At no time in
human history has the practice of prayer been easy. Even in Paul’s day, he had
to instruct the Colossian church to devote themselves to prayer and to stay
alert in it. The disciples who were with the Lord Jesus on the night before he
died succumbed to sleep instead of giving even an hour to prayer.
So,
while prayer has never been an easy practice to give ourselves to, the age in
which we live seems to add additional obstacles. We can access millions of web
pages and the thoughts of thousands of people with a device that fits in our
pockets. I can pull out my phone and watch any episode of my favorite TV shows.
A quick scroll through Twitter can send me down a wormhole of links. In this
environment, it is easy to see why we struggle to pray.
The Problems
When I
look on the landscape of our current culture, I see five temptations that we
face which make prayer particularly difficult.
We Occupy Ourselves
with the Trivial
Prayer makes us focus on the most important truths in
the world and on the greatest problems that we face. To really spend time in
prayer is to kneel before the living God because of the death of his Son by the
power of the Holy Spirit. When we pray, we are forced to think about our own
sins, our friends who do not know Christ, and the struggles that we are facing
in our everyday lives.
The nature of life in the digital world steers us
away from the kind of seriousness that prayer demands. Most days, navigating
social media means encountering controversies that seem to be of immense
importance, but next week we won’t even remember what this week’s controversy
was. Bright, bold letters tell us that we won’t believe what this celebrity
looks like today or that we won’t believe what so and so said. The vast majority
of it does not matter one iota, but it wants us to think that it does, and this
pulls us away from the discipline that prayer requires.
We Struggle to
Stay Focused
Yesterday, Cal Newport pointed out an interesting
discussion with comedian Aziz Ansari. Aziz talked about how often he was
checking his phone and he realized that he was doing this just because he wanted
to encounter something new. He said that when he thought about it, even most of
the things that he “had” to look up were not important. He had just become
addicted to the feeling of seeing something different and new.
As I have
been writing this post on the difficulty of staying focused on prayer in the
digital age, I have had to work to not click the Google Chrome icon on my
laptop. Writing this post is not easy, but staring at pictures, links, and other
people’s random thoughts takes no effort whatsoever.
Think about how this
affects our prayer lives. When we grow accustomed to checking our phones every
few minutes, we cannot stay in the moment in prayer. Our minds drift enough
already, our addiction to the internet is only making this problem
worse.
We Start Thinking the Worst of Others
We need to all be
honest with ourselves and admit how often other people make us angry on the
internet. Whether it is a comment on an article, a post in a Facebook group, or
the strong opinion of a “friend,”
It is difficult to pray when we harbor
bitterness in our heart towards people. We cannot be in fellowship with God when
we are cross with other people. The internet provides hundreds of occasions
every day for us to think the worst about people. And, it always happens without
seeing them face to face. They have been reduced to words on a
screen.
We Lose our Sense of Gratitude
A recent study
determined how unhappy people were after using various social media platforms. I
assumed people would be the most unhappy after using Facebook because there are
so many people using it. Instead, the platform that made people the unhappiest
was Instagram.
This makes perfect sense when you think about it. On
Instagram, you get to see everyone at their filtered best. That friend of yours
looks stunning in every photo that she takes. What you don’t get to see are the
forty-nine different pictures that she didn’t post. Another friend may post
their incredible vacations, their trips to multiple sporting events a year, or
pictures of the great view from their backyard. I get envious of the people who
post pictures with every one of their children actually looking at the camera.
(I have four kids and cannot make this happen to save my life.)
Gratitude
is at the heart of prayer. In Colossians 4, Paul speaks of our being devoted to
prayer and offering it with thanksgiving. In Philippians 4, he says that we are
not to be anxious, but to present our prayers to the Lord “with thanksgiving.”
Even as we pray for the things we need, we pray with gratitude because we know
how much the Lord has already given. However, this impulse for thanksgiving in
prayer dries up when we constantly compare our lives with other’s seemingly
perfect lives.
We Think Our Answers are a Click Away
We live
in a world where all the answers seem easy to find. If you wonder whether that
restaurant is good or not, instead of going to try it, you can read reviews on
Yelp. Gone are the days of my youth where you had to “look it up, dear.” Simply
type your query into Google and thousands of pages of information is at your
fingertips.
The problem with access to this much information is that we
lose our sense of wonder at the complexity of the world. We tend to think that
everything can be boiled down to simple explanations that you can discover by
quickly scanning an article. But, if you read the Psalms, you see those who have
gone before us wrestling with complex issues before the Lord because they had
nowhere else to go. Sometimes the answers we need can’t be found in a search
engine. We’ve got to go somewhere much deeper and wait there for a while.
It never does
for us to simply spell out the problems we struggle with while ignoring
potential solutions. If you find yourself struggling to pray because of a short
attention span, constant frustration with people, or preoccupation with trivial
things, here are some steps that you can take to wean yourself from your
addiction to technology and reconnect with the Lord in prayer.
Take 1
month off from the Internet as Entertainment
Often when we want to make
changes in our lives, we struggle with consistency. This is why we need to make
our goals time-bound. Matt Cutts gave a great TED Talk a few years ago on the
breakthroughs he had made in his life by giving himself 30-day challenges.
Imagine that there is a change you need to make in your life. Then, challenge
yourself to try it for a month to see if you can make a dent.
If you are
struggling with addiction to the internet, take a 30-day break from using the
Internet for entertainment. For one month, don’t check your social media feeds,
don’t watch anything on YouTube, and avoid binging on Netflix. Also, make sure
that you do not announce to everyone that you are taking a break. Just walk
away. Replace the time you would have spent on the Internet with reading,
prayer, exercise, spending time with people, or just enjoying the silence. Over
time you will find that your attention span increases and the impulse to
constantly check your phone begins to fade.
Don’t Check Social Media
Until You Have Prayed
Here is a good and simple principle for life-
don’t do trivial things until you have given time to the things that are most
important. For our purposes, this means stay off of Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram, or whatever social media draws your attention until you have spent
time in prayer. In this way, you give the Lord the best of your time and your
complete attention. In addition, it allows you to look at your social media
feeds with a different lens.
Hide the People Who Anger You
I
have good news for you. You are in complete control of what you see on your
social media feed. Instead of complaining about the things that come across your
feed. Take the active step of hiding things that anger you, annoy you, or cause
you anxiety. Also, you don’t have to announce that you are hiding, unfollowing,
or muting someone. Just do it.
Doing this will allow you the things you
enjoy about social media without encountering things that drive you to
frustration. Some people would counter that you need to run across ideas and
people who disagree with you, but I would argue that this is the stuff that you
should be doing in real life. In real life, you can dialogue with people and
more naturally empathize with them because they are in front of your face.
Social media is not real life and therefore you should not allow what you see on
it to drive you to the point that you struggle to spend time with the
Lord.
Cut the Cord Completely if You Have To
In the Sermon on
the Mount, Jesus says that we should tear out our eyes and cut off our hands if
they cause us to sin. Jesus uses hyperbole in this passage to remind us that we
should take serious pains in our struggle against sin because it is better to go
without something than to encounter the judgment of God.
In the same way,
if the Internet consistently interferes with your time with the Lord, get rid of
every bit of it that you can. Drop social media. Cancel Netflix. Block
distracting websites. Ditch your smartphone. If those things are necessary to
cultivate your walk with the Lord, then you should do all of them as soon as
possible.
Remember the Beauty of Communion with God
Psalm 131
paints a beautiful picture that I cannot get out of my head. David says, “I have
calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned
child is my soul within me.” Think about all of the controversies, trials, and
dangers that David faced. Many times his life was in danger. Often the danger
came from people he loved most. Yet, he says that his soul is quieted and calmed
before the Lord like a child in his mother’s lap.
In the midst of the
stresses, anxieties, and troubles in this present world, the Creator of the
world invites us to lay our cares on him. Peter says that the Lord entreats us
to do this because he cares for us. The one who loves us so much that he gave
his only Son in our place beckons us to come to him. We have the privilege of
presenting our requests to him, praising him for what he has done, and thanking
him for his provision for us. While prayer is commanded, it’s also a great
enjoyment. We should remember the amazing gift that prayer is and refuse to let
lesser things draw us away from it.
Take a Walk and Remember the
Beauty of the Created Order
Sometimes we need to completely disconnect
and get outside. When we do, we encounter God’s handiwork everywhere we turn.
Leave your phone in your pocket and don’t stop to take pictures. Simply let
yourself be overwhelmed by the beauty of God’s world. When we see his handiwork
and behold it in the stillness, we’re drawn to him. We find our hearts ready to
commune with him in a way that we don’t when we are sitting on the couch staring
at a screen.
Many good things have come into our lives because of
technology, but we often miss the subtle ways that what we perceive as blessings
can draw us away from the Lord. Let us remember that we need to stop, turn
everything off, and give our whole selves to the Lord in the discipline of
prayer.
[written by Scott Slayton]
