You're addicted to technology, and you wonder why you're anxious?
Turn them off. Turn them all off. It is affecting you. It is infecting you.
The reason everything is “crazy” in some conservative circles, with the constant unhinged attacks on Israel and people flipping sides and going against each other, is that that is the nature of sand. It shifts. It is shapeless. You can build on it, sure, but it won’t withstand the harsh winds of life.
If you shape your mind, political philosophy, or anything else on personalities, you are sure to be disappointed. There is only one sure foundation on which to build our lives, and only one: Jesus Christ (see 1 Corinthians 3:11).
We build our lives moment by moment, by how we invest our very limited time and resources (material, emotional, intellectual, spiritual). Therefore, to build a philosophy, a worldview, a righteous opinion, a political ideology, a wise cultural viewpoint, or a legacy, one must spend more time in the Scriptures than on podcasts, IG, or X.
Truth be told, though, the Spirit of the Age has such a grip on so many in our culture that they will actually spend three hours daily listening to Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens spew venom, while relegating the Scriptures to a scroll of social media and a verse of the day. What would you expect the fruits of such investments to be?
I can think of a few: anxiety, depression, paranoia, distrust, rebellion, and shame, among others. Disappointment, too, for when our idols are smashed, the disillusionment is felt very deeply. And the idols of today, like those of yesterday, will be smashed, for they are made of sand — of clay.
An intense self-evaluation is needed. What are you doing with your time and attention? Are you giving it to those who are not worthy of such a precious commodity?
Could this be the reason you are feeling the way you are? You must be honest with yourself and take radical action against the trend. We must think of it along the lines of Jesus’ admonition against lust in Matthew 5:30, “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into Hell.”
Delete the app. Throw the phone away, if you must. You don’t need to know what he or she says in the next episode, and what that other one responds, “Ha, got him!”
C.S. Lewis was one of the most significant minds of his time. Many Christians love his work. Millions wished they could write and communicate as he did. But how was he able to accomplish so much? I am currently reading a short collection of his essays on The Reading Life. In it, a portion of his description of an ideal daily routine in his memoir Surprise by Joy describes him: “reading and writing from nine until one and again from five to seven, with breaks for meals, walking or tea-time.”
Consider now the fruits of such a life, surrendered to Christ.
The “thing” that distracts us is not the issue. That will continually change. Today, it is social media; tomorrow, it will be VR or AI. The point is that your attention is incredibly valuable; it is actually one of the most precious things you have. The enemy knows this, and so it continually produces things that will distract us from God, so that we end up building our lives on sand instead of the Rock.
The Scriptures talk about those things as things “of the world.” In 1 John 2:16, we are given a profound insight: “For all that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world.” Those are big, broad, philosophical categories, but we can see them play out in all the things that separate us from what is good. They take our eyes, minds, and hearts away from the beautiful, the true, the honest and just, the pure and lovely (see Philippians 4:8), turning us towards the profane and crude, the irreverent and sarcastic, the mocking and insulting, the self-aggrandizing and egotistical.
Reject it all. Turn to Christ. Be at peace.
Remember when your schoolteacher would say, “Pay attention”? She was not kidding. We really do pay for that for which we pay attention. It is time we grew up and learned the lesson.
Mario Diaz is COO and General Counsel, Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization dedicated to promoting Biblical values and Constitutional principles in public policy. More information is available at www.ConcernedWomen.org.
