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And yet, if you own a smartphone, you have likely abused it. Such abuse is the target of countless magazine features, books of lament, and powerful videos that reveal just how foolishly our smartphone overuse influences our lives. A moment of guilt can be a powerful motivator, but it won’t last. As time wears on and guilt subsides, we revert to old behaviors. This is because our fundamental convictions are too flimsy to sustain new patterns of behavior, and so what seems immediately “right” (turning off our phones) is really nothing more than the product of a moment’s worth of shame.
Elecciones espasmódicas
Every time we open our Bibles, our souls are being fed through centuries of technological advancement. From trumpets and temples to gold-edged Bibles, God intended technology to play an essential role for us to know and worship him.
This is always what happens when technology is misused in unbelief. God is the genesis of all knowledge and technological advance, and he is the author and finisher of a glorified city to come. Why would a mud skyscraper impress him? Technology is not inherently evil, but it tends to become the platform of choice to express the fantasy of human autonomy.
God created trees to serve man, but man invented crosses to destroy man. In the darkness of this most evil moment, God’s entire plan for the glorious new city took a decisive step forward. Through an evil misuse of technology, man killed the Author of life, yet God was sovereign over the entire process.12 By a cosmic paradox that will never be eclipsed, in the naked torture of shame before the eyes of man, Christ exposed all the forces of evil to the shame of stripped-naked defeat.
the more addicted you become to your phone, the more prone you are to depression and anxiety, and the less able you are to concentrate at work and sleep at night.
As we progress, I will point out some scientific findings, but only as a turnstile for us to move the discussion from the biological effects of our screen habits into the more important discussion of the spiritual push and pull between our online actions and the infinite consequences of our device behaviors.
Why are we lured to distractions? What is a distraction? And, most foundational of all, what is the undistracted life?
fact: the human appetite for distraction is high in every age, because distractions give us easy escape from the silence and solitude whereby we become acquainted with our finitude, our inescapable mortality, and the distance of God from all our desires, hopes, and pleasures.
To be without the constant availability of distraction is solitary confinement, a punishment to be most dreaded. That is why in those moments when we realize we have forgotten our phone, lost it, or let the battery run out, we taste the captivity of a prison cell, and it can be frightening.
The Pascal of our generation puts it this way: “We run away like conscientious little bugs, scared rabbits, dancing attendance on our machines, our slaves, our masters”—clicking, scrolling, tapping, liking, sharing . . . anything. “We think we want peace and silence and freedom and leisure, but deep down we know that this would be unendurable to us.” In fact, “we want to complexify our lives. We don’t have to, we want to. We want to be harried and hassled and busy. Unconsciously, we want the very thing we complain about. For if we had leisure, we would look at ourselves and listen to our
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All of us find ourselves uncomfortably close to passing into the mystery of eternity, leaving this place, and being forgotten in the only home we’ve ever known. So every day we jump back into the hamster wheel of our digital conversations and muffle the reality.
Nothing puts social media and smartphone habits into context like the blunt reality of our mortality.
All distractions are measured by the reality that “the appointed time has grown very short.”
To put it another way, our battle against the encumbering distractions of this world—especially the unnecessary distractions of our phones—is a heart war we can wage only if our affections are locked firmly on the glory of Christ.
But if we merely exorcise one digital distraction from our lives without replacing it with a newer and healthier habit, seven more digital distractions will take its place.
Over time, we may lose our hearts by the erosive power of unchecked amusements. Eventually we ignore Paul as we lose a sense of our place in God’s timeline.
The more distracted we are digitally, the more displaced we become spiritually.
Pastor Tim Keller was once asked online: Why do you think young Christian adults struggle most deeply with God as a personal reality in their lives? He replied: “Noise and distraction. It is easier to tweet than pray!”40 (Said on Twitter, no less!) The ease and immediacy of Twitter is no match for the patient labor of prayer, and the neglect of prayer makes God feel distant in our lives.
As in every age, God calls his children to stop, study what captures their attention in this world, weigh the consequences, and fight for undistracted hearts before him.
As we drive, our phones ping, our brains get a shot of dopamine, and very often our decisions express our own neighbor negligence. We assume we can ignore the people we see in order to care for the people we don’t see, but that idea is all twisted backward.7 We sin with our phones when we ignore our street neighbors, the strangers who share with us the same track of pavement.
We are quick to believe the lie that we can simultaneously live a divided existence, engaging our phones while neglecting others.
solipsistic introjection—the theory that, subconsciously, talking on a computer can seem more like we’re talking to ourselves than to real people.”
“It’s very difficult to link words on a screen with the reality that there’s a living, breathing human on the other end of the connection.”
online. Our typing thumbs lack empathy without living faces in front of us. It is much easier to slander an online avatar than a real-life brother.
the epidemic of texting and driving (among many other epidemics) is an attempted escape from the limits of our flesh-and-blood nature. We try to break through the boundaries of time and space, and we end up ignoring the flesh and blood around us. In reality, we are finite. We assume that we can drive cars and read and write on our phones all at the same time, but we are weaker than our assumptions. To exist is to be walled in by physical limitations—boundaries and thresholds that limit what we can perceive and accomplish. When we always see our lives through glass, we forget that we are made
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We are not technology. We are not smooth, clean, and indestructible like man-made crystal. No. We are easily scratched. We are born broken. We are dust and water, chemicals and germs, and everywhere we go we leave oily blots on everything we touch.
When you know that there is a place where everyone largely agrees with and values you, you can develop a reluctance to go to a church where you are not so valued, understood, or appreciated.
Our phones buffer us from diversity,
“generational differences are fundamentally constitutive differences for the human race . . . new media is one of many ways our elders are rendered invisible.”
Maybe this is a key function of church attendance in the digital age. We must withdraw from our online worlds to gather as a body in our local churches. We gather to be seen, to feel awkward, and perhaps to feel a little unheard and underappreciated, all on purpose.
it. If you follow Christ, the world will unfollow you.
First, the itch for human approval ultimately renders faith pointless.24 Why? Because faith is the act of being satisfied with Christ, says John Piper, “and if you are bent on getting your satisfaction from scratching the itch of self-regard, people’s affirmation, you will turn away from Jesus, because you can’t serve two masters.”
“In a solid, God-chosen relationship with Jesus, man’s disapproval cannot hurt you and man’s approval cannot satisfy you. Therefore, to fear the one and crave the other is sheer folly.”
Second, the test of authenticity for our lives is not determined by the applause of man, but by the approval of God.26 We cannot commend ourselves. God commends us.27 He searches us. He knows our every motive, even our motives for ministry.28
The sad truth is that many of us are addicted to our phones because we crave immediate approval and affirmation.
When we put this scrubbed-down representation of ourselves online, we tabulate the human approval in a commodity index of likes and shares.
We post an image, then watch the immediate response. We refresh.
Did what we posted gain the immediate approval of others?
Even the promise of religious approval and the affirmation of other Christians is a gravitational pull that draws us toward our phones.
“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 6:1). Consider one example. Imagine setting aside a few weeks of your summer vacation to travel on dirt roads and bump around in loud jeeps, winding deep into remote jungle villages in Central America. You risk fevers, diseases, and heatstroke, all in order to help build an orphanage for twenty destitute kids. At the end of the month, you step back, take a selfie with your handiwork in the background, and post it with pride on
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shouldn’t we check ourselves through concrete examples like these?
It’s like a drug. It gives a buzz, and then it is gone.
on “regular micro-bursts of validation given by every like, favorite, retweet, or link.”
other seekers of affirmation.
we cultivate an inordinate desire for human approval through our social media platforms.
Those who feed on little nibbles of immediate approval from man will eternally starve.
But those who aim their entire lives toward the glory and approval of God will find, in Christ, eternal approval.33
The urgency that you feel and that drives you online is caused by your fear of being unreplicated, unseen, unloved.
Do you want your approval and fame now, or can you wait for an eternal crown?
whether our souls find health in Christ or sickness in the spotlight.
