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Twenty years ago, the cellular phone was introduced to the public with an emphasis on its utility. And its convenience is undeniable. My uncle got a car phone for his 80-plus-year-old mother (my grandmother). As she drives the 15 miles from their farm to do errands in town, it gives both of them peace of mind to know that his help is only a telephone call away. My wife teaches elementary school and usually stays three or four hours after the school day to prepare for the next day's lessons. Her cell phone (when it works) is the only way my daughter or I can contact her in her classroom. Once I was on a fishing trip in remote Canada, and a friend unexpectedly caught in the midst of an important business deal was able to go along because he had a cell phone. These are good things.

So, I am not ready to call for a wholesale ban on the cell phone. But despite its indisputable usefulness, I find myself much more often annoyed than thankful for this now omnipresent device.

There's no need to harp on the most clearly hazardous and bothersome use of the cell—people chattering as they drive. Instead, consider these exhibits:

• At least three times, standing in line at a cash register, I have seen (and heard) someone ahead in the line continue a cellular conversation all the way through the transaction with the cashier. There was no exchange of courtesies, sometimes not even eye contact with the clerk, just a rude continuance of the phone conversation and mute acceptance of change, merchandise, and receipt.



• Too many times cell phones have rung—or cheeped out bars from Beethoven's Ninth or some desecrated Beatles' tune—at movie theaters and public performances. I was once at a grade-school concert when a woman two rows behind spent most of the evening on her phone, and I hope she at least hid it whenever her child looked down from the stage. A few years ago my daughter and I were at a Bill Cosby performance when a cell phone sounded in the audience. To our delight, Cosby left the stage, strode into the seats, and demanded to talk to the caller, whom, he said, ought to be informed that he was "trying to work here."



• I cannot count the number of times that I've been in a restaurant and seen two people sitting at a table over drinks, each on a cell phone talking to someone else. If they didn't want to talk to one another, why did they go to the restaurant together?

Such incidents offer evidence that cell phones most often aren't used for utility but rather for display. After all, these typical incidents occur in public, and, oddly, people cell-talking in public usually raise, not lower, their voices. The connection isn't always faulty, and if the conversation were truly important the cell talker could retreat to a restroom or some other quieter spot.

	What the cell phone really says is this: "Look at me. Listen to me. I am important. In fact, I am indispensable."

Yet another piece of evidence for display, not utility, is that the overheard conversation is nearly always banal: "Now I'm walking past Marshall Field's, and there's Houlihan's" or "Have you been to your hairdresser yet?" or "I think the battery's running low on this thing. How long does yours usually last?"

When so much said over the cell is trivial and ostentatiously public, we can bet the real message intended to be communicated is not the one put into words and boosted into the ether. What the cell phone really says is this: "Look at me. Listen to me. I am important. In fact, I am indispensable. I must never be out of reach, no matter where I am or what I might be doing. People must have constant access to my counsel, my decisions, my refreshing repartee. I must always be available."

In our culture, pervaded by technological gadgets and dependencies, the opportunity for Christian witness comes in ways large and small. I won't suggest, flatly, that it's unchristian to use a cell phone, but there are powerful messages we might embody with a more careful and limited usage of the cell.

By refusing to answer or speak on the cell phone when we are in face-to-face conversation with another person, we communicate that we are willingly and fully available to the other. People are more important than task, not to mention vanity. People, not "efficiency" or increased profits, are made in the image of God.

Our control of the cell phone (rather than its control of us) also can demonstrate a profoundly Sabbatarian attitude. To acknowledge Sabbath—that is, to rest—is to acknowledge that God can run the world even when we stop trying to do so.

Americans work the longest hours and take the shortest vacations of any other people in the developed world. It can seem positively un-American to rest or be "out of touch" from the office. But it is not unchristian to admit and claim the freedom of Sabbath rest and be more in touch with our God and with our deepest selves.

So next time we are concentrated on family or friends, or even relaxation, and the cell phone rings, there is a choice. Will we be what we are called to be—a people of freedom—or will we press the phone against our palm, push the "on" button, and snap shackles as sure as handcuffs back around our wrist?

Adapted from Prism (Nov./Dec. 2001), © 2001 Rodney Clapp. Used by permission.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
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