We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
Insights from a Technology Fast
Hannah Brencher took a two week technology fast and shared what she learned last week. Of course, if you’re reading this, you obviously make use of technology and we’re not saying that there’s anything wrong with that. (We use it an awful lot too.) But there’s a proper place for technology and it’s good to periodically set it aside and notice the urges and voices that pop up when you cut off your reliance on it. Notice where you’re getting LIFE, and devote yourself to coming back to your source over and over again. Notice when anything, including technology, bleeds into the places that God alone should occupy in your heart and mind.
From her article:
My body- unrest. My thoughts- ungodly. My spirit- unfed. Me- in a steady, steady habit of checking my email before bed. 3am. 6am. My day sculpted already by the responses I must give to people, the photo albums I’ve devoured, the outfits I’ve seen pinned and the people I must call. Found & digested, all before God could even lift up His mighty hands and say, “Child, when shall I gear you for the work ahead? When will you realize the world will never feed you?”
It’s idolatry and I’ve never known it. To make myself a demigod. A person worth following. And if my streams, my Instagrammed actions, my blog holds no trace of the God who rains in my soul then who am I? Who am I & what kind of example have I been for you?
Image by Thomas Leuthard. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr.
Category: Essays
Tags: Essay, Technology
Topics: Ethical, Cultural and Political Issues
Related Reading
Kingdom Centeredness
A Silent Center white knuckles cling against peace and cries for release into chaos flying, centrifugal to death in attempt to salvage human breath for breathing, through peeling purge that burns away flesh to white bone singed and aching for skin new to inhale holy fire once again, until the timely scourge of…
Gospel “Contradictions” and Orality Studies
* This essay has been adopted from G. Boyd and Paul Eddy, Lord or Legend? (Baker, 2007). One of the standard tests historians put to ancient documents to assess their veracity is self-consistency. Generally speaking, fabricated accounts tend to include more inconsistencies than truthful accounts. Hence, the absence of inner contradictions contributes to a positive…
Homosexuality and the Church: Finding a “Third Way”
Here is a word I a shared this last weekend with Woodland Hills Church (where I’m senior pastor) in response to numerous questions I’ve received over the last several months. People have asked me why the leadership of WHC refuses to jump on the bandwagon of evangelical churches in the Twin Cities who rally their…
Racism: Why Whites have Trouble “Getting It”
I’m a member of a special task group on racial reconciliation that consists of a dozen or so pastors from around the Twin Cities. We’ve been meeting periodically for the past year or so in order to strategize how to help the Church of the Twin Cities as a whole move forward in racial reconciliation.…
The Case For Believer’s Baptism
In this essay I briefly present my reasons for believing that baptism is intended only for people who are old enough to responsibly choose to become disciples of Jesus. I will first offer several biblical arguments, then offer a supporting argument and conclude by responding to several objects to believer’s baptism. Biblical Arguments Baptism…
Imaging God Wrongly: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 2
Our relationship with God depends on the way we imagine God. When we get the image of God right, the doors open for us to trust and relate to God in the ways we were created to do. But there are so many images of God that are entirely messed up. Just think about the…