In the first article in this series we talked about the fact that in normal daily life we come at truth in very informal ways and yet in ways that work at the practical level. When we build our homes, we conform them to certain truths about how the construction needs to be done so our homes are safe and function well. We learn these truths by applying what we receive on good authority. This approach seems to be thrown out the window when it comes to discerning, believing and proclaiming religious truth.
In the second article we expanded more on the methods we use
to discern what truth is. Here again we discussed the fact that most of us
haven’t come in contact with the truth first-hand in most cases. In other words,
we don’t learn to build a house by trial and error. We usually learn from
somebody who already knows. We weren’t there when historical events took place
and we aren’t privy to the information that forms the basis for political
decisions. Most of us are not involved in the working out of mathematical
equations or scientific principles. We learn these things and base our
decisions on them based on good authority. But it’s interesting to recognize that
different people accept different authorities. Why is this so? Why, when the
President, any President, announces a decision, do some people assume it is a
wise and truthful decision whereas others claim the decision is faulty and
dishonest? Why do we gravitate to one news source over another or one religious
leader over another? Most of these propensities to lean in one direction or
another are not driven by facts that we know firsthand.
There are usually unproved and sometimes improvable
assumptions, called presuppositions, that move us in one direction or another
when we search for truth. The point I would like us to think very seriously
about is that there is no guarantee that these presuppositions are directing us
toward the truth. Our feelings tell us our sources are true, and we believe
they are, but there is no guarantee. I may listen to a particular news source
because I feel that it is a truthful source of information. But what makes me
think that? And just because I think it, does that make it true? I watch with
fascination as CNN fans put down Fox News for presenting a slanted view of the
facts. At the same time, I hear Fox News followers cut down CNN for painting a
false picture of causes and events. Since CNN and Fox present rather different
perspectives on events, they can’t both be giving the true and complete picture.
One or the other or both are presenting shaded views of the truth. Our
presuppositions drive us to listen to and believe one over the other … or
neither. Why is that?
The same thing occurs in religious discussion. Some people
do not believe that the Bible can be historically accurate and truthful in the narratives
about Jesus Christ, because it describes events which people have never seen
with their own eyes. These miracles are described as though they are facts, but
some people dismiss them out of hand because of the presupposition that such
things cannot and therefore did not take place. Think of the implications if
the resurrection of Jesus actually did take place. In other words, if we take
it out of the realm of a religious teaching and put it into the same realm as
the assassination of Julius Caesar or any other historical event, what would
that mean? Think about it. If this man really died, his heart stopped beating,
and his brain stopped functioning, someone put him into a cold cave, and then
three days later he was alive again, wouldn’t such an event warrant a place in
the history books? But somehow it has been relegated to a religious teaching,
and the thought that it actually happened has pretty much disappeared. Has this
happened because the history of it has been shown to be faulty or because of
presuppositions coming into play?
Our presuppositions tend to move us toward some information
sources and away from others. We believe some people who purport to be
authorities and we reject others. In most cases we haven’t and usually can’t do
the research required to independently verify these authorities. This situation
shouldn’t drive us to the conclusion that the truth doesn’t exist or that it
can’t be known. We don’t do that in normal daily life and we shouldn’t do it in
philosophical, political, or religious areas of life. However, we do need to
recognize that our presuppositions may not be pointing us to the truth. If we
really want to know what the truth is, we sometimes need to work against our
natural presuppositions and give other sources a fair and reasoned hearing
because it may be that the truth lies in that direction.
How do we know what is true and what is false in everyday life? Isn’t it true that most of us don’t know things from firsthand experience, but rather we learn them through other people who tell us or teach us about truth? For example, where was Abraham Lincoln when he was shot? Or was he shot? Maybe he died of a heart attack. How do we know these things? We don’t know any of this by having seen it with our own eyes. We don’t even know because we personally did hours upon hours of research to find out. Most of us know because someone, probably a teacher in school, and the textbooks we used, told us what happened to Abraham Lincoln.
Most of us who use math at the every-day level don’t know
the truths underlying the math, although we probably could. For example, most
people don’t know from personal investigation how fractions and common
denominators work. But if we use them at all, we were taught how to work with
fractions, and we know that the methods work, and that is good enough for us.
But my point is that we didn’t learn it from personal investigation and
discovery. We believe these principles because people we trusted, and who we
assumed were authorities, taught us, and what they taught us works.
What is interesting to me is how and why we choose the
people we decide to believe. In elementary school and probably through most of
high school we believed what we were told by our parents and teachers. But as
we grew older, we began to distinguish one opinion from another, and we began
to argue and debate whether what we were being told was true or not. What matters
to me is how we decide who to believe when we receive conflicting messages. Politics
is a good case in point. Someone on TV says that the reason we are in the
economic mess we are in is because we are spending billions on unnecessary
wars. (This article was first written in 2013.) There are really two messages
there: 1) the economic mess is caused by the wars, and 2) the wars were
unnecessary. The purpose of this article is not to delve into the politics, but
to observe that people on each side of the argument will rant for hours on
their point of view. How do they know the economic problems are caused by the
war expenditures? How do the people on the other side know that it was not the
wars that caused the economic problems? Have any of these people looked at the
numbers, compared the graphs, and analyzed all of the factors? No! We mostly
listen to what people tell us. For some reason each one of us has a propensity
to believe one explanation of events rather than another. In this particular
example, some believe war caused the mess and some do not. These beliefs are
based on who we have decided to listen to and who we believe. Why do we believe
one source rather than another? Do we have any factual reason for doing so, or are
we going by feelings?
I think the current debate over the Coronavirus is another
similar situation. Some say the President and his team are doing a great job in
handling the crisis. The other side says he should have started earlier, he
shouldn’t have shut down the economy, etc. Here again, I think that very few of
us actually know. We have chosen which news sources we believe because we are
drawn to their arguments, but it’s hard to actually get to the truth. Most of
us don’t analyze the graphs, we aren’t epidemiologists, we don’t know how
viruses work. Truth is out there, but it is hard to get at.
Shouldn’t we be interested in truth? What is the truth? In
many cases we could know if we took the time to do the research. Take
historical events for example. I brought up Abraham Lincoln a moment ago. How
does one know he was assassinated? I’m not a philosopher nor a historian so
this is not a rigorous academic treatise, but it seems to me that to verify
historic events, which no one living now witnessed, we need to go back to
original documents, news reports, photographs, etc., and put together the best
scenario we can as to what actually happened. This takes a lot of time – more
time than we have if we are trying to determine the truth about everything we
hear. So, we decide who we will believe and base our opinions on what they say.
These methods of determining truth pretty much work for day
to day living. But the possibility exists that we have chosen to believe things
which are not true simply because of who we listen to. We need to be open to
the possibility that what we believe might be false. We need to be ready to
discuss our ideas, and to probe other people’s ideas, and to give and receive
facts and arguments in order to get at the truth. The problem is that today
several things stand in the way of discussions of this sort. We’ll discuss
these in more detail later, but basically discussions of truth end because 1)
People don’t really care what the truth is – it doesn’t matter; 2) Truth is
felt at the emotional level and so if it feels correct, it must be true no
matter what the facts say; 3) Truth can’t be known so why bother talking about
it; and 4) Truth doesn’t exist.
My main focus in these articles is to focus on religious
truth, specifically the truth of Christianity and the implications. But, as I
do that, I also want you to begin thinking about all truth claims you hear,
whether in the realm of politics, advertising, advice about health, etc. Why do
you believe what you believe and how do you know you’re listening to the people
that are telling you the truth? But, in future articles I want us to think
about how we as Christians get at the truth of Christianity, and why we believe
it is true. I want us to think about the implications of saying that it is
true. I also want us to see how the four hindrances to seeking truth even
impact our understanding of the Bible and the differences of opinion among us.
Who has held the oceans in his hands? Who has numbered every grain of sand? Kings and nations tremble at his voice All creation rises to rejoice
Behold our God, seated on his throne Come, let us adore him Behold our king, nothing can compare Come, let us adore him
Who has given counsel to the Lord? Who can question any of his words? Who can teach, the one who knows all things? Who can fathom all his wondrous deeds?
Behold our God, seated on his throne Come, let us adore him Behold our king, nothing can compare Come, let us adore him
Who has felt the nails upon his hands? Bearing all the guilt of sinful man God eternal, humbled to the grave Jesus, Savior, risen now to reign
Behold our God, seated on his throne Come, let us adore him Behold our king, nothing can compare Come, let us adore him
As Christians we believe that the Bible is God’s word to man, and a Christian man who is trying to be faithful to his Lord will try to govern his life according to God’s will as given in the Bible.
The purpose
of this series of articles has been to examine the relationship between
technology and the Christian. In this last section I want to look at the issue
of technology and sexual temptation. However, I think that in order to explain
the sexual implications of technology I need to lay the groundwork of a few
principles from the Bible that I’m assuming in this discussion.
The first
thing we need to remember is that God created sex and sexuality. Sex in itself
is not a dirty or vulgar thing. It is a God-given gift. Next, we need to
remember that God has told us in Scripture that sex is to be enjoyed, but that
enjoyment is to be within the relationship of marriage between a man and a
woman. All through the Bible the rightful sexual relationship within marriage
is praised and held up as a joyful thing, not as a vulgar thing.
After Adam
sinned, man’s nature became sinful in all areas of his being and strong
desires, which the Bible calls lusts, began to have a dominant force in a
person’s life. The Bible says that the strong desires of the body (or the flesh
as the Bible describes it), the strong desires coming through our vision, and
the pride of life, are not from God the Father, but are part of the world
system. (I John 2:16) These strong
desires are very difficult to overcome, and without the Spirit of God at work,
it’s almost impossible.
When a
person comes to Christ, God gives him His Spirit and divine power to enable him
to overcome these desires and to live a life that pleases God. We need to
recognize that God has given us commands and directives because He is the one
who created us, and He knows best what is good for our well-being. We should
never look at the commandments of God as though they were meant to spoil our
fun. When we buy a product, a manufacturer will enclose a list of instructions
that show the proper way to use the device. For example, we are perhaps not
supposed to use the device in the water. It may cause damage to the device or
injury to us. These are rules written by the ones who know best how things are
supposed to work. The same is true of God’s rules for us.
The Bible
describes sexual sin with several different terms. One term, porneia, is
used for any sexual sin that is outside of the norm and standard that God
designed. The Greek word I referred to
here you will recognize as the root word for our word pornography. Another
Greek term is translated adultery and usually refers to sexual sin
committed by a married person. Another couple of terms refer to sexual sin as uncleanness
or lewdness. God uses all of these words to describe sins whereby we
violate God’s standard for our sexual behavior.
Let’s look
at some of the descriptions the Bible lays out. Let’s start with what Jesus
actually said. In Mark 7:21 Jesus, speaking about the fact that sin comes from
within a man, says, “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil
thoughts, sexual immorality (porneia, fornication),…adultery,
…sensuality (lewdness, sexual excess). All these evil things come from
within, and they defile a person.” Notice a couple of things here. First of all,
they come from within. The Bible says that the heart is deceitful and
desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). So the source of our difficulty is not from
the outside, but is from within. James writes that “each one is tempted when he
is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived,
it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.”
Next we see
that Jesus describes these actions as evil. Most of what happens sexually in
our culture is not considered evil by most people. The Bible has a different
approach. It makes a clear-cut statement
that sexual immorality is to be avoided and shunned. Lastly, we notice that they defile a person.
We defile ourselves from what comes from within ourselves. Defilement means we
make ourselves dirty and unfit for service for God
Paul,
writing to the Romans in 13:13 says, “Let us walk properly as in the daytime,
not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality (free and easy sex)
and sensuality.” In the next verse he
tells us to make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.” In other words, we should not make it easy to
serve our lusts. Paul writes similar things to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians
12:21.
To the
Ephesians in 5:3 he writes, “But sexual immorality and all impurity or
covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let
there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking which are out of
place. Be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who
is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ
and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things
the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.” In other words, God’s wrath is coming because
people engage in these behaviors. Why would we as Christians want to be a
participant?
Finally,
let’s look at what the Apostle Peter wrote in his first letter. In 4:2 he says
that we should live “no longer for human passions but for the will of God. The
time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in
sensuality (lewdness, sexual excess), passions, drunkenness, orgies,
drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.”
He is basically saying that we need to put our past behavior behind us
and live for God from here on out. And the life we live for God is different from
the description of our past life. Christians don’t behave the same as
non-Christians when it comes to sexuality.
With that
background in mind, how does technology fit into the picture? Technology,
whether it is TV, video, or Internet based, can bring us realistic portrayals
of sexual situations that in turn trigger the strong sexual desires that are
built into us. With men, the strong desires that are aroused through what we
see can be very powerful. The Bible calls these lusts. These lusts then can
give rise to sin if not dealt with.
Jesus tells
us that, “whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed
adultery with her in his heart.” Matthew 5:28. From this simple statement, we
can see that Jesus’ standard is very high. If we are to avoid this kind of
potential sexual sin, we need to take precautions. Jesus’ very next statement is to say that if
our eye offends us, we should pluck it out. Now we could debate whether he was
serious, or whether he was using hyperbole to prove a point, but nevertheless,
it’s obvious he takes this very seriously, and we should take whatever
precautions we can to avoid this sort of sinning. The Apostle Peter wrote to
his readers, “I beg you to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the
soul.” (I Peter 2:11) Peter knew that lusts and strong desires can actually
make war against our very souls. We are to abstain from such lusts. They can
harm us deep within our psyche. Paul told Timothy to flee from such lusts. So
the admonition for us is to do whatever we can to avoid situations that produce
these self-destructive lusts and enable them to flourish.
The problem
with lust is that it is never satisfied. Sexual immorality of all kinds
promises that it will meet the inner longings of our souls, but it never does.
We are trapped into an ever-deepening desire for more, and the satisfaction we
derive from our sin becomes less and less. God’s secret to happiness is what
Jesus taught the people in the Sermon on the Mount—Happy is the man who hungers
and thirsts for righteousness. While
this seems totally foreign to the modern mind, it is God’s way of finding
satisfaction. Do we believe God or the world system? Our direction and focus
need to be toward a life of righteousness.
In
Ephesians 5:10, Paul tells us that we should find out what pleases the Lord. In
verse 11 he tells us not to have any fellowship with the unfruitful works of
darkness, and then in verse 12 he explains that it is shameful to even speak
about things which are done by them in secret.
In other words, there are things that displease God that people do in
secret, and it’s shameful for Christians to even speak about these things. But
isn’t this what happens when we view certain scenes on TV or over the Internet?
Aren’t we looking in on what people are doing or talking about in secret?
So let’s
take these ideas and put them together. We as Christians are to avoid the
immorality that is initiated in our minds by the things which we see, and we
are to not even talk about the kinds of things that people do under the cover
of darkness or in secret. Focusing our attention on these things can trigger
strong desires that war on our souls and do great spiritual damage.
So what
does that tell us about TV viewing for example? Doesn’t this mean that we
should take every precaution in our viewing to avoid those programs and
commercials that either trigger immoral thoughts in our minds, or display or
discuss immoral activities in detail? In
this case, I’m not even talking about pornography. I’m just suggesting that we
take great care not to become careless and accustomed to immorality and casual
sexual content because in doing so, our own minds can become fertile ground for
imagined sexual activity that Jesus condemns.
If these
things are true, then what does that say about actual pornography? There’s no
question that exposure to graphic sexual material will produce strong sexual
lusts in our minds and in our bodies that we cannot legitimately act upon from
God’s point of view. This being the case, we as Christian men need to take
every precaution to avoid getting ourselves into the trap that pornography
represents.
Technology
itself can be addicting as we have discussed before. When you add pornography
to the technology, you have a powerful mix. The Bible often speaks of diligence
when it comes to the Christian life. It takes a great deal of diligence to
avoid the entrapping nature of pornography. What are some of the things we can
do to avoid the trap?
First, I
think we need to look at our lives to see if we really have the desire to live
a life that is honoring to God no matter what the cost. This is where a lot of
it falls down. We may claim that we are Christians, and we very well may be,
but we don’t really want to sacrifice the time and attention that it takes to
live a consistent, biblical, righteous Christian life. We may enjoy our sin too
much! We may believe that God isn’t really interested in our good if He would
withhold all of these things from us and ask us to live such a narrow life. So
we need to make up our minds. Do we want a God-honoring life or not?
Second, we
need to look at our personal spiritual disciplines carefully. Are we regularly
taking the time to pray? Are we reading, studying, and meditating on the
Scriptures regularly? Are we regularly involved with other Christians in
fellowship, prayer, and ministry? If not, we are making ourselves vulnerable in
many areas including our sexuality. If you are weak in any of these areas, take
immediate steps to improve. Start today by getting in the Word and taking time
to pray. Don’t make any excuses to miss church on Sunday. If there’s a church
prayer meeting going on somewhere near you, be there.
In addition
to making sure our Christian life is being supported the way it needs to be,
here are some other steps you can take to increase accountability and provide
protection for yourself and your family.
1. Make sure TV viewing is open and public within the home.
Children should not have televisions in their rooms where they can watch what
they want without supervision.
2. If you live alone and can’t control what you watch, get
rid of the TV. If you can’t handle the Internet, have it disconnected (Remember
Jesus telling us to pluck out our eye or cut off our arm?)
3. Computer use should be open and public within the
home—for everyone. Children should not have computers with Internet access or
DVD capabilities in their rooms. They may fight you on this and tell you what
every other child gets to have, but that’s ok. We are Christians who desire to
please God, and so we have different procedures.
4. Husbands, give your wife complete access to your
computer, your browsing history, your Facebook passwords… everything. Ask
your wife to keep you accountable.
5. Establish an accountability partner who has your
permission to ask you anything he wants about your viewing and browsing habits.
6. If necessary, sign up for a filtering service that will
email your browsing history to your wife or an accountability person.
7. Under no circumstances should teenagers have a smart
phone. That sounds radical, I know, but why do any of us have to have access to
the Internet 24/7? Do you honestly think a 16-year-old boy can keep away from
pornography if he has Internet access on his phone wherever he is? Think about
it! If your son wants to know why you don’t trust him, explain that you don’t
even trust yourself.
In conclusion, we realize that developments in technology
will continue. We have no way of knowing what the future will bring, and what
kinds of devices we will have to adjust to in the years ahead. But know this,
we must live for the glory of God in all areas of life, and technology is one
of those areas that needs to be brought under the Lordship of Christ. We need
to be discerning, and we need to pass on discernment skills to our children, so
they won’t be overwhelmed by the alluring, addicting devices that are sure to
come. Let’s pray earnestly and ask God for the wisdom we all will need to live
lives that are pleasing to Him in all areas.
I think all
of us have seen the bizarre sight of a man and woman across from each other in
a restaurant each texting or talking to someone else. I saw something similar
to this on a beautiful evening while walking down the sidewalk. Toward me came
a man and woman walking side by side. Both of them had a phone up to their ear
talking to someone elsewhere. It seemed to me that in so doing they were
missing both the potential communication with the other person as well as all
of the interesting sights and sounds of their actual location.
Why do we
do this to ourselves? What is it about remote contacts that is more appealing than
those we are with? There is a danger
here that I don’t think many people think about. If the person you are with is
someone near and dear to you such as a wife or a child, and if you repeatedly
move yourself from attending to them to attending to someone else (or something
else), the relationship changes and is ultimately harmed in some way. It may
not be damaged over night, but in time the relationship will not be as strong
as it should be.
We are
already familiar with the jokes about the husband who is distracted by a
newspaper or a ball game when his wife is trying to talk to him. Think about
how much greater the barrier is when there is an actual person on the other end
of a conversation who is getting precedence over one’s own spouse. This kind of
thing will certainly happen from time to time, but let’s just imagine the
scenario that every evening one spouse is texting some invisible person to the
neglect of the person right there in front of him. Doesn’t that have the
potential to break down the communication and put distance between the two of
them? What if they both are doing it? They are each receiving some sort of
fulfilling input from a source other than their spouse. Over time, this has to
have a damaging effect on the relationship.
Read what
one anonymous reader posted on my blog in response to a technology article:
I read through what you
wrote……my comment combines a few, as I am having jealousy issues with my
husband’s cell, FB usage, iPad etc. Mostly it is the cell phone usage with
access to FB. We have only been married a short time *less than a year* and
this is a big issue for me- as it takes away from our time together whether at
home, at restaurants, the mall, even at times, at church. Lately I have been
praying for patience and understanding…. understanding as to why he chooses
it over me. We also, btw, have 4 kids with us at any given time. I am going to
read through some of the other postings for enlightenment. But, my stance is:
these pieces (cell, iPad, FB) can hurt a person or a relationship just by
sucking up the TIME it takes away from a loved one.
Let’s
consider another scenario. A family of five is home for the evening for a
change. Dad and mom decide to watch a movie. The children don’t want to watch
that particular movie, so the first child goes to his room to watch something
he’s interested in on his computer. The next child props his feet up in the
family room and listens to his favorite playlist on his phone. And the last
child texts back and forth with one of her friends from school. In some homes
this is normal. It happens every day. Do
you see a problem here? The family is together, but not communicating.
Next
consider the fact that self-centeredness is fed by this scenario. No one has to
learn to appreciate the other person’s taste in music or movies. No one has to
learn to share. Everyone can have what suits himself. Sister is not required to
talk to brother if she doesn’t want to. While this might seem like a reasonable
thing in today’s world, for the Christian it is not the direction we want to
go.
I’ve
discovered that living the Christian life is an extremely difficult thing
especially when it comes to our relationships with others, especially when
those others are members of our family. If we are to become the kind of people
God wants us to be, don’t we have to learn the skills that He values?
Let’s look at some relevant scripture passages:
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the
church and gave himself for it. (Emphasis mine.)
Philippians 2:3 In lowliness of mind let each esteem others
better than himself.
Romans 12:10 In honor giving preference to one another
Galatians 5:13 Through love serve one another.
Deuteronomy 6:7 You shall teach them (God’s words)
diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house,
when you walk by the way, when you lie
down, and when you rise up.
Romans 15:1-2 Let each of us please his neighbor
for his good, leading to edification.
After
reading passages such as these, I learn that my role as husband and father is
one that is supposed to be other focused. I am to be attentive to the needs of
my wife, not only giving preference to her, but making sure that she is built
up spiritually and emotionally. I am to esteem her as better than myself when
it comes to preferences in the use of time, money and activities. I am not to
be focused on pleasing myself but on her good so she can be built up in her
faith and character.
In
addition, I am to spend time at all times of the day instilling in my children
the words and commandments of God. My focus personally and for my family is one
that is to have a God-ward direction. I’m to make sure that I am teaching my
children to be focused on the needs and interests of others rather than the
natural tendency to focus on self.
However,
when I make arrangements for each of my children to have his/her own electronic
entertainment, I am teaching them that they don’t have to learn to cater to the
desires and preferences of others. I am teaching them that each of us can have
what we want. Some may argue that such arrangements are not taking away from
the preferences of others because they too get to listen to or watch what they
want. But the issue is in learning to communicate and to submit to one another.
It’s difficult to let another person have the choice of the music that I have
to listen to or the movie we’re going to watch. Why should I have to watch a
movie my sister picked out?! My selfish self rebels against this. If we all
have to watch the same movie or listen to the same music and share the same
space, we learn to put others first and to share. This doesn’t come naturally,
but it is what God wants from us. And as parents we need to make our daily
instruction an integral part of our dialogue throughout the day’s activities.
Our decisions about how we use technology impact that daily instruction. If
everyone including parents is distracted with their own movie, playlist,
Facebook page, and text messages, where are the opportunities going to come
from for sharing the Christian life with one another?
It takes
time to build and nurture relationships. It takes time for me to nurture the
relationship with my wife and children, and it takes a lot of practice for
children to learn to relate with each other in the way I’m describing. The fact
that our technology has become ubiquitous and personal has worked against us in
the area of personal relationships. In fact, just this week as I was working on
this, (January 2012), CNN had an article on how multitasking hinders young
people’s social skills. http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/25/tech/social-media/multitasking-kids/index.html)
We need to
take steps to reverse the trend and nurture the personal relationships in our
lives the way God intended. As parents we need to make sure we are fulfilling
God’s desire for us to train up our children in the way they should go. As
spouses, we need to fulfill God’s design for marriage by being all there for
our spouse throughout the moments of every day.
As I was
thinking through the thoughts I shared last time, I was thinking through the
difference between the way we interact with technology and the way we used to
interact with newspapers or books. We’ve all seen the older sitcoms where a
woman would be trying to speak to her husband, but he would be hiding behind a
newspaper. He was shutting her out of his world during the time he was reading
the paper.
My dad was
a pastor. He loved to read, and so he almost always had a book with him. When
we’d go on vacation, as soon as he had a chance, he would sit down somewhere in
the shade and read his book. This would sometimes perturb my mother because she
often had other ideas of what she would rather have him do with his time,
especially time she considered to be family time.
In both of
these scenarios, it’s important for a husband to learn to be attentive to the
needs and desires of his wife and family. It was still possible to be withdrawn
and separated from those around us even when the technology consisted of paper
and ink.
But I’ve
been asking myself the question as to whether our issue today is just another
version of the same thing, or is it fundamentally different? On the surface
there are some of the same issues. I can be reading the daily news on my phone
when my wife wants to get my attention about something. A phone isn’t as big as
a newspaper, and so she can easily see my face.
Or, I can be on vacation, and when I think I have a good opportunity, I
can go off somewhere and read a book on a Kindle. Is this different or the same
as what happened in previous generations?
On another
level, the two media pose completely different circumstances that I think we as
Christians need to look at very carefully. With print media, one is normally
locked into one task. When I’m reading a book, everyone around me knows I’m
reading a book. If I decide I’d like to check on the yesterday’s sports scores,
I will put down the book and go pick up the newspaper. If my son is reading the
sports page, I have to wait until he’s finished. I don’t know how other people
are, but very seldom, if I had five minutes of free time between getting
dressed and leaving for work, would I go find my book, pick it up, and read a
page. Because I wasn’t used to so much distraction and multi-tasking, my brain
didn’t think it needed to find some little thing to do during every quiet space
in the day.
How do
things differ now with technology? Let me use myself as an example. I have a phone
that I use for just about everything except typing. I mean I can study my
Bible, check the weather, read the news, read any number of different books,
play games, text people, send out tweets, check on Facebook, etc. Because I am
older, I tend to use this tool more like I would the device it replaces. In
other words, when I read, I tend to read it the way I would a book. Younger
people tend to be much more distracted and multi-tasking than I am. But having
said that, I have noticed some tendencies that automatically come with this
type of technology.
I may be
reading my Bible and meditating on it, but then wonder what today’s weather is
going to be. So almost in mid-sentence I may switch over and check the weather.
Then I’ll wonder what the 10-day outlook is and so might check that out.
Needless to say, this breaks my train of thought. I may be reading another book,
when I wonder if anyone has posted a response to a grandchild’s picture I
posted on Facebook, and so might switch over there to see what’s been
happening. Someone there may have referenced a cute YouTube video, and so I
might check that out and chuckle as I see the inane antics of some 2-year-old.
Meanwhile, the thoughts evoked by the book I was reading are long gone.
All of the
previous events can take place while I’m “reading” a text. But what about all
of the other snippets of time that are spread throughout the day? We have a tendency to check in with the
technology in almost every spare minute. There is a pull there that was not
present in the newspaper and book. I’m not saying there is anything innately
wrong about that, but it has a pull. Can’t you feel it? You have a few minutes
while your wife is putting dishes in the dishwasher, and so you check out the
sports scores. She comes in the living room to find you looking at your phone.
It was just a few seconds, and you found out what you wanted to know, and so
you put it down. Later on, there’s a lull in the conversation, if you ever got
started in a conversation in the first place, and so you check to see if anyone
has updated Facebook. In a few more minutes you remember that you had put a bid
on Ebay, and so you check your email for a minute to see if there’s a message
there regarding your bid. Again, you set your phone aside, only to hear the
familiar tone that tells you someone has texted you. It would be rude to leave
it until tomorrow, so you quickly check to see what that was about. Oh, it was
only Culver’s restaurant telling you you could get a buy-one-get-one free
Sundae on Thursday between 4 and 5 pm. That was important, wasn’t it? Through
all of this you are pulled aside from conversing with your wife or distracted from
what your children are doing. Rather than talking to or playing with them, you
are fiddling with your phone.
Another
difference I’ve discovered about technology media compared to print media is
that it tends to hold our attention more. Often that’s because a video is
somehow involved, or because the communication is fluid. That is, it’s
changing. There are new postings and responses all of the time. It used to be
when a person was reading a book, and another person in the room wanted to say
something, it wasn’t too difficult to pull the attention away from the book to
listen to the other person. When that happened to me, I would usually put a
finger down where I had left off and then listen to what was being said and
reply back and forth if that was called for. Now, when someone interrupts a
person using a computer or phone or other device, it’s hard for the person to
break away. There’s a tendency to keep looking back at the device that has
grabbed our attention. This leaves the other person feeling like they are not
as important as whatever it is that’s showing on the screen.
One other
related issue is that it used to be that when family gathered in the living
room after a meal or whatever, they would easily carry on conversations. Even
if someone was browsing a magazine or knitting or something like that, the
conversation could continue. When there were normal lulls in the conversation,
someone would bring up another topic, and the conversation would continue.
What’s happening now is that we feel the tug to keep doing something
“profitable” during those lulls, and so we pull out the phone or computer so
that we can keep tabs on something else, other than what’s going on in the
room. The problem is that it is not as easy to return to the conversation again,
and people don’t know whether to interrupt or not. Some people even plan ahead
so that they have their device ready for those lulls. When they do this, it
looks to others like they are prepared for the conversation to be uninteresting
and unimportant. It sends exactly the opposite signal from the one we should be
sending.
God is
interested in interpersonal relationships. The members of the trinity have
loved each other since eternity past and have been carrying on a loving
communicating relationship forever. When God created us, he created us in his
image. One of the things that means is that he created us as communicating
beings. He gave us faces so that we could see one another as we communicated.
We could read each other’s facial expressions, point of focus, eye movements,
and so on. Proverbs 15:30 says the light of the eyes rejoices the heart.
In his book
The Next Story, Tim Challies explains that before the fall, God and man
had direct communication. (page 93) He calls this immediate
communication. The prefix im means not, as in immature,
meaning not mature. So immediate
communication is communication that is not mediated. In other words, it is face
to face with no intervening medium. Challies contends that this is God’s
preference and ideal. He writes, “I would argue that it [mediated
communication] is, in fact, a lower form of communication, one that is intended
to be a mere supplement to our lives. The best relationships we can have are
not those that rely on mediation, but rather the ones that allow for unmediated
contact and communication.” By unmediated contact he means face to face
communication. I agree with this assessment. We thank God for means of
communication that allow us to be in contact with family and friends that are
far away. Sending a letter or email or text message allows us to communicate
with those with whom we cannot have immediate communication.
When we
were first created, God had face-to-face communication with us. After the fall,
God basically turned aside in a way, and Adam, for his part, hid so God
couldn’t see him. Ultimately God sent Jesus Christ to be the mediator between
God and man so that fellowship and communion could exist. God wants immediate
communication with us, and he desires that we have immediate communication with
one another.
But what’s
happening now is that we turn our backs on the immediate communication we could
be having with family or friends who are right with us and communicating in a
mediated way with others. We are neglecting what is arguably the ideal method
of communication and substituting an inferior type of communication on purpose.
Besides switching to an inferior mode of communication, it is often
communication with someone who is further removed from us relationally than
those right around us.
In her book
Distracted, Maggie Jackson writes, “Moreover, a boundary-less world
means that coming home doesn’t signal the end of the workday anymore than being
on vacation is a time of pure relaxation, or being under one roof marks the
beginning of unadulterated family time. We rarely are completely present in one
moment or for one another….To cope and to keep up with our pulsing personal
orbits, we live in worlds of our own making, grazing from separate menus,
plugged into our own bedroom-based media centers, adhering to customized
schedules. … Seventeen percent of the families in the UCLA study consistently
ate dinner together. On weekdays, the parents and at least one child came
together in a room just 16 percent of their time at home. True, hours together
don’t automatically translate into intimacy. But if we can’t be bothered to
keep coming together in the fullest, richest sense of the word, we lose the
opportunity to form those deeper bonds. … Are we losing our willingness to
wade down into the painful, soulful depths of human relations? ‘When you can
have a face-to-face conversation, do you? When you’re right in very close
proximity, do you bother?’ asked Ochs. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to wake up and
think, “Oh my gosh, we could have been having a conversation.”’”
My hope is
that as Christians, we will not be absorbed into the world’s way of thinking
about these things. Relationships are important to God. Satan would do all that
he can to disrupt and destroy relationships because good relationships are an
image of God and he hates that image to be portrayed with all of the love and
self-sacrifice that is an accurate portrayal of God.
Our
technologies, as helpful as they are, have the capacity to disrupt and break
down the most crucial and intimate relationships of the home and family. We
must not be naive about this. We must be on the alert and take active steps to
counter the communication breaking aspects of our technology. It makes no sense
to use less than ideal communication media to communicate with people who are further
removed from us, when the people we should be caring for are right there, and
the means to communicate face-to-face is immediately available.
So what are
some steps we could take to counterbalance the tendencies we’ve discussed? Two
choices are not really possible. The first is to throw our hands in the air and
say we can’t fight it. It’s too hard, and we can’t make any progress. The other
choice is to say that the good old days were better. Let’s get rid of all the
technology and return to a previous life. That is not going to happen. So, what
can we do?
Realize
and accept the fact that you do have the power to control the technology
and to manage it for the glory of God.
On the
personal level, make the conscious decision that “wherever you are, be all
there.” (Jim Elliott)
Based
on the previous decision, refuse to take cell calls, look at text messages
or emails during times that call for your participation listening and
interacting with others. That would mean during mealtimes either at home
or in restaurants when you’re with others.
Be
careful even during group events such as watching a movie or ball game
together. I have discussed the implications of multi-tasking on the brain
as well as the importance of being involved socially with others, and so
if you are involved in a shared experience, participate in that experience
without being distracted by your technology.
If
you’re in the kind of setting where reading a physical magazine, book or
newspaper would be appropriate, you should be able to read any of these on
an electronic device as well. But beware of the tendency to jump from
thing to thing. Control your self. Do not allow yourself to be controlled
by the technology. Stay tuned to those around you so that you can be
involved. If there are conversations going on around you, pay attention to
one of them and join in. You don’t want to hear, “… isn’t that right,
Roger,” and not know what they are talking about. It is not only
embarrassing; it’s rude.
Whether
you’re with others or not, control the urge to flit around the internet,
hitting links in an almost mindless way. Your brain will become less able
to focus. If you find yourself doing this, find something constructive to
do either with or without technology, but find something you can focus on
for a long stretch.
If you
are a parent, this and the following suggestions are for you. Restrict
cell phone use. Children do not need to be in communication with their
friends at all hours. Perhaps they have a cell phone for safety reasons
while away from home, but all phones go on the recharging table when they
are home.
There’s
no good reason for children and teens to have smart phones. The Internet
is not a safe place. As a young man told me just yesterday, “There is no
good reason for a 15-year-old boy to have unlimited and unrestricted
access to what’s on the Internet.”
Children
and teens shouldn’t have TV or computers in their bedrooms. Everything
done on a computer should be out in the open in public.
If you
allow your children to use Facebook or other social media, you must be
their friend online and read through what gets posted both to and from
them. Be disciplined about this. It is part of your job. When they have
new friend requests, ask them, “Who is that?”
Teach
your children electronic etiquette – No phones during meals; don’t
interrupt a conversation with a friend to take a call or check a text
message; etc.
References:
Bauerlein, Mark. The
Dumbest Generation. New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2008.
Carr, Nicholas G. The
Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. New York: W.W. Norton,
2010.
Challies, Tim. The
Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion. Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan, 2011.
Jackson, Maggie. Distracted:
The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age. Amherst, NY: Prometheus,
2008.
“There is a higher throne Than all this world has known, Where faithful ones from ev’ry tongue Will one day come. Before the Son we’ll stand, Made faultless through the Lamb; Believing hearts find promised grace— Salvation comes.
REFRAIN Hear heaven’s voices sing; Their thund’rous anthem rings Through em’rald courts and sapphire skies. Their praises rise. All glory, wisdom, pow’r, Strength, thanks, and honor are To God our King, who reigns on high Forevermore.
And there we’ll find our home, Our life before the throne; We’ll honor Him in perfect song Where we belong. He’ll wipe each tear-stained eye As thirst and hunger die. The Lamb becomes our Shepherd King; We’ll reign with Him.”
In the
previous two sections I have discussed the fact that some of our technology has
a way of increasing our distractedness and decreasing our ability to attend to
or focus on a task for an extended period of time. In addition, technology has
the potential to become an idol for us. One of the reasons that these issues
concern me as a Christian, is that God has chosen to reveal Himself to us
through His Word. That is, He has communicated with the human race through
written words. If we do not know how to read, the communication from God is
hindered. But most of us know how to read. The problem many have is the
inability to focus for an extended amount of time in order to think about and
analyze what God has said. In addition to not being able to focus, we have the
problem of not being able to think deeply about the text.
In Joshua
1:8, God says, “This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but
you shall meditate on it day and night.” He goes on to explain that meditating
on it brings success in our lives. This is not the kind of success to which
most Americans aspire, but it is the kind of success Christians should work
toward. It is the successful life of faith that builds a strong relationship
with God and with other people. This success is founded on the wisdom of God
that is gained as we think about and reflect on what God has said.
But in
contradiction to this, we have developed a culture that is focused more on the
visual media such as TV, movies, and Internet browsing.
Here’s an example of the time spent per day by percentages
of young people on various media:
watch television: 84 percent 3:04 hours
use a computer 54 percent 48 minutes
read a magazine 47 percent 14 minutes
read a book 46 percent 23 minutes
play video games 41 percent 32 minutes at console; 17
minutes with handheld
watch videos/dvd 39 percent 32 minutes
watch prerecorded TV 21 percent 14 minutes
go to a movie; 13 percent.
(Dumbest, page 89)
There are
many hindrances to extended thinking and meditating on God’s Word. One of the
more recent hindrances is the growing inability to focus on anything for an
extended length of time. We are becoming more accustomed to reading web pages
where there are multiple windows open begging us to look at them to see what is
being advertised or what new event has been posted to Facebook. Throughout most
of the texts we read online there are hyperlinks that tempt us to click in
order to follow some rabbit trail of thought. While this helps us to extend our
knowledge in some way, it also interrupts the flow of thought. Even if we don’t
click on the link, we are interrupted by the split-second thought of the
possibility of clicking on it. As I mentioned previously, these constant
interruptions of our train of thought change the way we think so that it
becomes more and more difficult to focus for an extended period of time. Just
ask someone under the age of 35 how it would feel to sit down for 30 or 40
minutes to read their Bible and think about it, with no background music, no
TV, no cell phone beeps, and no interruptions of any kind. Just the thought of
it brings pain and panic. Or how about asking them to listen to even an
interesting lecture for 45 minutes? More pain and more panic.
Nicholas
Carr, in his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains,
explains that research shows that the average person spends between 19 and 27
seconds at the most on any web page he visits.
How can a person who is used to this kind of scanning, sit down and hear
from God through His Word? You simply can’t take in a page of Scripture in 19
seconds! Rather than doing a lot of reading ourselves and encouraging our
children to read, we spend time in front of the TV or with our computers and
teach our children to do the same!
Consider
the important impact reading time has on student performance in school:
“Buried in
the depths of the Kaiser report Generation M is a startling finding about
different media use and student achievement. It shows that leisure reading of
any kind correlates more closely with a student’s grades than any other media.
While eight to 18 year olds with high and low grades differed by only one
minute in TV time, they differed in reading time by 17 minutes, (46-29) a huge
discrepancy in relative terms ( a 36 percent drop in leisure reading for kids
with low grades.” (Dumbest, page 90) What this is saying is that
students with low grades spend considerably less time reading than students
with good grades.
We’ve become addicted to our
screens: “The screen…promotes multitasking and discourages
single-tasking, hampering the deliberate focus on a single text, a discrete
problem. ‘Screen mindedness’ prizes using search engines and clicking 20
websites not the plodding, 10-hour passage through a 300 page novel. It
searches for information, fast, too impatient for the long-term acquisition of
facts and stories and principles.” (Dumbest, page 115)
This kind of multitasking and
rapid skimming is detrimental to grasping the facts, stories and principles
found in any text, but most important for us, God’s Word.
If you are
a Christian, you need to take this information seriously. As a parent, you need
to make sure that your young person is not losing his ability to concentrate.
You have a responsibility to set the example and then establish the expectation
that in your home there will be technology-free times when time is devoted to
quiet reading and meditation. Just writing the previous sentence sounded
strange. When does anyone have time where there is no input from TV, radio, or the
Internet? Some people will suggest that reading is a thing of the past and is
no longer necessary in our time when our technology serves as the conduit for
our information. The problem is, and you need to think about this carefully –
the problem is that the God of the universe has chosen to speak to us in
written words. Those who cannot read those words either because of illiteracy
or inability to focus, will not hear from God!
But, you
may say, is it necessary to read? What about listening to God’s Word? Doesn’t
that count? The answer is yes, but how often does anyone sit and listen to the
Word of God being read to them? How easy is it in our video-centric culture to
sit and listen to words being read for an extended period of time with no other
interruptions or input. I think you can see that listening happens less than
reading does and is at least equally difficult.
One of the
things educators and researches are noticing is that we are becoming good at
skimming, but we are losing our ability to interpret what we read accurately,
as well as the ability to think carefully and deeply about what we read. The
reason this is important is that when God communicates through words, He is
communicating truth and concepts that are not necessarily understood with a
quick skim. Many of the sentences in the Bible are long and complex, and many
modern readers are unable to understand such complexity, whether it is in the
Bible or a book about the Bible. Think about how important this is. God desires
to speak to us through His Word, and we may be unable to understand what He is
saying because we have become surface readers and have not trained our minds to
think deeply and logically about what He is saying. That’s something that
should not be dismissed lightly.
So let me
encourage those of you who desire to be faithful to God, to train yourself to
put aside the technology and focus on the Word of God for extended amounts of
time. Let me encourage you to insist that the children for whom you are
responsible do the same. They will grumble and complain, but it is essential
for them to learn how to hear from God.
Read to
children early in their life, and then encourage them to read for themselves
throughout their growing up years. Have regular conversations with your
children. You’ll be keeping the relationship strong, and at the same time you
will be giving them the vocabulary they need to navigate through life.
Mark Bauerlein writes, “Everything
depends on the oral and written language the infant-toddler-child-teen hears
and reads throughout the day, for the amount of vocabulary learned inside the
fifth-grade classroom alone doesn’t come close to the amount needed to
understand fifth-grade textbooks. They need a social life and a home life that
deliver requisite words to them, put them into practice, and coax kids to speak
them.” (Dumbest, page 138)
This is especially true in the
Christian home where you want your children to pick up the vocabulary that they
need to describe God’s relationship to man and our relationship to Him. In a
recent study of adolescents and twenty-somethings, it was observed that young
people simply do not have the vocabulary to describe their thoughts and
feelings about God and the truths the Bible teaches about God.
Another thing that the
all-encompassing presence of technology does is allows us to pursue topics that
are of interest to us and to avoid topics that we don’t think are all that
interesting. We can have it our way. Now
when it comes to educating our children and ourselves, it’s important to expose
ourselves to things we may not necessarily be interested in. When someone
proposes a class in some unfamiliar area of Christian doctrine, there is a
tendency to avoid that class or to allow your children to avoid such a study.
Bauerlein writes, “For education to
happen, people must encounter worthwhile things outside their sphere of
interest and brainpower. Knowledge grows, skills improve, tastes refine, and
conscience ripens only if the experiences bear a degree of unfamiliarity.” (Dumbest,
page 145)
From this I take it that we
shouldn’t try to get off easy when it comes to what kind of learning we subject
ourselves or our children to. If we continually read things that we are already
interested in, we won’t learn much. With our technology, the tendency is to
read about and follow trains of thought that are of interest to us. Because
there is so much information available, we do not need to explore the unknown
or difficult. One would think that having the proliferation of technology would
allow people to learn more and grow more. But the natural tendency is the
reverse. It is not natural to delve into something difficult or that we think
we wouldn’t understand. But if we don’t, our minds won’t be strengthened.
As technology moves along, there is
a tendency to substitute web reading for book reading. As an older person who
was raised on books, I find that I read the web much the same way I read a
book. This is not the case with younger readers. And if I spend more and more
time reading online rather than in a linear text such as a book, my brain will
be affected and changed as well. Book reading affects regions of the brain for
language, memory, and visual processing whereas web reading affects the brain
areas for decision making and problem solving. (Dumbest, page 120) Why
the difference? Because when reading the web there are hyperlinks and ads and
other messages along the periphery of the text that causes your brain to
constantly be making decisions as to the relative importance of these links.
Deep
reading is hindered by problem solving. Intelligence requires taking things
into short term memory and then weaving it into conceptual schemas in long term
memory. If our problem-solving areas of the brain are active, the concentration
and focus aren’t there to transfer information into long term memory. Our
problem-solving capacity has been using up brain power to decide which links to
click on or avoid. This can overload working memory which results in
distractedness, “understanding” weakened by overloading
Why am I
emphasizing all of this detail? Because I think we as Christians should have an
idea of what’s at stake. As we read the Bible and religious texts about the
Bible and Christian devotional life, God wants us to meditate and reflect
deeply on the truths they contain. In order for that to happen, we need to
understand what we read and then take that information deeply into our lives
where all sorts of interconnections can be made so that it affects our life.
It’s important to understand that out-of-control technology and its resulting
distractedness can rewire our brain in such a way that understanding and
assimilating the truths of Scripture can be severely impaired. We certainly
shouldn’t want that to happen to ourselves, and we especially need to be
careful to prevent that from happening to those who are most susceptible to
this danger, our children.
So what are some concrete steps you can take
to help prevent this from happening to you and your children?
Limit exposure to visual media – whether it be TV, videos or web-based media. I remember way back when our kids were small, my wife was concerned about Sesame Street. Everyone was proclaiming the virtues of such educational material, but she wasn’t so sure. In retrospect, after having observed middle school and high school students up close in an educational setting for over 40 years, I believe she was right. The images on programs such as Sesame Street change every couple of minutes either causing or adding to children’s inability to focus for long stretches of time.
Encourage creative, imaginative play. Reduce the number of choices children have to play with at any given time. When your children are faced with which one of 20 different toys they should play with at any given moment, it increases the decision-making part of the brain, but reduces the thoughtful part.
Read to your children often and encourage them to read when they are old enough. Let them see you reading, thus setting a good example that they will want to follow.
When using technology personally or with children, use it for specific purposes and reduce the impulsiveness of it. In other words, don’t jump to the technology to fill every 5-minute void in something to do. Don’t give your children the example of interrupting one activity with another as demanded by your technology. In other words, when you are writing in a word processing program, as I am right now, don’t keep switching to see all of the world-shaping events in the news and weather and Facebook changes that have taken place in the last 5 minutes. Let it be obvious that you stay on a task for extended periods of time and teach them to do the same.
Don’t allow children to have the technology in their rooms. Let everything be out in the open so that you can see and control how its used.
As strange as it sounds, create times of quiet in the house where kids can read and work on homework while parents read a book or magazine. Leave the TV off. Make sure cell phones are unavailable for texting or web browsing after a certain time.
Teach your children explicitly how to use technology as I’ve outlined it here. If they need to do word processing, provide a computer that has no Internet connection or games so that they only use the tool for one thing. They must be overtly taught the skill of focus rather than distraction.
One of the important things for us as Christians to recognize regarding technology is that it can become an idol, either in itself or in the perceived benefits it provides.
Tim
Challies observes, “There are always spiritual realities linked to our use of
technology. We know that there is often a link between our use of technology
and idolatry, that our idols are often good things that want to become ultimate
things in our lives. Communication with others is just this sort of good thing,
a very good thing, that can so easily become an ultimate thing—an idol in our
hearts. How can we tell if something has become an idol? One possible sign of
idolatry is when we devote an inordinate amount of time and attention to
something, when we feel less than complete without it. It may be something that
we look at right before we go to sleep, and the first thing we give our
attention to when we wake up. It may be the kind of thing that keeps us awake,
even in the middle of the night.” (The Next Story, page 74)
Challies
gives us several indications as to when a thing might be becoming an idol. One
of the things he mentions is the devotion of an inordinate amount of time to
something or anything we feel incomplete without. Haven’t you felt these
inclinations in yourself when it comes to your smart phone or computer? Haven’t
you felt the sensation that says, “What do I do now?” when your phone or
computer is out of order? Do you feel compelled to check your Facebook page
before you do almost anything else in the morning? Almost certainly most of us
check email or Facebook before we even check in with God in prayer or read His
Word. That indicates the possibility of an idolatrous situation taking place.
One author
suggests that people have begun to see technology and the Internet as a sort of
spiritual existence: “Many see in cyberspace nothing less than a new, spiritual
heaven that is open to all who are computer literate, that is, ‘baptized,’ some
observe. Cyberspace gives us the means to realize ‘a dream thousands of years
old: the dream of transcending the physical world, fully alive, at will, to
dwell in some Beyond—to be empowered or enlightened there, alone or with
others, and to return,’ writes editor Michael Benedikt in the influential essay
collection Cyberspace: First Steps.” (Distracted, page 51)
People have
always had the tendency to be attracted by the idea of out-of-body experiences
and existence. The Internet gives them that capability to a degree. They don’t
have to be real; they can become strong online when they are weak in person.
They can be beautiful online when they may be plain in person. Such
capabilities are alluring to some people and take on an idolatrous tug.
Challies
says that we need to figure out what idol we may be serving. “What is really
happening here? Why do we feel this constant need to communicate with others?
What idol are we serving? There are any number of idols we may be serving
through the tools of communication technology:
• We may be serving
the idol of productivity, communicating so that we feel as though we are being
productive, constantly answering work-related e-mails or monitoring
work-related social media platforms, feeling the need to respond instantly and decisively
morning, noon, or night.
• We may be serving
the idol of significance, finding a sense of value in the number of people who
notice us and interact with us. People with an idol of significance will
measure their success or popularity by the number of friends they have on
Facebook or the number of followers on Twitter. They make popularity something
that can be measured and analyzed and feel that their own significance
increases as more people pay attention to them and interact with them online.
• It may be that the
very desire for information is an idol for us; that we feel as if having more
information holds the key to living a better life.” (The Next Story, page 75)
One type of
sin that I think is related to the idol of significance that Challies mentions
is the twin sins of pride and envy. Now that we have the ability to inform all
of our friends about every move we make, there is a tendency to mention things
that we secretly hope will arouse a certain amount of jealousy. Let’s let
people know about our latte at Starbucks or the powerful engine in our new
truck. Why not inform people that you are having a fantastic time in Bermuda
during the middle of a cold winter. I need to be careful here because it is
possible to inform friends of these things without having any intention of
arousing their jealousy, but it seems to me there is a danger here that we need
to be alert to. Even in the case when
our own motive might be pure, we need to learn to have caution as to how we
might be provoking others through our carelessness. As Christians we are not
supposed to be causing others to stumble, and when we blatantly announce every
new purchase or exciting adventure, we may be triggering jealousy in others.
The Bible
tells us to flee idolatry. The natural tendency when one reads an article such
as this one, is to go immediately into self-defense mode and to deny that
anything close to idolatry exists in our lives. A more prudent reaction would
be to go to God humbly and ask Him to reveal to us any areas of our life where He
is not first. Ask Him for wisdom to determine whether something about
technology – having it, jealousy of others, pride and boasting in social media,
or anything else has become an idol.
The Bible
tells us in 1 John 2:15 that we should not love the world. A love of the world
is an indication that the love of the Father is not in us. John then goes on to
tell us what things demonstrate this love of the world. 1 John 2:16 “For all
that is in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the
pride of life – is not of the Father but is of the world.”
I’m sure if
we look carefully and think deeply, we can see that there is potential for each
of these three characteristics of worldly focus to be present in our use of
technology. As Christians, let’s take steps to recognize God in His proper
place and put our technology in its proper place – a place of helpfulness and
productivity, but not the place of control and mastery. As Paul said, “All
things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful
for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any.” 1 Corinthians
6:12 (Emphasis mine)
Here are some steps that might help us determine whether
some technology (or anything) is becoming an idol in our lives.
Evaluate
the amount of time you spend with technology, playing games, mindlessly
hopping around the Internet, checking Facebook posts, etc., compared to
the amount of time you spend in the scriptures, praying, meditating, etc.
Examine
the attraction of the technology compared to the attraction of other
things. When you first get up in the morning, is your first instinct to
check Facebook or email, or do you get showered, dressed, and have
devotions before checking in with your technology?
Ask
yourself how you would feel if you had a technology-free week with the
only exception being voice phone calls. Is the feeling similar to the
feeling you would have if you missed your Bible reading, prayer, and
church attendance for a week?
When you follow the trail of
your time, energy, affection, and money, you find a throne. And whatever or whomever is on that throne is
the object of your worship. ~Louie Giglio
Do we as
Christians, and in particular, Christian men, have a responsibility to think
deeply and respond wisely to the proliferation of technological gadgets in our
lives? I believe we do. God calls us to be wise in all of the areas
of our lives, and, considering the fact that technology plays a major part in
our lives these days, we need to be sure that we are using it wisely. There is
a sense in which things seem to be getting out of hand. Now before anyone jumps
to conclusions, let it be known that I am a technology junky. I like to look at
all the new gadgets. Forty years ago, I was the first to bring a computer into
the school where I taught. Since then I have followed with great interest the
development of not only the PC, but also cell phones, Phones, and tablet
computers. So I am not just an old man complaining about all of the new fangled
stuff. I like the new-fangled stuff! In this booklet, I hope to help us think
through some of the implications of the technology we use, and the impact it
may have on our Christian life and on our relationships with others.
Distraction
The first
area I would like us to consider is the area of distraction vs. attention. I
have a real concern about how our devices are limiting our ability to focus and
pay attention to one thing at a time. You probably know the feeling. You’re
involved in a face to face conversation with someone, and your cell phone
vibrates in your pocket, or you hear the tones from your computer that let you
know that an email has arrived. You are now faced with a choice. Do you slide
the phone out of your pocket to see what email has arrived? Do you excuse
yourself from the conversation to go check the computer to see what the email
is about? Many people would do the first. Not so many people would actually get
up and leave the room to check on their email message. But, even if you don’t
follow through in either case, your train of thought has been interrupted, and
there is one part of your brain that wonders who’s trying to communicate with
you. You’ve been distracted.
A similar
scenario can take place while you’re reading your Bible or praying. The
interruption has the effect of breaking your concentration and introduces a
question in your mind as to what the message might be. Even if that lasts for
only a second, it takes effort to get back into the train of thought that was
interrupted. If this happens often enough in life, your brain actually changes
its wiring, so that it becomes harder and harder to focus for stretches of
time. (See The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains by
Nicholas Carr)
Tim
Challies asserts, “Our brains actually change in response to new technologies.
The brain of a person raised in the age of print, a person who learned from
books and who read books in time of leisure or study, has a brain that is markedly
different from a person who has learned primarily from images or who has
watched videos in times of leisure or study.” (The Next Story, page 44)
One of the
interesting things about all of these interruptions is that very few of them
are important. Your deep contemplation of the love of God might have been
broken by the tone that ultimately lets you know that someone “Liked” the
description of breakfast you posted on Facebook.
I don’t
want to make this too complex, but our system for responding to external input
consists of three basic areas – the alerting, the orienting, and the executive
networks. The alerting lets us know what inputs are around us. The orienting
helps us select what we pay attention to out of the millions of available
inputs at any moment. The executive network is in charge of attention and helps
resolve all of the areas of the brain that are responding to the inputs from
your world. (Distracted, page 23) When our executive network gets
overloaded trying to handle all of the inputs, we feel overwhelmed, fearful,
and frustrated. In Distracted, Maggie Jackson states that “People who
focus well report feeling less fear, frustration, and sadness day to day,
partly because they can literally deploy their attention away from negatives in
life.” In other words, their executive network is able to manage all it is
given to control, and so the frustration is lower.
In another
place Maggie Jackson writes, “Executive attention (which directs judgment,
planning, and self-control) is a precious commodity. Relying on multitasking as
a way of life, we chop up our opportunities and abilities to make big-picture
sense of the world and pursue our long-term goals. In the name of efficiency,
we are diluting some of the essential qualities that make us human.” (Distracted,
page 80)
Tim
Challies writes:
“Harvard Medical School, is
recognized as one of the world’s foremost experts on
attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. After years of studying and treating
ADHD, Hallowell began to note a similar disorder…. He termed this condition
attention deficit trait. ADT is a product of the digital world, a result of our
obsession with information—our desire to surround ourselves with it, with more
of it, all the time. In an interview with CNET News, Hallowell observed, ‘It’s
a condition induced by modern life, in which you’ve become so busy attending to
so many inputs and outputs that you become increasingly distracted, irritable,
impulsive, restless, and, over the long term, underachieving.’ People will know
they’ve succumbed to it ‘when they start answering questions in ways that are
more superficial, more hurried, than they usually would; when their reservoir
of new ideas starts to run dry; when they find themselves working ever-longer
hours and sleeping less, exercising less, spending free time with friends less,
and in general putting in more hours but getting less production overall.’” In
other words, they will know they’ve got it when they find that they no longer
have time or ability to give to building relationships or to fulfilling their
God-given mandate that they work, create, innovate. Arising as a direct result
of overloading the brain’s internal circuitry with too much input, ADT carries
significant consequences. Hallowell states, ‘Aside from underachievement, you
don’t ever get the fulfillment of seeing yourself coming up with the ideas you
ought to come up with.’” (The Next Story, pages 138-139)
My
motivation for bringing in these technical descriptions is to make us aware of
the dangers that exist by too much multitasking enhanced by our personal
technologies. God wants us to be able to get the big picture. He wants us to be
able to think deeply about truth and focus on His word and its implications in
our lives. Nicholas Carr writes, “The
more you multitask, the less deliberate you become and the less able to think
and reason out a problem.” (The Shallows, page 140)
Carr goes
on, “The influx of competing messages that we receive whenever we go online not
only overloads our working memory; it makes it much harder for our frontal
lobes to concentrate our attention on any one thing. The process of memory
consolidation can’t even get started. The more we use the web, the more we
train our brain to be distracted.” (Shallows, page 194).
If we are
continuously distracted, we cannot see the big picture and think deeply and
therefore we will be less than God wants us to be in our growth in
Christ-likeness. In addition, it is much more difficult to store information
into our long-term memory and therefore the portions of the Word of God which
should be in our brains don’t stick.
It is a
difficult thing to work against the trend toward impulsiveness and
distractedness. The “rewiring” of our brains to undo the distracted state can
be accomplished but it takes work and effort. It requires us to have motivation
and self control. Scripture teaches us that these are important qualities.
Proverbs 25:28 reads, “A man without self-control is like a
city broken into and left without walls.”
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my life to be like a vulnerable
city where there is no protection.
In Titus 2:2 we read, “Older men are to be sober-minded,
dignified, self-controlled, sound in
faith and steadfastness.” Then they are
urged in verse 6 to “urge the younger men to be self-controlled.”
In I Peter 4:7, “The end of all things is at hand; therefore
be self-controlled and sober-minded
for the sake of your prayers.”
Finally, in 2 Peter 1:5 he tells us to “make every effort (i.e., be diligent) to supplement your
faith with.…” Using every effort and
diligence we have, we are supposed to add certain virtues to our faith. Among
the things we are to diligently add is self-control.
Let me
challenge all of us as Christians to be diligent in our efforts to master
ourselves. Do not kid yourself into thinking that this is an easy process. It
takes effort. What better area would there be to put that into practice than in
the area of technology? Men love to consider strength and its development as a
virtue. Let’s work on building the strength required to master ourselves in the
area of our technological devices. Self control is part of the fruit of the
Spirit, and as such we have the resource of God and His power to enable us to
accomplish this goal.
Challies
agrees, “The challenge facing us is clear. We need to relearn how to think, and
we need to discipline ourselves to think deeply, conquering the distractions in
our lives so that we can live deeply. We must rediscover how to be truly
thoughtful Christians, as we seek to live with virtue in the aftermath of the
digital explosion.” (The Next Story, page 117)
I’m going
to provide some suggestions as to how to retake control and rewire your brain
back to a less distracted state. It can be done, but it is difficult. It must
be something you really want to do. The following are suggestions, not rules.
Depending on your situation, you may find some more helpful than others.
Discipline
yourself to check email at set times in the day—perhaps first thing in the
morning, once in the middle of the day, and then again once in the
evening. This of course is not referring to email you need to be attending
to as part of your job. But even then, when work is over, do not refer to
work email at all. This same suggestion applies to your Facebook and
Twitter access as well. Schedule times and don’t look at it in between.
Learn
to disregard email or message alerts until the appointed time. If you are
reading an online newspaper, and the email icon shows up, don’t interrupt
your reading to check the email. Teach yourself to avoid the urge to
switch gears. Remember, you are trying to program your brain to focus for
longer stretches of time, not shorter ones. This will seem difficult, and
you will ask yourself why you should wait. The answer is that it is good
for your brain. Even in my work setting, I learned that I did much better
if I forced myself to finish one task before breaking to check email.
When
you are working on tasks that don’t involve the computer, don’t just leave
your computer up and logged in to email, Facebook or other social media.
Your temptation to check it out will be strong every time you walk by your
computer.
Read a
good book or serious magazine articles. Force yourself to attend to it for
a long stretch of time, 30 minutes or more, without looking at your phone,
and without trying to watch TV at the same time. If you can’t read for
that long of a time, start with a shorter time and then build up your
endurance and concentration.
Resist
the urge to look at your phone every time you sense a message has come in.
Don’t resort to your phone every time you think of a question – What
temperature is it? Why is the deer population so high? What year was the
first Chevy Impala produced? You
don’t have to know the answer to every question just because it crossed
your mind. Reaching for your phone every five minutes is an addictive
behavior. Take control and resist the urge, no matter how much it hurts.
Make
it a matter of specific prayer, asking God to enable you to extend your
ability to focus and pay attention. But at the same time take the needed
steps to break bad habits.
Be
faithful in having a daily time in prayer and in the Word. Force this to
be an undistracted time. Make it a priority ahead of email and Facebook.
If you
are a parent, let me encourage you to help your children adopt better
technology practices in order to avoid the issues discussed here. Apply
the above list of suggestions to your children. In addition, research
shows that teens need 9.5 hours of sleep per night. Many teens keep their
cell phones nearby during sleep, and even if they don’t respond to it, the
sensation of alerting them to an incoming message disrupts the deep sleep
necessary for properly wiring the mind and sorting out learning from the
previous day. I would keep all technology out of children and teens
bedrooms.
Reduce
the time your children spend with technology. In spite of what they say,
they will not die if they can’t be in constant contact with their friends.
Lengthening
a child’s attention span begins long before they begin to use technology.
Reduce the number of inputs your small children are subject to. If they
have 50 toys to pick from for play time, the choices involved create
conflicts in their decision-making. Reduce the choices and encourage them
to finish playing with one category of toys before switching to another.
Switching gears frequently and having too many choices all the time
contributes to a low attention span and trains the brain to be distracted.
Jesus, Thou Joy of loving hearts, Thou Fount of life, Thou Light of men, From the best bliss that earth imparts, We turn unfilled to Thee again.
Thy truth unchanged hath ever stood; Thou savest those that on Thee call; To them that seek Thee Thou art good, To them that find Thee all in all.
We taste Thee, O Thou living Bread, And long to feast upon Thee still; We drink of Thee, the Fountainhead, And thirst our souls from Thee to fill.
Our restless spirits yearn for Thee, Wherever our changeful lot is cast; Glad when Thy gracious smile we see, Blessed when our faith can hold Thee fast.
O Jesus, ever with us stay, Make all our moments calm and bright; Chase the dark night of sin away, Shed over the world Thy holy light.
