental,
And the ending was ideal. 
For despite their tests and trials, 
From the start their love was sealed.  

A silly tear escaped my eye, 
As I read the final scene, 
Of proposal and acceptance,
And a ring to seal their dreams. 

But as I put the volume down, 
A chill insight came to mind--
This progressive world before us,  
Fails the test of earlier times. 

For although we're all “connected” 
As we push the speed of light.
The price of these “achievements”, 
Leaves our ethics far from sight. 

We too rarely read the Bible, 
We too rarely kneel in prayer. 
Most have come to doubt in Heaven,
Or the God who loves us there. 

We’ve abandoned and forsaken, 
Our own Founders' dreams and faith. 
And, worse, we cannot see we miss, 
God’s power that kept us safe. 

So I fear our transformation
Is achieved at terrible cost.
For the value of this “progress”, 
Is not worth the things we’ve lost. 


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NOTE:

This is not a diatribe against digital communications, entertainment, or social media.  The Church embraces the electronic age and encourages its members to do likewise. (See, Elder Bednar's talk:  "To Sweep the Earth As With a Flood", cited below).  However, limitations as to both content and time/place of usage are appropriate.    

See, Liahona of August, 2015, Elder David Bednar, reprinted there as, "Flood the Earth Through Social Media"

https://www.lds.org/liahona/2015/08/youth/flood-the-earth-through-social-media?lang=eng