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
What I – a Pacifist – Would say to Obama About the Crisis In Syria
Over the last week many of you have written ReKnew asking me to weigh in on the crisis in Syria. Does being a pacifist mean that I am opposed to America violently intervening to keep Assad from using chemical weapons against his own people? And if so, what would I say if Obama asked for…
Getting Free From the Sin of Sodom: Living With Outrageous Generosity
Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction. Erich Fromm Jesus, the poor and the greedy Though it’s often missed by American Christians, confronting poverty was central to everything Jesus was about. Jesus didn’t just care about the poor. Though he was…
The Cruciform Center Part 1: How Matthew, Mark and Luke Reveal a Cruciform God
In the previous series of posts I’ve argued that a merely “Christocentric” approach to God is too general, as can be shown by the widely different conceptions of God people arrive at, despite their claim to be “Christocentric.” The confession that Jesus reveals what God is like is simply too abstract, for it leaves too…
Lighten Up: If Jesus Had Come In Our Time
Is there any doubt that this is the way it would have played out in 2014?
A Brief Outline and Defense of the Open View
While many Christians have found the open view of the future to be the most helpful and accurate view of God’s foreknowledge of the future based on biblical, philosophical, and experiential evidence, others have criticized the view as unorthodox and even heretical. What follows is a brief description and defense of the open view prepared…
Scientific Support for the Open View
If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction. What follows are two more “pointers” to the view that the future is at least partly open (indefinite, composed of possibilities). I’ll first consider an argument from quantum physics, followed by a pragmatic argument regarding what we ordinarily assume to…