The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place

by Andy Crouch

We are prisoners of our own insecurity (Will I still have a job if I take two solid weeks of vacation?), pride (How can people get along without me?), fantasies (What if I miss an email telling me I’ve won the lottery?), and cultural capitulation (This is just how the world works now, isn’t it?). For us, the door to a better life is only locked from the inside. We prefer our brightly lit cage of toil and leisure (this cage, after all, comes with unlimited Netflix). In this area, as in all of life, the path toward real freedom—including the freedom to actually choose freedom, rather than imprisoning ourselves in our too-small substitutes for real life—is to embrace disciplines. And that is what the practice of Sabbath, whether on a daily, weekly, or yearly basis, can be. The beautiful, indeed amazing, thing about all disciplines is that they serve as both diagnosis and cure for what is missing in our lives. They both help us recognize the exact nature of our disease and, at the very same time, begin to heal us from our disease.