I hand the iPad off to my youngest when she gets up in the morning so I can read my Bible... the same works well when we need to study language. Touchscreen entertainment is wildly effective when we are traveling through airports for hours on hours... or stuck in Indonesian traffic for hours upon hours.
Screens are pervasive in our lives. In many ways they are a necessary evil. The same devices that keep us in contact with friends and family can eat minutes and hours of our days away. I know this is true not only here but everywhere. We don't watch 'bad' television... and our watching habits are probably much more benign than many of our friends and family.
But I recently was curious about a post by John Piper's Desiring God, so I followed the link and took a survey about screen watching habits. I'll let you search for the survey yourself if you want to challenge yourself with questions like "At what point when watching TV-level intimacy onscreen are you complicit in the sin?"
But I will leave us with a couple of questions that are echoing in my mind... of all the screen time we have, how does it affect us?
- Mostly positive, deepening our spiritual life and sensitivities?
OR
- Mostly negative, hollowing our spiritual life and sensitivities?
That word... "hollowing"... I think that is how I would describe what large amounts of screen time does to me. I continue to watch more, never getting fully satisfied... I think this is symptomatic of what happens when we "binge watch". Isn't this by definition what happens when we seek out a false god?
Only Jesus truly satisfies... Only filling myself with the Word builds up what has been hollowed out. And with this in mind, I make a conscious effort to limit my screen time and eliminate the hollowing... how about you?