Distractions, Technically
By Sue Maakestad
“Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral.” – Kahlil Gibran
The devil goes to church more faithfully than most Christians. He’s there every service – just as he is anywhere else – seeking whom he may devour (I Peter 5:8). It’s okay with him if you’re saved. He’ll tolerate you being full of the Holy Ghost, too – as long as you’ll just sit down in your favorite pew and keep really quiet about it. As long as you forget that you’re a child of God with all power and authority in heaven and earth to dismantle Satan’s kingdom through the Name of Jesus Christ (Matthew 28:18-19). And he’ll sit down right next to you because he, too, has a mission: to derail you from yours. All he has to do is get your attention off of all the souls dying all around you – long enough to collect them all and take them to hell.
He really doesn’t need much to pull this off, either. His favorite weapon is generally the fifth column: what lies within. He knows that just beneath our heartfelt spiritual dedication there’s still a foundational layer of good old human laziness and an undying love affair with our comfort zone. It’s what the marketing experts cater to most because it’s a powerful motivation in all of us. Just show me a way to do it bigger, faster, better, sleeker – and above all, more comfortably – and I’m sold. Bookstores and video stores are on the list of endangered species; car dealerships are predicted to follow, as all things take their place in a virtual marketplace where they are purchased at the click of a mouse and streamlined directly to your door.
What do I prefer? To get in my car and drive from store to store in the Tucson heat and perhaps come up empty? To call around and be put on infinite hold and get entertained by elevator music? Or to search, point, and click and have it all done in five minutes? As a certifiable dinosaur, I’m still searching, pointing, and clicking on my desktop. Even if you go the phone route nowadays, you’ll have games and web surfing to drown out the elevator music.
So much technology, so little time! I often find that technology is tying up all my time – holding me back from more important pursuits, even while the digital pursuits have merit. Hebrews 12:1-2 says: “Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” There are two dangers here: weights and snares. While we may be able to avoid the snares of sin that are so easy to find on the Internet, that is not our only threat.
We can also be put out of commission because we’re immobilized by Satan’s weights – and believe me, he has a bag of them. The cares of this life. Guilt. Unforgiveness. Bitterness. Self-accusation. Sickness. Trials. Anguish of soul. Voracious gobblers of time. I can be in the middle of working on something necessary and still be thinking of three other essentials that are waiting for me to finish that task. And while they are not the most important thing I’d like to direct my attention to, they all scream for my attention. They are all urgent. They are all vital. And they all tie my hands and keep me from what’s truly important. I’m sandbagged.
Time is one of our most valuable resources to use for God, others, and ourselves. Life is busy and full of commitments, and we must weigh those commitments and make our time count – and that time must include spaces for relaxation and recharging if we are to sharpen our edge. In assessing how my time is spent, I hunt down the sandbags. What’s holding me back? Is it important? Does it help people? Is it a waste of time? How long have I spent now in front of this blasted computer? In our digital age, it’s so easy to jump online to check email and come back up for air hours later wondering where all that time just went. One thing leads to another to another… I’m as guilty as anyone.
“In our distracted world, we’re constantly battling electronic temptations that threaten to take over our available time,” says efficiency expert Laura Vanderkam in her book, 168 Hours. I’m forever amazed at how much time modern technology can suck out of my life, never to be restored. Just catching up with friends and family on social media, reading headlines, or searching for an exciting book I just heard about can devour a gargantuan mouthful of my precious day. We need an analyst to perform one of those famous statistical counts on the matter: “Over the next five years you will have clicked on 7 million links, sent 15 million tweets, and impulse-bought three garage-fuls of junk that are destined to wind up in seventeen yard sales in the very near future…”
One intriguing article leads to another until I’ve spent another good chunk just informing myself – which in itself is not a harmful pursuit – but studies have shown that even our reading habits are being affected by technology. Says Todd Henry in his book, Die Empty: “This is the blessing and curse of technology. It broadens our scope of familiarity with what’s happening in the world, but over-familiarity has undesirable side effects. We may think we understand something, but the depth of our knowledge is more shallow.”
It’s what has been called reading a mile wide and an inch deep. Even the way we acquire knowledge and internalize experience is changing, and this can contribute to learning disorders and short attention spans in educational settings. In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr explains: “What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a jet ski.”
Looking at the scenario from a spiritual perspective, we can see a greater danger. Beyond losing our depth perception, we are being entertained with such a deluge of information and entertainment that we can no longer concentrate on our life’s purpose. I am quite certain that when as kids we were asked what we wanted to do when we grew up, not a single one of us said “Eat pizza, surf the web and play video games.” We were going to change the world. And the good news is, we still can.
The Bible tells us in I Corinthians 6:19-20: “You are bought with a price; therefore glorify God with your body and your spirit, which are God’s.” and in I Corinthians 10:31 it says: “Therefore, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” That means, in plain English, that if God bought me, He owns all of me. He owns my body and my spirit. He owns my time and my electronic devices. Whatever I do with any of it should be what pleases Him and shows Him to the world. Paul tells Timothy: “No one engaged in warfare entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who enlisted him as a soldier” (2 Timothy 2:4). When it comes to stomping out the fire on your fuse, entanglement is the name of the devil’s game.
God loves you and has a purpose for your life. As His child and a soldier in His army, you are enlisted in the cosmic fight to take back territory from Satan in the form of precious souls, and this war is won a soul at a time. Regardless of whether each Christian feels called to enter formal ministry, each of us is called to a personal ministry of sharing what Jesus has done for us and winning souls to His kingdom at every opportunity. We are a threat to Satan’s kingdom, and don’t think he’s overlooked that!
Satan will use whatever he can to pull the plug on your mission for God. Let’s turn the tables on him by unplugging from distractions and rewiring our time and determination to serve others and bring them to the feet of Jesus.