Q: Can we pray about technology "viruses," like we might pray about disease?

This is the current "Question of the Week" on JSH-Online, and what I posted in response.

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A: Yes, I certainly do!

Most of the technology viruses I seem to hear about fall into three categories: either they were developed by someone maliciously to access private information, developed with the somewhat less malicious intent of getting advertisements in front of people, or seem to develop over time as technology begins to be out of date. So, behind all three of those types, I see mistakes about the nature of man and the universe that I can correct through prayer.

In the first case, I can know that God’s children are the direct outcomes of Him. The only thing they can manifest are His qualities of goodness, love, respect, etc. They represent divine Mind, and as such can’t include an evil intention of harming others.

In the second case, I can know that both I and whoever is trying to market things to me, can be free from a false sense of manipulation—me from being manipulated by another to think or feel the way they want me to; the other parties from feeling that manipulation is not only an acceptable, but also an effective way to achieve success in their business or cause. Again, divine Mind is supplying all of us with right thoughts and motives, and wakes us up from a deluded sense of human will as something effective.

In the last case, I handle it as a belief of aging. I mean, isn’t the way we think of aging technology eerily similar to how we think of aging material bodies? I love the explanation I read/heard somewhere recently in one of the periodicals that what we think of as aging is just an accumulation of false beliefs that we haven’t handled, that is, seen the nothingness of. And that’s just how we think of old technology—it isn’t properly squashing new security threats, and so it gets slow, malfunctions, or—we even use this word for it—dies! 

So, to counter this type of imposition, we can take a few steps that are a lot like prayer to heal or prevent disease. Updating our anti-virus software is a lot like working with the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures—possibly through the Weekly Bible Lesson—to glean new ideas or new applications of ideas and use them in our daily lives. Learning to spot email scams is a lot like becoming so familiar with Truth, God, that anything erroneous is really obvious to us and we dismiss it instantly. And deciding when to upgrade to new technology is a lot like listening for inspiration about when it’s appropriate to move on to new life experiences, such as jobs, homes, or relationships—or when it’s time to move up higher in our reliance on God in any kind of situation, including for our sense of health and well-being.

So I think it’s mostly about being alert, listening for inspiration—to our intuition or spiritual sense, and acting on the guidance we’re given. Those activities preserve us from all kinds of ills—bodily and technological included.