31-Day Phone Challenge - Day 2

 

Many people today don’t see anything wrong with spending eight hours a day playing computer games.

If this life is all there is, why not have as much fun as possible? Why not watch/view/read whatever brings you pleasure?

We need an eternal view to be deliberate about our phone use.

While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4:18

We were created in the image of God to reflect Christ to the world. What we desire becomes our idol. What we worship becomes our model. When we worship Christ, we become like Christ. To use a Facebook term, we become what we “like.”

Can our phone cravings become idolatry?

Idolatry isn’t just bowing down to a golden idol. Idolatry is finding ultimate meaning in the created instead of the Creator.

“We idolize our phones when we lose our ability to ask if they help us (or hurt us) in reaching our spiritual goals.” from 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You by Tony Reinke

In the next weeks we’ll be considering how technology and our phones are affecting us. But ultimately we need to ask God to give us a vision for our media use. Unless our hearts change, even smashing our phone won’t bring victory. Maybe God wants you to use your phone less, or maybe He wants you to use your online time in a better way—to encourage or evangelize—becoming a producer instead of a consumer.

Today’s challenge: Install a tracking app on your phone, if your phone doesn’t already have one. I use Your Hour, but there are many other options. In a few days, we’ll look at the results.