I’m not a fax machine, but I can still receive!

My column in the local paper went through a "hiatus" as my column was lost in the shuffle for several weeks. I have made it my policy to not post online until after the print version has been distributed. Then things got very busy for me and I did not get this article posted for another week beyond its first published date. So without further adieu, here is the article that was first published Oct 5, 2007 in The Daily Sentinel:


I have a love-hate relationship with technology. I am old enough to remember what life was like before personal computers, fax machines, cell phones and the internet. But I’m young enough that I have used those technologies for almost my entire working life. They do so much for me: make communications easier; send information long distances instantly; store and retrieve data. But then things can go wrong. Sometimes the technology just seems SO DUMB!

Take for instance, the fax machine. It seems simple: I want to send a copy of a document from here to somewhere else. I have the phone number for the fax machine there. I put my paper into the sheet feeder (making sure I put it in the right direction!) and dial the number. I even remember to hit the green “start” button so that when the two fax machines connect, my document will start feeding automatically. I hear the numbers “dialed;” I hear the “sqeeeee-grshhhhhhh-sqeeeee-diiiiiit” that tells me the fax machines are talking to one another. I see the document start to go through the feeder. Success! I walk away to take care of something else.

An hour later, I come back and discover my document is stuck two-thirds of the way down into the feeder, slightly askew. I gently tug on the paper. It doesn’t move. I tug harder. It moves a little bit, but doesn’t come loose. I tug a little harder. The paper rips into two pieces. What’s left in the machine is now sticking out about one-sixteenth of an inch – nowhere near enough for me to grab it with my fingers!

So now I have a ruined document. I have no idea how much of it made it to the other end. And I have to break my machine apart to gather then other end of the paper. By the time I am done, that fax machine will never send another document again.

So why did it do that? What caused the paper to jam? Why isn’t the machine smart enough to holler “help!” when things started going wrong? Was it feeling neglected because I walked away? Did it decide to “get back” at me for not baby-sitting the entire fax-sending process?

It’s amazing how much we put human emotion and expectations on mechanical things. Social scientists call that “anthropomorphism” – an interpretation of what is not human or personal in terms of human or personal characteristics. Well, I say we’re only human and so we can only understand things when we try to humanize them.

I believe God created us with this tendency. In fact, I think it may be one of the greatest gifts God gave us. Genesis 1:27 says this: “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

To coin a phrase, God “deifi-morphed” humanity – gave us something that allows us to recognize the divine in non-divine things. Now there are some people who have twisted that around to make it go the other way: humanity created God in its own image. But I don’t think so.

We have “made up” a lot of things about God. We often try to superimpose our definitions of what it means to be god-like upon God. And we often reject God because God refuses to conform to our nice little tidy definitions and expectations of what God should be.

But God did something more than just make humans in God’s image. God “anthropomorphed” into humanity’s image. The apostle Paul explained it this way: “Jesus Christ, who being in the very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! Therefore, God also exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Phillipians 2:6-11)

I am so grateful that God created me with something divine so that I could recognize when God became something human!

I can project all kinds of human qualities on that fax machine, but it will never succeed in receiving them – and I will never become more fax-like in order to save it from destroying my documents. Maybe that difference between my actions and God’s action explains why I have a love-hate relationship with technology, while God only has a love relationship with humanity. When the fax machine doesn’t do what I want it to do, I end up breaking it and throwing it into the garbage. Thank God that when I don’t do what God wants, I don’t become garbage! And neither do you!!

Why not take a moment right now and thank God for being willing to fix you no matter how badly you are broken? God’s sending love from heaven to earth. To you. Will you receive it?