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
Trapped in a Constantinian Paradigm
A Response to James Smith’s Review of The Myth of a Christian Nation In my book The Myth of a Christian Nation I repeatedly call on Christians to engage in social activism. Followers of Jesus are called to be revolutionaries, I argue, meaning that we are to revolt against the status quo insofar as the…
Imaging God Rightly: God’s Self-Portrait, Part 3
In the previous two blogs I noted that the vision of God in our minds is the single most important vision in our lives, for it completely determines whether we’ll have a relationship with God and what kind of relationship this will be. A. W. Tozer once wrote, “What comes into our minds when we…
Must wives submit to husbands?
The apostle Paul writes: Wives, be subject to your husbands as you are to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife just as Christ is the head of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. Just as the church is subject to Christ, so also wives ought to…
Naturalism and the Historical Jesus
The quest for a “merely human” Jesus The various radical views of Jesus now being advocated by certain scholars and propagated through the press are buttressed by a number of different historical arguments. Some argue, for example, that the evidence from the first century suggests that Jesus was not unique in his healing ministry. Or,…
Penal Substitution View of Atonement: Did God the Father Just Need to Vent?
In this video blog, Greg outlines the penal substitution view of atonement which says that the Father poured out his wrath on Jesus instead of us so that we could be forgiven. This view is very common and you might even be nodding your head in agreement with that description. However, this view creates some…
The “Christus Victor” View of the Atonement
God accomplished many things by having his Son become incarnate and die on Calvary. Through Christ God revealed the definitive truth about himself (Rom 5:8, cf. Jn 14:7-10); reconciled all things, including humans, to himself (2 Cor 5:18-19; Col 1:20-22), forgave us our sins (Ac 13:38; Eph 1:7); healed us from our sin-diseased nature (1…