I wrote yesterday that sometimes technology can be a good thing. It can also be used for evil. Here’s a brief article on North Korea that makes the point about technology and also chillingly reinforces my assertion that many government leaders want to be little-g gods. You don’t think so? What does this picture say?

This news article by Elizabeth Russell, World Magazine, September 12, 2005, also contains this paragraph on technology:

The report also found that the government was using more of its citizens for forced labor, and that advances in technology made surveillance of its citizens much more pervasive. (emphasis mine)

It’s not the first time a leader thought of himself as a god:

The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, Thus says the Lord GOD: “Because your heart is proud, and you have said, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods..,’ yet you are but a man, and no god, though you make your heart like the heart of a god….” (Ezekiel 28.1, 2, ESV)

And it’s not the first time that government used something benign for evil purposes:

Then Herod summoned the wise men secretly and ascertained from them what time the star had appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child, and when you have found him, bring me word, that I too may come and worship him.”…Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men. (Matthew 2.7, 8, 16, ESV)