There’s a good article on Boundless about “unplugging the God of Information Technology“. As someone who compulsively checks their email and Facebook throughout the day, Joe Carter’s observations on the all-pervading place we give technology in our lives struck home with me.
Recently, God has really been hitting home to me the importance of rest. He seems to have been repeatedly bringing the topic to my attention, such as in Dan Edelen’s blog post on “Demolishing the Culture of Busyness“, and through some of the team talks on beach mission. Mark Hodgkinson spoke on the last morning of the mission about this, and how important it is to take time to “Be still and know that I am God”, as God says in the Psalms.
When I came back from beach mission, I was in fact planning on starting resting from technology on Sundays back then. But something that seemed oh-so-important at the time came up on a Sunday, and I “needed” that time on the Internet, and I forgot about it.
But this last Wednesday, I was really challenged by the Bible study in my church home group to “remember my first love” for Christ. That time of first love in a relationship is always exhilarating, fuelled by emotions and hope and excitement. There are times in the Christian life where our relationship with Jesus feels like that.
But it’s easy to get caught up in activities, both those that are worthwhile and those that do nothing more than distract, and lose that sense of excitement. Within our secular culture which is so focussed on the material, it’s easy to be distracted from the fact that Jesus is the one who “walks among the lampstands”, who is actively present among his Church. As Jim Elliot prayed, “Lord, deliver me from the dread asbestos of other things”.
One of the biggest distractions for me is modern technology. Working on something, be it writing my novel or spending time wrestling with God in prayer or in his word, is often tough. One of the effects of our Fall is that work is cursed and often frustrating. Our relationship with God is damaged, and although believers are united to him in Christ, we still often feel that distance. So how easy it is to just turn on the television, log on to the Internet or start playing video games. Even those things that do have a real practical use, such as email, become a way for me to avoid doing hard things.
So what I plan to do is to build in some time each week where I just turn these things off, where I liberate myself from the ubiquity of technology. Specifically, I’m not going to use the Internet or play any computer games on a Sunday. Someone once described Sabbath as “building a Cathedral in time”. I’m sure I’ll find it an effort and a pain to begin with, but the reason I’m doing it is that I think it could become a real blessing, and help me draw nearer to God.
Anyway, I’ll see how it goes, and I’ll try and report back in a few weeks time!