Tag Archives: Christian Life

Ephesians 1:16

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I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers,

Because of what he has heard, Paul tells them that he does not cease giving thanks for them. The faith and love he has heard about ignites a spirit of thankfulness for what God is doing in and through these people. When we hear of faith and love among the people of another church, do these qualities generate a genuine spirit of thankfulness in us?

This thankfulness results in the remembering and mentioning of them in prayer. I don’t know about you, but prayer is hard for me. I don’t like it really, because it demonstrates our total inability and inadequacy to accomplish things in our own strength. But God calls us to pray for ourselves, our family, and our church ministries. In this case, Paul prayed for a church where he had been ministering, and, having heard of their faith and love, he prays for them that God will accomplish many spiritual things in their lives.

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:56 AM October 5, 2020.

Ephesians 1:15

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For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints,

In the next few verses, Paul is going to tell the Ephesian Christians what he is praying for them. He begins, though, by giving them the reason and motivation for his praying. This explanation takes us through both verses 15 and 16.

The first reason he gives is that he has heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus. My immediate thought is, “Has anyone heard of my faith in the Lord Jesus?” The Ephesian Christian’s faith must have been strong enough and evident enough that someone told Paul about them. Their faith must have stood out to this person in such a strong way that it had an impact on whoever it was that told Paul about it.

The second thing he mentions is that he has also heard of their love toward all the saints. How would that love have manifested itself? Love produces action and so there must have been an abundant demonstration, within the church and toward saints in other places, of love. It would have consisted of sacrificial sharing of resources, kindness, a forgiving spirit, gentleness, humility, and any number of other things that demonstrated that love. The point is that it was evident. Love is evident not through the absence of arguing and bickering, but through the positive demonstration of love.

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 11:36 AM October 5, 2020.

Ephesians 1:3

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Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,

Ephesians

Ephesians 1:3

What Paul is exclaiming here is that God is worthy of being praised. Blessed be God! Which God, Paul, are you talking about? Specifically, He is the God of the Bible, the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

Paul, who had been a persecutor of Christians and who denied that Jesus was Lord, now is blessing the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And what has this God done? He has blessed us! He has blessed us in Christ. In giving Christ to us, God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. See for example 1 Corinthians 1:30-31. There are no additional blessings that we are missing. In other words, we don’t need anything other than Christ. If we have Him and are in Him, we have every blessing heaven has to offer!

Think about that the next time you are tempted to murmur or complain. Think about that the next time you feel like you’ve been short-changed and want to ask for additional blessings from God. We’ve been blessed with every spiritual blessing.

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 10:53 AM August 29, 2020.

Ephesians 1:2

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Ephesians 1:2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Grace and peace. This is common in Paul’s salutations, and we usually read right over it. But think about what it is saying. Unmerited favor and the peace of God and peace with God are being offered both from God and from Jesus Christ our Lord. This is more than a salutation. It is a promise from God through the mouth of his apostle. It is a promise to all those whose faith and trust are in Jesus Christ.

God has promised us His grace. We are, after all, saved by grace and not through any merit we could achieve. He has promised that His mercies are new every single morning!

And He has given us peace. Jesus said, My peace I give to you, not like the peace the world gives. (John 14:27 paraphrase.) And note that it is His peace. God is at rest. Nothing disturbs Him. His peace He gives to us.

Grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

Exported from Logos Bible Software, 10:23 AM August 29, 2020.

Moment by Moment

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Suddenly yesterday I found myself singing the old hymn, Moment by Moment. To me, the very first line is an essential truth that we Christians need to grasp. I began to grasp this as a young man, but as the years have passed, I have realized how central this is to living the Christian life and finding victory over sin, and having joy in understanding what in fact took place when we were converted.

The first line of the song says, “Dying with Jesus by death reckoned mine.” I’ll expand on this as we go along, but what it is saying is that once I’m in Christ, His death is my death, and by extension, His resurrection is my resurrection.

Some scriptural examples:
Romans 6:8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him

Galatians 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Colossians 3:3 For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Ephesians 2:4-6 But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

These truths have been central and core beliefs for me. When Christ died, I died with Him. I died to the old life; I died to sin. Since I was also raised with Christ, I have been resurrected to a new life. These things are true for all believers, but it doesn’t always feel like it and we don’t act like it. But the key is the word “reckon” which is used in the song I started with. It means to count it to be true. It doesn’t mean “pretend” it’s true. It is true, but we need to reckon it true in our life. Romans 6:11 says, “Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I cannot stress enough how important this is. Satan reminds us that the wages of sin is death. Our answer should be, “I already had my death when Jesus died.” There is no further punishment for sin. It is finished!

I would strongly recommend a thorough and careful reading of Romans 6:1-14. Read it often and meditate on it deeply. Understanding this one truth can transform your life!

True? False? or Who Cares? Part 5

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I’ve titled this series “True? False? Or Who Cares?” I’m concerned that the “who cares” crowd is winning. Someone asked me the other day what I thought of subjective truth. My problem is that I don’t even understand what this means. In my reply, I used this example: Suppose one of your friends doesn’t believe in absolute truth. All truth is subjective, he thinks. Ask him to do this – when he gets his next pay check, he should cash it at the bank, bring all of the currency home, wad it up, and burn it in the middle of the driveway.

If there is no such thing as truth, then there is no such true statement as, “That $1500 worth of currency can buy me food or pay down my mortgage.” That’s just a matter of personal opinion and therefore burning it is no more significant than leaving it intact. Now, we all know that this whole example is stupid. In the real world, we work with true and false all the time. It’s just when it comes to religion and morals, and maybe politics, that everything is questionable. And we know what the reason is. No one really wants some Being to be able to tell us what to do.

I started this series by referring to Dr. Willard’s discussion of “profession”, “commitment”, “faith”, and “knowledge.” He was primarily discussing religion and the fact that we often emphasize profession and commitment without the foundation of knowledge or truth. This is not only a religious problem, but a problem in most areas of human life and is at the root of the collapse of so much discourse. Let’s take it out of the field of religion and use the words, feelings, opinions, beliefs, and truth. I maintain that our problem is that we argue at the level of our feelings and opinions. People operate on the assumption that if they feel something is true or are of the opinion that it is true, then it must be true.

It used to be that discussions and arguments were carried out at the truth level. People would say, “What you are saying is not true because of these three facts.” Someone else might respond by stating that fact number 2 isn’t true for the following reasons….

That’s not how arguments go today. People say things like, “I just don’t think you’re right because I just feel that….” Or, “You can’t say that because how will people who disagree with you feel about it if they think you are saying they are wrong?”

We need to get back to focusing on what the truth is and how we discover it. We need to base our arguments and discussions at that point.

Back to the religious aspect for a minute. When someone makes a profession of faith, it should be faith in something that is asserted to be true, not just in some mystical feeling. The Christian teaching is that in real time and space, Jesus Christ was literally born from a virgin. At some point he was executed on a Roman cross and he died, i.e., his heart stopped beating and his brain ceased to function. Three days later he came alive, proving that he was God in a human body. We assert these things to be true meaning we believe they actually happened.

When we get careless and begin to think at the level of our feelings, then we are exactly where Dr. Willard describes – profession and commitment become dominant, and the grounding in truth that people need won’t be there to sustain them through all of the challenges of life.

True? False? or Who Cares? Part 4

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In the last article in this series we looked at the concept of “presuppositions.” Presuppositions are ideas we believe or accept without proof. Everyone has them. Even in mathematics we have things called postulates which are statements that are accepted as true without proof. I remember a math class I had once where we assumed that the number 1 existed. We also assumed that the next number in a counting series could be found by adding the number 1 to the previous number. Every other “truth” that we used in the course had to be proved from these two postulates or assumptions or presuppositions.

So what does this have to do with our discussion of truth and how we know it? Let’s take the Creation vs Evolution debate for example. I worked in the public schools for 42 years and have seen the nuances that this debate has taken. When everything is sorted out through the legal system it usually comes down to this: Creation is a religious, faith-based idea and therefore has no place within the science curriculum. Evolution however is a scientific truth and therefore can and should be taught within the science curriculum.

I realize that I am probably not going to change many minds in this short article, but this is how I see it in light of our discussion about truth and how we know it. Scientific knowledge and truth come from proposing an hypothesis and then designing a controlled experiment to test that hypothesis to see if it is true. In the case of the origin of life, it seems obvious to me that there can be no experiment designed that will duplicate the conditions, time span, and forces needed to create and evolve life by random processes. Every attempt so far has involved a high level of human thinking and planning involved to set up conditions favorable for the creation of life. The true condition of randomness and chance events were not duplicated.  Even so, life has not been created by those experiments.

On the creation side, there is no one alive today who saw God create anything. All we have is ancient documents within various religious traditions describing how God did it.

My point is that those who claim evolution is true are actually proposing something just as faith-based as a creationist is.

But the evolutionist says, “No, that’s not true. You creationists are bringing God into the mix. We are providing a natural and scientific explanation of how life began and evolved.” The problem here is with the assumptions or presuppositions that underlie what we believe. In order to fit the definition of science, God must be left out of the equation. That is an assumption. All of the study and investigation that takes place looks for explanations that leave God out. It is assumed that God either does not exist or does not play any role in any way in the natural world. But suppose God actually exists. If God actually exists, isn’t it madness to try to get at the explanation for why things are the way they are without including him in the mix?

“But”, they say, “we don’t know if God exists or not and therefore, we choose to leave him out of our assumptions regarding science and simply look for the natural causes of things.”

OK. That’s fine. But don’t call your explanation of origins totally scientific because you are basing your “science” on the belief that certain things are true. There are a set of beliefs or assumptions upon which the entire system is built. That makes it a faith based philosophy.

A scientist who includes the belief in a god or supreme being in his foundational assumptions will also build a faith-based science. But he, when he looks at the order and apparent “design” in the universe, will come to the conclusion that there is a designer behind it.

It’s interesting that in normal life we do this all the time. If you’re walking through the woods and you come upon a group of similar sized stones lying in the dirt forming the shape of a circle, you assume someone of intelligence placed them that way. You don’t assume that they just fell there randomly. And yet when some scientists look at the brain or the eye, they don’t see a designer at all, but millions of years of random circumstances producing it. So we attribute a simple circle of stones to an intelligent designer, i.e., a human being behind it, but something as complex as an eye evolved with no intelligent activity involved in it at all.

When trying to determine the truth, everyone begins their investigative reasoning with presuppositions or assumptions. Mathematicians do it and scientists do it. We all do it. We need to be careful to recognize that we are doing it. When you make statements of truth or believe what someone else says, look for the presuppositions that underlie those statements. Second, make sure that when you are discussing what you believe to be the truth, acknowledge your presuppositions. Don’t hide them. Finally make sure your presuppositions are logical and consistent. Only in so doing will you be able to get at the truth whether it is in the field of science, politics or religion.

True? False? or Who Cares? (Part 1)

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Several years ago, I listened to an interview of Dallas Willard by Ken Meyers. Dr. Willard is a professor of philosophy at University of Southern California. The interview was part of Volume 100 of an audio journal series published by Mars Hill Audio. (http://www.marshillaudio.org)

In the interview, Dr. Willard compared “profession”, “commitment”, “faith”, and “knowledge”. What interested me is that he said that in religion, we often emphasize profession and commitment without the foundation of faith based on knowledge. This might all seem too philosophical, but I think there are some important things for us non-philosophers to think about here. In normal pursuits of life there is such a thing as truth which can be known.

In virtually every area of normal life we know that there are some truths which can be known and taught. Then, when these truths are believed and acted upon, individuals, workers, and organizations can be committed to the policies and procedures that are based on this knowledge, and they can then profess that they can accomplish certain goals.

All of this normal thinking has broken down, however, when it comes to beliefs about religion, morals, and the like. We are told that there is no truth that can be known. Everyone’s opinion is as good as anyone else’s. Does this even make any sense?

I believe we need to think through all truth claims. For example, I saw a bumper sticker once that said, “The earth does not belong to us. We belong to the earth.” Is this true? How could we know? Does someone really believe this? It is certainly a profession of some sort. I wonder if the people who own the car are committed to this statement in their everyday life.

Every day of our lives we and others make statements about things we believe are true. In some cases, it doesn’t matter if there is truth behind our beliefs or not. In other situations, it’s crucial to know the truth that underlies our beliefs. If I’m going to have brain surgery to remove a tumor, my life depends on whether those who are going to operate know that there is a tumor there and know how to get to it and remove it safely. I certainly don’t want them to operate on me if they just profess that they know how to do it without actually knowing how. Similarly, if someone is going to rewire my home, I want them to know how electricity works and the facts that govern the proper wiring of a home.

Everything seems to change when it comes to religion and religious belief and profession. In our day, truth and knowing are under attack. For some, the whole concept that there is religious truth is absurd. For others, the problem is more the question of how one can know what is true. For these people, it’s not the existence of truth that is the problem, but that it seems impossible to them that we can know what the truth is. Both thinking there is no truth, and thinking truth can’t really be known, generate a level of skepticism that makes it almost impossible to have a normal conversation about religion and religious truth.

As a Christian, I was intrigued by Dr. Willard’s idea that often within Christianity we have begun to focus on profession or commitment without these being based on knowledge of the truth. In earlier times, churches grounded their members in what was at least purported to be the truth. They taught these truths to their constituents so that they had a knowledge of them, could believe them, develop commitments to them, and as a result, profess them.

These days, in many religious congregations, the idea that there is truth that can be known and believed has almost disappeared. In some other congregations where the idea of truth undergirds their teaching, the grounding and reinforcement that these things are truly true is lacking. When we simply have as our goal commitment and profession and put them first without the foundation of knowledge of truth, those commitments and professions will not last long. In addition, without the belief that there is such a thing as truth or that truth can be known, it’s impossible to subject one’s own belief or the beliefs of others to any sort of scrutiny or discussion. Personal growth and communication with others are stifled. As a result, the idea of sharing the gospel with others in order to bring them to faith in Christ seems more and more antiquated, because we’re trying to say we believe in something that is true. Many people don’t have any idea what that means.

Let’s go back to the narrative I presented at the beginning. Is it true that “the earth does not belong to us but rather we belong to the earth?” I might propose a bumper sticker that says, “The earth is the Lord’s.” Is one bumper sticker true and the other one false or are they both false? Maybe they are both true. Could they be? Does it matter? Maybe they’re just words and they don’t mean anything. If there is no truth, or truth cannot be discovered, then we can say whatever we want, and all statements are equally valid … or equally invalid.

However, if truth exists and it can be known, then what we say does matter. We can have discussions or even arguments about what is true and what is false. We can make decisions as to what beliefs to abandon and what beliefs to adopt based on their truth or falsity. When leaders try to lead us in a given direction, we have the foundation we need to discern truth from error. Otherwise we are just lead around like dumb animals babbling feelings and platitudes that mean nothing.

We are going to discuss this further in upcoming posts, but let me encourage you to apply the same principles in religious discussion as you do in the rest of life. There is truth. You may not know it all but it’s there. Some religious statements are true. Some are false. You need to find out which are which because your future well-being depends on knowing the truth.

Part 2 is here.

Technology and Sexual Temptation

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            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.

Technology and the Christian

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            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.

  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.
  1. 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.