by Drew Dyck
But while it’s wise to focus on temptation, we need to pay attention to our state of mind too. We know that there are certain things that decimate our willpower. Being tired, for instance, leaves us more vulnerable to temptation. Ditto for being hungry and stressed. The same is true for being distracted. It’s like a pickpocket who works with an accomplice. While one is distracting you, the other robs you blind. You don’t even know what hit you.
Have you ever wondered why so many stores blast loud music or provide other diversions? They want you to act on impulse. It’s not in their best interest to provide a distraction-free environment where you can think clearly and resist temptation. Studies have demonstrated that even mild distractions, like trying to remember a phone number, leave people more likely to make unhealthy choices.
The internet is like every store on earth rolled into one. It offers up an endless flood of distraction that wears down your resolve. Bombarded by this continual flow, we become easy marks for temptation.
At the same time, it makes it harder to engage in spiritual practices. Scripture reading is often the first to go. You may not care about plowing through dense classics, but as a Christian, you should care about reading at least one classic. Well, sixty-six classics if you want to get technical about it—the library of holy books we call the Bible. In chapter 6, we saw how Bible reading is a keystone habit, a practice that pays dividends in multiple areas of life. Yet let’s face it—reading the Bible is difficult. It’s a big, daunting book. Yes, it’s the inspired Word of God and filled with breathtaking beauty. But it was written in multiple genres over thousands of years by people from ancient cultures. It demands discipline to read and understand.
I interviewed Glenn Paauw of the Institute for Bible Reading about the Bible reading habits of contemporary Christians. One of his biggest concerns is how contemporary Christians tend to live off “Scripture McNuggets” rather than “feasting on the whole Word of God.” To correct this habit requires “big readings of Scripture,” he says. “We need to increase the size of our Bible readings. Start reading the words around your cherry-picked passages. Then you’re immediately confronted with context…. I’m a big fan of reading entire books of the Bible.”
Unfortunately, for people with Twitter-sized attention spans, doing “big readings” of an ancient text is nearly impossible. The internet trains us to skim instead of read. It also encourages what cognitive scientists call “task switching,” a practice of shifting your attention from one thing to another. The problem is that each time you shift your attention—a practice the internet encourages constantly—the brain has to reorient itself. The practice imposes “switching costs” that slow your brain down and diminish your ability to concentrate. Here’s how Stanford communications professor Clifford Nass explained the impact of constant switching on the brains of the subjects he studied. “People who multitask all the time can’t filter out irrelevancy. They can’t manage a working memory. They’re chronically distracted…. they’re pretty much mental wrecks.”
Even when these habitual multitaskers got offline, the negative effects of the switching persisted. Nass continued:
The people we talk with continually said, look, when I really have to concentrate, I turn off everything and I am laser-focused. And unfortunately, they’ve developed habits of mind that make it impossible for them to be laser-focused…. They just can’t keep on task.23
Our brains are addicted to the novelty served up by the internet. No wonder we struggle to quiet our minds and study God’s Word. Hip-hop artist and pastor Trip Lee attests to this dynamic in his own life: “The more time I spend reading ten-second tweets and skimming random articles online, the more it affects my attention span, weakening the muscles I need to read Scripture for long distances.”24
In his book 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You, Tony Reinke connects our ability to engage Scripture with our willingness to tune out online distractions.
To live an abundant life in this insatiable consumer society, we must plead in prayer for God-given power to turn our eyes away from the gigs of digital garbage endlessly offered in our phones and tune our ears to hear sublime echoes of an eternal enthrallment with the transcendent beauties we “see” in Scripture.25
FAREWELL, SOLITUDE AND COMMUNITY
Another casualty of the digital flood is solitude. Once you’ve conditioned your brain to require constant entertainment, quieting your soul to commune with God becomes nearly impossible.
I sense this in my own life. When I try to carve out time for meditation and prayer, I feel a strong urge to reach for my phone or log on to my computer. I try to spend time with God but squirm with restlessness the moment I’m deprived of external stimuli. Connecting deeply with God takes silence, solitude, and concentration. It might even mean we have to get bored. But as my friend Skye Jethani says, “Boredom is a prerequisite to spiritual growth.” That statement may sound wrong. In America, being bored is among the worst things that can happen to you, but I think he’s onto something. As unendurable as it may be for tech-addicts like me, boredom just might be the answer. It can serve as a spiritual reset, a blankness into which God can speak. Of course spiritual practices aren’t boring. If we fully grasped what we’re truly doing (communing with the God of the universe!) we wouldn’t be bored. We’d be excited, energized. But for people whose imaginations have been blunted by a barrage of digital stimuli, slowing down will feel like boredom, at least at first.
The internet makes spending time alone and with God more difficult. It also threatens our time with each other, straining at the cords of Christian community.
A couple of years ago, I was out for dinner with my family when I noticed a group of young people at the table next to us bowing their heads. That’s refreshing, I thought. You don’t see too many young people pausing to pray before meals anymore. I glanced back a few minutes later and was surprised to see them still frozen in the same position. That’s when it hit me. They weren’t praying; they were on their phones. I marveled at the irony of the scene. They were together but disconnected—at least from each other.
A pastor friend who leads a thriving urban church of mostly twentysomethings told me about how big a challenge this kind of behavior is for his congregation. “This is our church’s greatest obstacle to discipleship,” he said, holding up a smartphone. The young, affluent couples attending his church gave lip service to the idea of community, but had trouble breaking away from their digital devices to truly engage with each other. At the time of our conversation, my friend was thinking of placing baskets in the foyer of the church and having everyone drop their smartphones in before entering the sanctuary. He knew the idea would be a tough sell for his hyperconnected parishioners, but he was determined to find a way to wrest digital devices out of the hands of his distracted congregants, if only temporarily. “I don’t know if that’s the solution,” he said, “but we have to do something.”
BE THE TORTOISE
The people I’ve known who have had major moral failings all had one thing in common: they were moving way too fast. Their failures were tragic, but not surprising. We’re like cars—far more likely to crash when moving at a high rate of speed. Cramming our schedules depletes our willpower and leaves us physically exhausted. It’s the perfect recipe for a moral failure. Slowing down and resting replenishes our willpower reserves.
Slowing down enables us to defeat temptation. Our desires are strong, but short-lived. Sometimes by simply waiting ten minutes or so, the desire will wane, enabling you to resist giving in. Adopting practices that force you to slow your pace also help. Spending a mere five minutes in meditation or prayer boosts a person’s willpower for the remainder of the day. Other studies have demonstrated that getting sufficient sleep and relaxation are crucial for shoring up willpower reserves.
No wonder Scripture repeatedly gives us commands such as “wait on the Lord” or “be still and know that I am God.” Our Creator knows that we need to slow down and rest. When
it comes to self-control, the tortoise beats the hare every time.
WEAPONS FOR FIGHTING BACK
Like most parents, I struggle to get my kids’ attention. My six-year-old boy is particularly difficult. He’s in constant motion. Whether he’s playing tag with his sister, smashing toy superheroes into each other, or pretending he’s a lizard that can scale vertical surfaces, the boy is a blur. That’s fine; I’m pretty sure that’s what little boys are supposed to do. The only problem comes when I need to tell him something important. He’ll acknowledge my words with a mindless, “Yeah, Dad” as he blazes by, but I know he didn’t really hear me. That’s when I have to chase him down, remove whatever toy is in his hands, put my hands on his shoulders and look him in the eyes. Finally I have his attention.
I wonder if God feels the same way about His children sometimes. We’re so busy, so distracted. New technologies have filled our lives with toys that keep us constantly entertained. Perhaps truly communing with our heavenly Father involves letting Him pull our toys from our hands long enough to hear Him again.
But how exactly do we do that? In order to protect ourselves from self-control-destroying technology, we need to exercise self-control in the first place.
Draw Bright Lines
We all want to improve our behavior. But often we pursue this goal with vague aspirations, like “I’m going to try to eat better.” Of course, objectives like this rarely work because they’re so ambiguous. “Bright lines” are hard-and-fast rules that help you avoid unwanted behavior. The term came from the legal system to describe clearly defined courtroom rulings, but researchers found the idea helpful for controlling conduct.
This is how it works. A vague goal like trying to eat better requires you to constantly assess what you should eat and how much. However, if you have a bright-line rule such as “No eating sugar” or “No eating after 8:00 p.m.,” you’re far more likely to see your eating habits improve. These rules may sound difficult but they actually preserve your willpower. When you see a donut, you know it has sugar, so it’s off-limits. You don’t have to sit around wrestling with a decision. You don’t even have to think about it.
The Bible is filled with these sorts of “bright-line” rules. What are the Ten Commandments after all, but a series of inviolable laws designed to steer us away from evil? Jesus moved these bright lines into the realm of the heart. He taught us to not even lust or hate, knowing that those dangerous feelings are not only sinful but lead to outward acts of sin as well.
We’re wise to apply this thinking to our lives, and not just to avoid committing adultery and murder. Bright lines are especially crucial for breaking bad digital habits.
My pastor, C. J. Coffee, is a bit of a Luddite. He doesn’t spend much time online, isn’t on social media, and he has (gasp!) an old-fashioned flip phone. He doesn’t opt for these restrictions because he has something against technology. He does it to avoid falling prey to pornography. Since becoming a Christian in his late teens, C. J. hasn’t looked at porn—not once. You might think that’s because he’s some sort of superman, but he says it’s just the opposite. “I consider myself fundamentally weak in this area,” he confessed. “That’s why I’ve taken extreme precautions to avoid temptation.”26 He encouraged other people in our church to take the same measures if they find themselves besieged by temptation. “If you’re a guy who’s getting tempted by images online, don’t be proud,” he once thundered from the pulpit. “Set up controls on your computer. Don’t access the internet when you’re alone. And if you have to, get yourself a flip phone!”27
Even if you’re not falling to porn, bright lines are valuable for limiting the influence of technology. Make hard-and-fast rules like “No email after 6:00 p.m.,” or “No internet on weekends,” or “No phones at the dinner table.” These bright lines are like levees, strategically placed in your life to guard against the flood of digital distractions that threaten to overwhelm your soul.
Structure Your Time
I doubt any of us sits down to plan the week and thinks, Hmm … I’m going to pencil in thirty-five hours for staring at my phone, thirty hours of TV, and seven hours of mindlessly surfing the web. Sounds ridiculous, right? We ’d never plan to spend our time like this. Yet that’s what many of us do—week after week.
How do we bring sanity back to our schedules? By becoming intentional about the way we spend our time. Of course that doesn’t mean we say no more phones, TV, or computers. For most of us, that isn’t feasible. If I said no to email, I’d lose my job! But it does require applying wisdom to our online habits. One tool I’ve found helpful comes from my friend Brett McCracken. Playing off Maslow’s famous Hierarchy of Needs, McCracken came up with the “Wisdom Pyramid”28 to give internet-addicted Christians a way to think more fruitfully about the way they spend their time.
As you can see, McCracken puts social media and the internet at the pinnacle of his pyramid—not because those are the best uses of your time, but because they’re the least important. He advises prioritizing Scripture-reading and spending time with your church family in order to keep your priorities balanced.
These are good guidelines. I’ve often referred back to it when I sense that I’m inverting the pyramid in the way I spend my time.
Yet I also need more practical tools to help me allot my time wisely. Ironically, many of these tools are technological.
For those struggling with online porn, there are a host of great tools. You can download software like Net Nanny that will block all porn on your computer and phone. There are other services, like Covenant Eyes, that send a report of all your online activities to an accountability partner. You may feel a little silly installing software or paying for an accountability service, but it’s worth it. Better to swallow your pride and spend a few bucks on a service, than risk polluting your mind and soul with the evils of online porn.
There are also small steps you can take to curb your digital dependency. One is to disable color on your smartphone. The former Design Ethicist at Google, Tristan Harris, explains that opting for the “grayscale” option makes the apps on your phone far less addictive.29 A few months ago, I did something simple that reduced my tendency to waste time on my phone. I turned off all the notifications. Did I really need to be alerted every time someone liked one of my tweets or Facebook posts? Must I know each time CNN.com posts a new political story? Nope. Yet these dings and beeps were continually pulling me away from more important activities and sapping my ability to concentrate deeply. So I went into my settings and disabled all notifications. I haven’t missed them. The second thing I did: install an app (called Moment) that tracks all the time I spend on my phone. It’s sobering to get an accurate understanding of just how much time you’re spending on your phone. Such tools help you prevent giving too much of your time and attention to the internet.
Make Your Sabbath Tech-Free
Observing a Sabbath is crucial. Don’t worry—I’m not legalistic about it. The Jews observed the Sabbath on Saturday. The early Christians moved it to Sunday, the Lord’s Day, to honor the day that Jesus rose from the dead. Today, we no longer live in tight-knit, kin-based cultures, and everyone has different work schedules. I don’t care if you observe Sabbath on Sunday, Saturday—or Wednesday. But observing a Sabbath is wise, especially in our hurry-sick world.
A couple years ago, our family started giving our Sabbath a low-tech twist. We forbade the use of screens. We called it “No Screen Sundays.” It’s a little cheesy, but somehow the alliteration helped it stick. We don’t always observe it in our home, but we try. And when we do, it feels like a little slice of heaven. The kids aren’t zoned out watching cartoons, Mom isn’t texting, and maybe most refreshing of all, Dad isn’t glued to his phone checking email or Twitter. It’s a day to worship God, enjoy our church community, and to be together as a family. Really together. “The Sabbath prefers natural light to artificial light,” writes A. J. Swoboda.30 We’ve found this to be true in our home. When we power down
our devices and step outside into the natural light of God’s creation, our souls are restored.
This is just a sampling of strategies I’ve found useful. You may opt for different ones. The important thing is that we get intentional about freeing our minds from the tyranny of technology. Too much time in front of screens breeds impatience and impulsivity. It leaves us depressed and distracted and discontent. Compare those states of mind with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and—self-control. The contrast could hardly be sharper. By limiting our time online, we give God the space in our lives to cultivate the virtues He longs for us to have, including self-control.
Self-Control Training: Entry #8—Running
SO FAR I’VE FOUND MY SELF-CONTROL EXPERIMENTS challenging. Yet, in one way, they’ve been easy. They don’t require movement. Reading the Bible, praying, and fasting all demand discipline but you can do them all while sitting perfectly still on the couch. As a fairly sedentary person—and committed indoorsman—that’s something I appreciate
But that’s about to change. The last discipline I’m going to try to build into my life is running.
At a recent checkup, I noticed my doctor was hinting at some lifestyle changes. And the hints weren’t subtle. “Sometimes we eat even when we’re not hungry,” he said as he examined my shirtless torso. When he asked me if I exercised, I proudly reported that I try to get out for a walk a few times a week. “That’s perfect …” he replied. I smiled—then he finished his sentence. “… if you were an eighty-five-year-old woman.” Apparently he wasn’t impressed with my afternoon strolls. “You need to get out there and do vigorous exercise,” he told me. “You need to sweat.”