I like to talk about "what's coming" in terms of near-future technologies, and sometimes my "victims" think I'm nuts. I don't think so, naturally, and it is postings like the one from CNN concerning the American scientist Ray Kurzweil entitled, "Futurist: We'll someday accept computers as human," that form the basis of my conviction that the world is going to change dramatically and relatively soon. Medical science will learn how to lengthen our life spans by hundreds of years. Nanotechnologies will give whole new post-industrial processes as well as products. There is going to be growing interest in what we might call "spiritual technologies" such as meditation. It isn't clear how all of this will work out and who will benefit from it, but a new world is coming and fast.If this subject interests you, I recommend that you spend a few minutes viewing a video Kurzweil put out in 2009 called, "The Singularity of Ray Kurzweil" (here).
Churches remain one of society's institutions most resistant to change. What is likely to happen is that while Christians continue to fight over how old the Earth is and whether or not there was a "historical Adam," the world will simply leave them in the dust. The church will become an increasingly small retro curiosity. How will faith in Christ be expressed in the 22nd century? Will we make it that far? These are questions worth pondering.
