Recommended

7 Reasons Why Your Smartphone Is Bilbo's Ring

Gollum has the ring. Scene from 'The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.'
Gollum has the ring. Scene from "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King." | (Photo: The Lord of the Rings Facebook/Screengrab)

1) You randomly worry that you don't have it, check your pocket, your heart rate quickens, you check your other pocket, find it, and then slowly calm back down again.

2) Your phone is powerful and magical. 10 years ago, if you told someone all the things your phone would do, they would have thought of it as magic. Your phone also gives you the power to do everything you would need to do to run a Fortune 500 company for weeks from thousands of miles away.

3) You think sometimes of getting rid of your phone, but every time you get ready to throw it away, you step back from the edge and change your mind. 

Get Our Latest News for FREE

Subscribe to get daily/weekly email with the top stories (plus special offers!) from The Christian Post. Be the first to know.

4) To the observer at a distance, for hours on end each day, you look at it, make faces at it, touch it and stroke it and talk to it.

5) Your phone, as studies suggest, through the course of months and years, slowly changes you into a different version of yourself.

6) Your phone gives you the impression that you have great power and are in control (see number 2 above) but it actually ultimately gives much more power to "the great eye" (i.e. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung) who, as everyone knows, is storing and cataloging and quantifying every move we make and every single act we perform with our phones, handing over to such corporations an ability to "dominate all life."

7) When you use your phone, you disappear to all those around you and are instantly transported to something that is like reality, but is a warped and clouded version of it.

Originally posted at On This Rock. 

Father John Hollowell is a priest for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis.

Was this article helpful?

Help keep The Christian Post free for everyone.

By making a recurring donation or a one-time donation of any amount, you're helping to keep CP's articles free and accessible for everyone.

We’re sorry to hear that.

Hope you’ll give us another try and check out some other articles. Return to homepage.