Under Control

I’ve been reading Tony Reinke’s book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You. Ironically, Facebook got knocked out of commission for several hours Monday. Perhaps God was encouraging me (and everyone else) to consider the message of the book even more seriously. My social media use tends to increase over time until I make a conscious effort to pull back, and this is one of those times.

As I was reading about the decline in reading comprehension and the growing determination to catalogue our lives in post-worthy images, I imagined how a few scenes from Jesus’s life on earth might have been different:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit… meek… merciful…” -Yeah, whatever. Keep scrolling.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted…” -Retweet!

Hey, I got 136 likes on my post! Who’s the greatest now? LOL -“The greatest among you shall be your servant.”

Who are we missing on this Zoom meeting? -Well, Andrew went fishing, Peter’s mother-in-law is sick again, and no one knows where Judas is tonight.

“One of you will betray Me.” -Wait, what did He say? I was checking my messages.

OK, so maybe we aren’t much different from the disciples. We all wrestle in varying degrees with pride, distraction, and desire for attention and approval. Smartphones and social media connections just give us a quick and easy way to do so.

Reinke writes about a theology of remembering:

“Whatever else is at play in the digital age, Christians are commanded over and over to remember. We must not lose our past and our future for moment-by-moment tweets and texts on our phones… All spiritual growth is rooted in remembering what Christ has done in me… Remembering is one of the key spiritual disciplines we must guard with vigilance amid the mind-fragmenting and past-forgetting temptations of the digital age” (187-188).

I would add to that a different sense of the word remember. We need to re-member who we are created to be as the Body of Christ. Social media is great at fragmenting us into camps that are at odds with one another over all kinds of issues. We interpret likes and follows as affirmation that we are in the “right” crowd, even as we’ve simultaneously alienated friends and neighbors that we go to church with. We essentially dismember one set of relationships that’s based on eternal principles for another set based on the illusion of superficial agreement.

“Jesus boils down the purpose and aim of our lives into two goals: treasure God with your whole being, and then pour out your God-centered joy in love for others. On these two commands all other smartphone laws depend: (190).

Reinke asks some good questions, including: “Do my smartphone behaviors move me toward God or away from him? …Do my smartphone behaviors edify me and others, or do they build nothing of lasting value?” (194). I’m sure we could all find areas where we could improve our words and actions to better love God and our neighbors.

“I am not my own. I am owned by my Lord. I have been bought with a price, which means I must glorify Christ with my thumbs, my ears, my eyes, and my time… I do not have ‘time to kill’—I have time to redeem” (180).

“Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil” (Eph. 5:15-16).

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© 2021 Dawn Rutan. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture are ESV. Image courtesy of Amazon. The opinions stated do not necessarily reflect the views of my church or employer.