My wife listens to a lot of shows on CBC radio (the Canadian equivalent of NPR). Over the holidays she was sharing some details from an interview Nora Young of Spark conducted with Alan Jacobs. It piqued my interest and led to me checking out Alan’s site.
And that led to this article here, one of the best pieces of writing I’ve found in recent years. The sub-heading to the article says it all:
Small steps to meet the challenge of hearing God in a technologically disruptive environment.
It’s a long read that touches on a lot of related topics. But it’s so very worth your time to give it a read, then some time to reflect on the ideas within. To give a taste, here are a few of the passages that stood out the most to me.
I am a living illustration of Technological Stockholm Syndrome: I have embraced my kidnapper. Or, to change the metaphor yet again, I have welcomed this disruptive ecosystem into my mental domicile and invited it to make a home for itself here—like those poor kids who let the Cat in the Hat in.
And the primary problem of this technological state we find ourselves in?
Our "ecosystem of interruption technologies" affects our spiritual and moral lives in every aspect. By our immersion in that ecosystem we are radically impeded from achieving a "right understanding of ourselves" and of God's disposition toward us. We will not understand ourselves as sinners, or as people made in God's image, or as people spiritually endangered by wandering far from God, or as people made to live in communion with God, or as people whom God has come to a far country in order to seek and to save, if we cannot cease for a few moments from an endless procession of stimuli that shock us out of thought.
A hearty amen to that!
