Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. Or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m.. If you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us online at Madison Church.
Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our sermons podcast, madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: Thank you so much for joining us tonight. If you're with us online, we're exceptionally happy. That's a big word. We're really glad you're here as well. We're thankful for your presence. If you're joining us after this is going live, then we're glad that you've stopped by as well. This is our analog faith in Digital Babylon study. This quarter in the first couple of weeks, we've talked specifically about different generations, how we relate to each other, how we relate to technology, and how that impacts how we relate to each other. And last week, we talked a little bit about how technology forms us in some broad, sweeping ways. Tonight, we're going to get a little bit more specific in how our devices how our screens and our devices impact us and form us. So as we get into this, generally speaking, what are some ways that you feel like screens impact and shape you spiritually?
That's right.
[00:01:36] Speaker C: They aggravate the fire out of me.
[00:01:37] Speaker A: Aggravate the fire. Amen. Absolutely. I don't disagree with that. Yes, ma'am.
Okay. It also makes the husband follow up. It should be fun.
[00:01:54] Speaker D: It makes your ministers much more careful because when they do an illustration, they know there's quarter of the audience that are checking. Right.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I try to change what quarter it is. Try to hit all the different ones. That's right.
Yes.
Discontentment. All right.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: I know a lot more now.
Facebook.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Sometimes people are more transparent online than they are face to face. That's very good. We're going to look at a few statistics on how devices have shaped us. And I realized for most of you in the back, this is small text. You're not supposed to go below, like 32, but yet here we are. As of June 2019, 96% of Americans own a cell phone of some kind. Most of them reply to text messages within minutes of receiving them. 66% of the population show signs of nomophobia, formerly known as nomo.
I practiced it. No mo motorolophobia. That's not true. I just wanted to say it the fear of being without your phone. There's a real thing. There's a term now for the fear of being without your phone altogether. We can say that's a little ridiculous, but that's a big word to say together, so don't do it. The average time spent on smartphones a day is 2 hours and 51 minutes seems low, depending on what website you go to and what data you're looking at. Those averages are upwards of 7 hours, seven and a half hours a day, which is essentially a full time job. It's impressive. The average smartphone owner will click, tap, or swipe their phone 2617 times a day. Outside of breathing, I don't know anything that you would do over 2500 times a day when leaving their phones at home. 50% of respondents feel uneasy. This is according to a survey done by a company called Slicktext.com. They are a text messaging company, a text alert company that businesses use. 26% of accidents involving cars are caused by cell phone use while driving. Think about that for just a second.
That includes hitting rover, hitting deer. That includes running stop signs. That includes drunk driving related incidents. 26% of all vehicle accidents are caused by cell phone use. 87% of smartphone users check their devices within an hour of going to sleep or waking up. 69% of smartphone users check their devices within the first five minutes of waking up in the morning. Guilty. More people have smartphones than toilets. On a global scale, I really want to meet the guy or girl that did the research to find out the ratio of smart devices to toilets. I also have other thoughts on that stat, but we'll move on. 20% of respondents in a cell phone usage survey would rather go without shoes for a week and be without their smartphones. I did not realize that many people lived in Austria in that beautiful scene from Not Gone with the Wind. Sound of Music. That's the one. Otherwise, that's ridiculous.
I mean, I'm a flip flop guy, but still footwear over cell phone. It's crazy. Absolutely crazy. But also shows kind of where we are. Here's another graph that gives us some context. The top two, the blue and the red, represent young millennials and Gen Z. Right around 2012, 2013, we see a dramatic rise in a lot of these stats. There's a quick drop there for ages 26 to 34, right around 2013 to 2014, but then it steadily increases a rise in anxiety.
Remember, we've talked about 2012. What were some of the significant events there?
Social media became more prominent. More than half of teenagers in America had access to social media, had social media accounts. That number went drastically higher as you get closer to 2018, when virtually all teenagers, especially older teenagers, have smartphones and multiple social media accounts. What's interesting here is ages 50 plus, there's a 7% decrease in anxiety since 2010. Now, this doesn't go up to the pandemic, so some of those numbers obviously would be different.
But one thing that we've seen in our study of generations is that older generations seem to be more steady on the anxiety, depression, suicide ideation, the dark triad statistics that are out there specifically that is due to life predigital age.
The main thing we're talking about tonight is our attention.
We have to be very intentional with our attention, because what has our attention has our hearts. Jesus said, Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.
What has our attention has our time. Our time is our greatest commodity. We can lose a lot of money, but then over a short period of time, we can also gain a lot of money depending on different circumstances.
Time we never get back.
Time. I've never heard someone says, man, I really wish that I had given my kid more time on a cell phone when they were young.
I've also not really heard people say, man, I just really wish I had spent less time with my family growing up. I've never heard a parent say, I wish I had spent less time investing my child. Spiritually time is very important.
Time is something that we are given to steward.
No one knows when their life is going to end. Life is but a vapor.
No one has full confidence in tomorrow. We can't, because we're not guaranteed tomorrow.
We are given this moment, we are given this life to do with as we see fit. And it's our decision whether or not we see fit to glorify God and to steward in a way that glorifies Him and grows his kingdom, or we see fit to be a consumer of life, consumer of the things of this world. And our devices. We talked last week, they are not neutral.
Are they positive or negative? Yes, they're certainly not neutral. Every app on your phone was designed by someone, and that someone designed it with a purposeful, intention.
It may be positive, maybe negative, you may use it in a way that's positive or negative, but it was designed with intention. And if it's designed with intention, it's not neutral. And so we can't fall into that trap thinking that everything is neutral when it comes to technology. Psalm 119 37 turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.
I don't know how much time you spent today scrolling through a feed on your phone or a new tablet, but if we spent more than any time to some degree of mindlessly scrolling without purpose, without intention. Then this verse should be very concerning for us.
It's not a verse I was very familiar with. I've read Psalm 119 a bunch of times over the course of my life. Verse 37 never really jumped out to me until preparing for tonight. Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give me life in your ways.
We are distracted by design when it comes to our devices.
We are a part of what Tristan Harris, who is a former Google ethicist, he's considered the only conscience that Silicon Valley ever had, or closest thing to a conscience, as some people said. He says we have this attention economy. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about how our country has moved from an industrial or a manufacturing economy into a knowledge based economy. And that's impacted education. It's impacted that families are now developing later in life and different things like that. But this attention economy is one of the greatest impacts to our personal lives, to our family lives, to our relationships greater than virtually any other invention over the last 2050 or I would say even 100 years.
Who pays for Google?
Google search engine? Let me put it that way. Nobody. It's free.
What's really free in life?
You can say it louder.
Nothing's free. So if it's not free, if you're not paying for something, what's happening? Someone's paying for you.
And I've used Google for a long time because Yahoo got really cluttered. Google was kind of refreshing. Oh, that's nice.
It is nice, but it's also very clever.
When it comes to being distracted, there's a lot of things that we really need to think about. When you get a notification on your phone, that little bubble pops up. What color is it typically?
Red. Why is that? What do you think?
What's that get your attention?
What color is a stop sign?
What color is a red light?
The light that tells you to stop?
It's red. Red has a visceral we have a visceral reaction to red. It's attention grabbing. Imagine if somebody went around and painted all the stop signs blue or green.
Don't do that. And now that that's on the Internet, it was not me, we wouldn't notice them as much.
And people that design technology, people that make a living and make money off of the technology that we consume and we participate in and we engage with, they know that. They know color theory, color science, they didn't have to necessarily go to design school to know that. They know how the brain works.
It grabs our attention. And the aim specifically of our phones and our tablets is to not let go. Because the longer we're on them, the more we'll invest in another app or a little bit more time, a little bit more this, a little bit more that.
We are being formed and shaped very intentionally.
We have to dribble with our heads up. That's a phrase I use a lot. Carson, what does that mean in basketball? Dribble with your head up?
Exactly. If I dribble with my head down and I just go this way, if a defender comes this way, I react to him and I go to the sideline. He pushes me to the sideline. Well, now he doesn't need an extra defender because it's him and the side of the court. I'm out of balance. I'm letting him control where I go. If I dribble with my head up, I not only know where the defender is, I know where my teammates are. I know where help is going to come from. I can think a step or two ahead.
When it comes to technology, we have to dribble with our heads up. We have to be very wise. We have to learn to discern, because something will offer us convenience. Whether it's quick access to information that over a period of time creates a habit in us that we feel like we have to have information instantly.
Instant gratification forms something in us that may not be the image of Christ.
Got a few different stats, and specifically some science for us tonight. In your brain, when you decide to make a decision, you have a couple of different things going on.
When you get a notification and that little red thing pops up there, you look at it, you glance at it. What are some of the emotions that you feel? How do you normally respond to that?
I want to get rid of it. I want to get rid of it. Why?
Okay, so what do you have to do to get rid of it? You got to open the app. That's right.
So you come back and you get it again. And you get it again. You get it again. And how many apps would you say on average, do you have on your phone? Or would you say the average person? Let's not make it personal.
I don't know. Maybe 100.
Really, Jimmy? No, I'm just kidding. Maybe. I have no idea what the answer to that question is, but it's probably a lot. Whenever you go back and you do like an update, you have to clear space off your phone. Or if you ever realize, especially Apple. This is one thing I've really detested, switching from Android to Apple is that in order to close it, you swipe up, right? To close it. Well, Android, I just click close all, and then beautiful little cascading of all of my apps. Well, in Apple, I'm just sitting here doing this. And how in the world do I have 20 apps open? I didn't know I had 20 apps on there. Well, because gradually, by the day, as the day goes on, rather, I use things, and I do it without thinking.
I'm not always intentional with how I use my phone.
Sometimes I'm just habitual with how I use my phone. When you get that notification, there's a chemical that's released in your brain called dopamine. Dopamine is something that's become a lot more popular in our vernacular with the rise of the opioid crisis. We talk about a lot there, and more recently with the rise of social media and digital device addiction in the world. Of addiction. Dopamine is a really big deal. Dopamine is what triggers this process in your brain to say, oh, that was fun, let's do it again. Dopamine is not necessarily what brings you the satisfaction. Delta phosph is another hormone. We'll talk more about that as we get into our talk about sexuality. Dopamine loves to chase. Dopamine wants to get back and get into that chase because there's a promise at the end. That's why it's so addictive.
There's this battle. Frontal cortex.
Knew I was going to miss one periatal parietal.
Exactly. Audience participation. Perfect. Parietal cortex, right. So there's this battle. Think of it as like a tug of war.
If the frontal cortex wins, then you're able to focus. But if the parietal cortex wins, then there's distractions that pop up. So every time you get a notification, but you're supposed to be working on this, that notification, there's that tug of war, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And how many notifications do you think you get a day? If you have 100 apps, how many notifications are you likely to receive?
[00:15:47] Speaker D: Probably about 1000.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's probably exponential. If you think about every notification for every email, every text message, every phone call, you get it's a lot.
That's why if you have email at work, you hate email in every other context. Which is why now Madison, we have like 1400 group meets that everybody's flocking to, which also is crazy annoying, but we'll talk about that later.
Screens manipulate us because they want us to have this. They prey off of this dopamine, as one author described. Dopamine tickle this dopamine sensory reward system.
And what they want us to do is to continue to chase, to continue to go and find that. Because once you click that notification, the risk reward is gone. Right now, it's a known commodity. The brain thrives off of novelty. This is important when it comes to our devices. It's very important when it comes to sexuality and how our devices manipulate us there.
Between 2012 and 2018, teenagers owning mobile devices or tablets increased from 41% to 89%.
From 2012 to 2018, in a six year span, we went from less than half 41% to almost all 89%. Using social media several times a day increased from 34% to 70%.
These are tied to that chart of anxiety, depression, loneliness.
If you don't think it's real, ask some of our counselors. They'll give you the local stats here of our folks and the folks in our community.
If you don't think it's real, ask your teenager or talk to their friends or talk to their friend's parents. It's very real. It's very much a part of our lives. And for some reason now it feels like we can't get away from it. We can, but it's very difficult.
Apps and devices are designed to highlight our impulses before they highlight our values. And that's a problem because our impulses don't always allow for thinking through things in the moment.
When it comes to a person who is tempted by chocolate, I'll stand up first. When you walk into the chocolate crocodile and you're faced with a sea of beauty, right? The promised land.
It's a lot more difficult for me to say no standing in the chocolate store than it is in the parking lot of the shopping center before I ever see the chocolate. But you know what? It just buzzed. I don't really get away from these things. This thing's always with me.
This thing sleeps next to my bed.
I spend more time in close proximity to this than I do my wife.
First time I said that out loud. That's disturbing.
This actually listens to everything I say.
I'll stop there.
That's called surveillance, by the way. I don't want my wife to be surveillance. Right? She listens, just stop talking. Keep moving.
When we engage in dopamine activating behavior, then the dopamine levels in our brain increase. We do that with regularity. It gets to a certain point where that dopamine gets regulated.
It takes more of the search, it takes more of the chase to achieve the same level of high from the dopamine to receive that same level of pleasure.
So what happens? You have to add more. You have to increase more. It's the same thing that happens in addicts of alcohol, in addicts of crack cocaine and heroin addiction.
Pardon me. We now have science. We now have brain scans. We now have a lot of literature that tells us that the brain of a person that's addicted to their devices, a chronic user of technology, specifically social media and other devices, develops very similar addictive brain pathways and neural pathways to a person who's addicted to crack cocaine.
It creates the same sensation, it creates the same pleasure. It responds to the same pleasure sensory in your brain.
The difference is most eight and ten year olds don't have access to crack cocaine, but today, most eight and ten year olds have access to devices.
In fact, I've got a third grader and a first grader right now that are given Chromebooks the first day of school.
So if I said zero screen time at home, no TV, no nothing, they're still getting it at school by the end of this study.
You'll know very clearly where I stand on the academic advantage of devices in elementary age children. It's not there.
But there is this idea that it's helpful.
And it's very easy for me as a parent to allow my child to be distracted or occupied by a device, because that means I can get stuff done easily.
I get it. I succumb to it. Often, the TV bluey. I just need them to be longer than six minutes, because then they get distracted after the six minutes, right? But they're away. There's so many ways that we justify allowing technology to have a place of prominence in our life.
And sometimes they're really good reasons. But the purpose of this study is every week for us to be challenged by scripture to think deeper about how technology shapes us spiritually. Jesus said that the eye is the light to the body.
What has our attention molds us? What we allow the next generation to be occupied by what we give attention to for them or allow them to have uninterrupted attention with shapes, forms, molds them into something. Whether it's the image of Christ or not, we're finding out.
Let's get back into this. Dopamine natural dopamine activating behaviors like eating and having sex have natural stop gaps? So eating releases dopamine. When you eat, there's the anticipation of getting to the restaurant. There's ordering. Depending on what restaurants you are, you're at it's five minutes or an hour later, you get your food. That anticipation has built. You're excited. You eat the food. There's the process of eating, the process of swallowing, digesting. There's a process there. There's some natural stop gaps to where it's not just wide open all the time. Same thing with sexual activity. There's some natural stop gaps in there. But what happens when it comes to gaming, online gaming, or when it comes to gambling as well, is that there's a shortcut.
There's a shortcut in the brain that gets us to those sensories quicker. It bypasses the natural stop gaps. There's no time to reprocess. There's no time to reset anything. What happens at a slot machine? What do you do?
Thank you, Heidi, for being the one to we all know it, people. All right, you pull the lever, and then what happens?
It spins, lights up, makes sounds, and then stops. All three at the same time or five or however many at the same time? No, one at a time. Why do you think that is?
Builds the anticipation, right? Oh, there's a seven. Oh, there's another seven. I'm good at this. Pumpkin man or whatever. I don't know.
Trying to prove my ignorance here where I was a little kid, I used to go to a place called Amory, which is where my grandmother worked. And in their conference room, they had a little toy slot machine. And I would play that thing over and over again because it was fun, right? Because there's this excitement building. And I remember that. So when I read research that says this ability to get our devices and keep us hooked to these devices is similar to that used in casinos, specifically slot machines. How do you refresh a page on your phone?
Click a button. Okay, Apple people. How do you refresh a page?
You pull it down, you let it go. What's going to happen? It's going to refresh.
There's the promise of a reward, but there's not the guarantee of a reward. And that's significant because that is the hook. That is where the addictive behavior is cultivated. The fact that you know there's going to be something there, but you don't know exactly what it's going to be. The fact that you get a red notification, you click that app, facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, I don't care what it is, you're going to get something in front of you. You don't know exactly what it's going to be. And so you just keep coming back and you keep coming back and you keep coming back, and you got to have more.
So you wait till you have 37 notifications and I'm just kidding. Don't do that. When addiction occurs, there's a decrease in dopamine reward. In order to give the reward center some relief, those receptor cells, they need to recover. But the addicted person then needs more substance or behavior in order to regain the same level of reward. This is the same brain activity in addicted brains of drugs and device addicts. Chronic exposure to addictive substances or behaviors negatively affect the frontal cortex, which is the decision making center.
This is the part of the brain that doesn't mature until our mid twenty s at best.
Keep that in mind.
Which is associated with impulse control, or the braking mechanism, which gives us the ability to say, hey, enough's, enough. We need to stop.
Essentially, your emergency brake doesn't work. After a while, it compromises a person's ability to have control or to say no. When you eat, dopamine can increase by as much as 50%.
When you have sex, dopamine can be raised by as much as 100%.
When you snort cocaine, dopamine raises by 350%.
When you're on crystal meth, dopamine increases by over 1200%, which is why crystal meth is considered the most addictive of the substances out there, studies have shown. Specifically, in 1998, there was a breakthrough by a Dr. Kep that showed video games can increase dopamine by 100%.
So when you have a young child that is sitting there playing the video game, and they don't want to put down the video game, it's because the dopamine level is at the same level as when a person has sex.
These addictions are real and they're being programmed that way. You remember, I guess it was last week or the week before, we talked specifically about how the brain neural pathways form. And if you walk through the woods, go on a hike, the very first time you go through the woods, is there any evidence that you've been there after you've walked that path?
No, not really. You walk that path every day for six years. Is there evidence that you've been there? Yes. The path becomes more defined. Think of it this way some psychiatrists describe it as if you're going down in a bobsled on snow, you keep taking the same path down and down, but as you turn, every time you make that turn, that snow carves a more defined path.
This is the way the brain works. We can teach it, we teach ourselves, right? That's why when David writes psalms over and over again. He talks about God's ways being his pathway. He's learning to follow God. He's teaching him your precepts. I delight in your precepts. I dwell in daily refuge because that's where David spends his time. David thinks about God. David wrote about God. David sang about God. It was constantly the forefront of his mind. And yet David still messed up. So what happens then when we have these little tiny rectangles that constantly have our attention? We're constantly swiping one way or the other. They're constantly forming pathways in our brains. Forming how? We think just a simple notification.
Have you seen that in your own life or in the lives of other people?
How do you feel like this information impacts our discussion of generations? If you're part of an older generation, a Gen X or a Boomer, do you feel like you struggle with an addiction to your device, to the notifications? Do you feel that's developed? Keith, you say no.
Do you feel like yeah, gotcha. Do you feel like your kids are more prone to a technology addiction? Yes.
Remember the first week specifically, we talked about how there's a significant amount of time, decades in brain development of older generations where things were analog, emerging generations. Gen Z and younger have not had any of that from the moment they were born. The Internet was not only in existence, it was in full use and it was in everybody's home. There were multiple televisions in everyone's home when Gen Z was born. There were cell phones in most people's homes and increasingly in everyone's possession when they were growing up. Laptops were in abundance. Computers.
All the things our brains are different as much as the things we talked about similarities. The first couple of weeks. This is where it gets different.
How do we guard against being formed and shaped by technology?
What do you do? Those of you that are not formed in the ways that younger generations are, what do we do?
Yes, sir.
[00:29:41] Speaker D: From my perspective, that my phone or digital aspect of things. I look at it as entertainment. Where Lily, on the other hand, it's part of her life.
I've got a thousand plus unread emails.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: Amen. Yeah, I'm at 9000. Get on my level, Sonny. Yeah.
[00:30:08] Speaker D: But for me, yeah, it's not part of my life.
It's not essential.
I got time where she lily, on the other hand, she's always constantly, nonstop all the time. And it's part of.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: For those online sonny is saying that for him it's entertainment. He goes to his phone for entertainment. But for his daughter, it's a part of her identity. It's who she is, part of her actual existence. So there's a different relationship to it. That's a great observation. What else?
[00:30:52] Speaker C: I have an app that tells me my screen time hours try to get.
[00:30:57] Speaker A: Lower every week, try to reduce screen time using an app, trying to be.
[00:31:03] Speaker C: Intentional, putting it down until a. Certain time.
[00:31:10] Speaker A: Not always great at it, but you also can make it a game there in your own 15,000. Wow. That's more than me. You have a problem.
What else?
Yes, ma'am.
Social dilemma.
[00:31:41] Speaker C: It helped me be more aware of how somebody else is in control of the information you're getting based on what you read and how long you have that thing on the screen.
In my mind, it's not really a full picture, an accurate representation, perhaps, of really the reality, because, again, it's just reinforcing you in reality.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: That may not be in my mind.
[00:32:13] Speaker C: When I learned that, I thought, this is allowing this advice to feed me information that may or may not be accurate. I may have an opinion about something, but I'm more about right.
[00:32:33] Speaker A: Yes. What is the value of someone wanting our attention? Why would a company want our attention?
Money. What else?
Persuasion. Influence.
[00:32:47] Speaker D: More data about us.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: What's that? More data. More data about us.
[00:32:54] Speaker C: I get in trouble about playing games on my phone, but a lot of the games now, it used to be like if you were coloring some picture on your phone, then in between pictures, you had to have an ad. Now it's gotten to where it just will pop up in the middle of you doing it. I started deleting those. That's very annoying. But there's nothing worse about trying to get your attention. Okay. So I'm not just going to do it between your games. I'm going to pop it up. You're going to have to see it.
[00:33:30] Speaker D: If you want to play my game.
[00:33:33] Speaker A: Do you still play the games?
[00:33:35] Speaker C: I got rid of the ones that.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: Popped it up in the middle, went on to the next mole, right?
Yes, sir.
[00:33:43] Speaker D: I think you said that at the very beginning about being stewards of our time, all of these apps, right?
They all give you rules.
If your email gets to me, to my notification, it's gone through at least 30 rules for me. I take the time to set that up. I don't get a notification that I've got a text unless it comes from my family. And so take the time. First of all, look at your corporate email once a day. At the end of the day, set the rules that I'm not going to be a slave to when that notification comes up on my email, and then define rules. Like all the junk mail I get from all the organization that doesn't even call the notification that automatically gets for me. And part of it is Dyslexic. So part of it is.
[00:34:44] Speaker A: I got.
[00:34:45] Speaker D: To have that pattern down to where I don't get flooded.
So take the time. For me, I would tell someone, take the time and be a good steward of those notifications. Don't get a notification.
Plan out how those rules.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: When it comes to an attention economy, keeping us engaged is the number one priority at virtually any cost. Whether it's an annoying pop up, whether it's a splashy image, whether it's nowadays, specifically vertical video. If you're driving down the road and I'm in the passenger seat and you're driving, and I show you a picture of my family, you could glance over there. Oh, lovely family. Handsome chap. And then you could go about your day and it would stick in your mind. You say, oh, maybe Jason had a blue shirt on or they were at the beach, or some of those facts. But if I hold up a video or hold my phone and it's a video, you can't glance at that and then go back to the road. You can, but then you're right back to it. And you're right back to it.
The more it moves, the more stimulation, the more novelty happens in your brain. And again, the light of the body receives that information and starts creating a pathway.
People that design this technology know that, and they know that most people are not willing to put in a stop gap because that takes effort, that takes thinking deeply about what actually adds value to my life excuse me. And what does not add value to my life. But that's where we as Christians begin in one corinthians, chapter six, in the Context of Sexual morality, in the context of giving your body over to unholy things, paul writes, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything. If food is for the stomach, and stomach for the food, then why not? That's not the way it works.
He would later say that we take every thought captive for the cause of Christ.
That is the same call for us today. That is the same responsibility we have today. Even in the midst of modern technology, we allow something to have our attention.
We give our attention to whatever we choose.
The thing is, technology tries to posture itself as a tool, and it should be a tool to steward. But ultimately that tool is something that makes us think that we're using. But ultimately it's using us.
It's learning us. Yes, sir.
[00:37:05] Speaker E: I would say this how difficult it will be right now to flip from smartphone to analog phone, for instance.
Okay, go a little bit fancy.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: No. Key.
[00:37:16] Speaker E: S 33.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Ten, old school. I like it. Blue trim. I'm with you. Snake.
No.
Tank phone. Yes, that too. But Snake, you could do everything.
[00:37:28] Speaker E: No, I wasn't good at it.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough.
[00:37:31] Speaker E: But I had a one time problem with my smartphone, so the provider was unable to provide me another smartphone. So I had an old phone, and I could tell that even though I wasn't using a lot of applications and stuff like that, sometimes I was verifying after half a day. I was nervous, I was looking, that I need to do something with it.
[00:37:56] Speaker A: Yeah, ultimately, the question is, what do we have to have? What do we need? What do we want?
I think most every need, the answer to that question is something that God will absolutely provide for us. Look at the birds of the air. He provides their needs.
Typically, we end up dwelling on the want.
What do we need? We need a deep, connected relationship to Christ. We need a deep understanding of His Word so that we know how to apply it and to discern it wisely. We need deep community with other Christians. Colossians, chapter three in verse one. If, then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.
How do your devices help you set your mind?
Let me back up. What does your device set your mind on more often than not?
Flip back just a few more pages in Galatians, chapter five, verse 16. But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things that you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now, the works of the flesh are evident sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry which Paul would say, in another place, covetousness is idolatry. Sorcery enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, political seasons, divisions, envy that part's not in there, but envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its pleasures, passions and desires.
My question for every one of us is does our technology, do our devices cultivate the fruit of the Spirit?
I hope so.
But when it does not, what are we willing to do about that?
If it is not this is a real dramatic point. Stay with me. If it's not cultivating that, is it because it's the way that we're using it or because of how it's designed or simply its basic function? Sometimes those are different answers. But the responsibility always lies on us to think deeply and to examine. And then when we get to the answer of yes, is it bringing me closer to God? Is it forming me into the image of Christ? Go for it.
If it's not, what needs to change? Yes, sir.
[00:40:51] Speaker E: It's kind of close to what I was thinking right now.
[00:40:53] Speaker A: I knew it.
[00:40:54] Speaker E: The only reason is if we're going to put it in our phone, the phone will going to remember about whatever I have the meeting, the call, whatever's going on, not me. So I'm making my phone a master and being aware.
[00:41:09] Speaker A: And Paul said I would be enslaved by.
[00:41:13] Speaker E: Previously. You know, in the past when people have been phoning or calling anybody, they remember the numbers, they remembered the date, they remembered everything, even birthday.
[00:41:21] Speaker A: Right now we have Facebook, we have whatever social media.
[00:41:24] Speaker E: We don't know people, it's only shallow surface.
But how much is being truly being acting on what to remember? Who is in our inner circle?
[00:41:36] Speaker A: Right.
[00:41:37] Speaker E: I know we can have over a million people, friends, followers, YouTube, whatever TikTok, it doesn't matter. But how truly they are and how much we know them.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Yep, that deep connection.
Infinite is not eternal. We have to understand that. We have to teach that to the next generation. Because we have access to an infinite scroll does not mean it gives us access to eternity. It doesn't form us into the shape of Christ.
How do we cultivate the fruit of the spirit? We just talked about that. We mentioned this last week as well. Access to excess does not necessarily cultivate holiness. Access to communication does not excuse me, I should have taken that one out. Should have been this one relationship cultivates community. And that's exactly what Wukash was talking about there is that the ability to remember someone's birthday is a personal intent. It takes effort, it takes energy to store it up. Know we have a limited number of space sometimes. But the fact that you took time to remember my birthday and it didn't take a notification for Facebook to tell you means something. The fact that you took time to write a card and put it in the mail and pay for a stamp, the outrageous price of a stamp today and send it, that means something when we settle for only digital communication. I do think that we are sacrificing some things. The reminders can be good, can absolutely be helpful and I'm not trying to lessen the fact that you wrote on somebody's wall, but don't just stop there. If that's the extent to which we are in each other's lives, we're settling.
We can go much, much further than that.
Very quickly, a couple of tips beyond what Mike said, ways to keep your phone from shaping you, limit your phone's access to you. By that I mean don't keep it by your bedside, get an actual alarm clock. That all it does is alarm clocks, right? We did it for a long time and it worked great. Only allow notifications, like Mike said, from people that add value to your life. Now that does not mean don't answer the phone when your boss calls and you tell them that your minister said that unless you need to lose your job, that's fine.
But define who adds value and what adds value. And then get rid of all the other notifications. We don't have to have notifications on every app that we have. It's actually much better to not have that. If you get caught in the cycle of a fee, because algorithms went from chronological now to this discovery algorithm where they just throw out a bunch of stuff and see what sticks.
Get rid of the app.
If you need to check something specifically because you're following your grandkids or you're following friends, reinstall it, check it and get rid of it. If you go to the centerforhumainetech.org, they have Chrome extensions where you can actually remove all of these suggested infinite scroll, suggested videos on YouTube. So you get a link from a friend to go watch this video. You go watch the video and you get out.
There are lots of ways. There's all kinds of helpful hints out there. Center for Humane Technology, a great place to start. Last but not least, just use grayscale. If your phone specifically is something that is a big hindrance to you, make it all black and white and your brain is going to look at that and go, well, that's not interesting. No more red notifications, no more pretty colors. Just grayscale circa 1937. It was a great time, right? Your brain responds to novelty. Learn how your brain works, and then learn how we can form our thoughts into the image of Christ. Let's bow and we'll be dismissed. Father, we're grateful for the opportunity to gather in Your name to learn about your creation, how You've created our bodies, and also to think more wisely and to think deeper of how other people are trying to exploit that. Help us to be wise. Help us to learn to discern. Help us if we know someone that's in addiction to act to help them retrain their brain for Godliness. You have given us all things that we need to be equipped to please you. Help us to pursue those things and to not waste our time thinking, thinking and looking at and searching for worthless things. We love you, and we thank you for our time together tonight. In Christ's name. Amen.
