"Of idolatry and iPhones"

In this engaging and wide-ranging Commonweal essay, Andrew Bacevich invokes Henry Adams and others in contemplating the reasons for, and implications of, (what looks like) Christianity's demise in the face of "a tacit collaboration of the powerful and the largely powerless distracting attention from the havoc then bearing down on the world."  Along the way, the iPhone is discussed.  He concludes:

The Information Age . . . displays in stark terms our propensity to bow down before freedom’s reputed source. Anyone who today works with or near young people cannot fail to see this: for members of the present generation, the smartphone has become an amulet. It is a sacred object to be held and caressed and constantly attended to. Previous generations fell in love with their cars or became addicted to TV, but this one elevates devotion to material objects to an altogether different level. In the guise of exercising freedom, its members engage in a form of idolatry. Small wonder that aficionados of Apple’s iPhone call it the Jesus Phone.

So the frantic pursuit of self-liberation that Adams identified and warned against enters yet another cycle, with little sign of anything having been learned from past failures. If the God of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament exists, then it must be that he wills this. Yet his purposes remain inscrutable.

Ever the cool observer, Adams might have posited two possible explanations. Either humankind’s quest for freedom in the here and now, achieved through human effort and ingenuity, represents the ultimate heresy and offense against God—in which case we invite his continuing punishment. Or belief in God’s existence represents the ultimate illusion—in which case the chaos humanity has inflicted on itself as it careens from one dynamo to the next may be merely a foretaste of what is to come.

Hmmmm.  I do love the iPhone. . . .