Reflection for August 28

A recent article (by John Dyer) points out that Apple tech has been an incredible boon to missionaries in the field, and particularly those working in areas where Christians are suffering persecution.

“The iPod was revolutionary because it made gigabytes the new norm for storage capacities. Surprisingly, this mattered to the Church.... There are many cultures without a written language. Other impoverished countries have high illiteracy rates among the poor.... The obvious solution was to translate [the Bible] directly into spoken words and create audio versions of the Scriptures. The problem was that doing so required dozens of CDs and a large playback device.

The iPod made it possible to carry solar-powered audio Bibles in a backpack across the Amazon, the African plains, or the mountains of East Asia. Missionaries could hand a device to any person anywhere in the world, and that person could hear the Word of God.... An even bigger bonus is that while customs agents often confiscate Bibles and CDs, they don’t care about MP3 players” (posted by Nicholas Knisely at Episcopal Cafe).