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We need to return to the land. We need to venture back up the mountain, to God.
I find it interesting and inspiring, if not sobering and humbling, to think about how God was found in the wild places throughout Scripture.
There, in the wilderness, God revealed himself to Moses—even if it was only the hem of his glory.
He came through the natural phenomena when Elijah found himself on Mt. Horeb, another name for Mt. Sinai.
Jesus himself retreated to the mountainside often to seek the counsel of his Heavenly Father.
“But Tim,” you say, “Just because these people went out in the natural world doesn’t mean that we have to go hiking to find God. Right?”
“Ah yes,” I reply, “I hear this contestation often. ‘We can interact with God wherever we are.’ But, though that is true, it is also true that God created us to participate in creation with him. When we look, we see God’s character revealed in the wonder of the natural world.”
When we isolate ourselves with digital devices, programming through various media, and remaining indoors, we rob ourselves of our birthright: planet earth.
The Isolation is Killing Us
I’ve written on these statistics before, but it bears repeating.
Seventy-percent of Americans binge-watch. People spend fifty minutes a day on Facebook. And, Facebook wants more.
Our society now spends more time on Facebook and watching television programs (2.8 hours a day) than any other leisure activity.
The typical person reads 19 minutes a day.
We exercise 17 minutes a day. Attend social activities four minutes a day.
We attend to Facebook nearly as long as we spend time eating and drinking: 1.07 hours per day.
And what about YouTube? We average 17 minutes on that platform a day. Add the 50 Facebook minutes, and the nearly 3 hours of television and Ray Bradbury’s prophetic vision doesn’t seem too far off.
We even have a new “unofficial” syndrome: “Internet Addiction Disorder.”
“Time has become the holy grail of digital media.”
The political theatre that ravaged our culture in 2020—and seems hellbent to continue for the foreseeable future—touched us most through social media platforms.
We are now seeing watchdog groups set up in order to report people with whom they disagree with. The tenor of our engagement is as rancid as ever. We, as a society, feel it is our obligation and right to call people out whenever and for whatever.
Our constant usage over the last several years of digital media has produced a harvest of deadness and narcissism.
Some Christians feel we need to remain on social media to bring some kind of light or redemption to it. The argument goes like this: this is where people are and the language our society speaks right now so we should engage with it.
I don’t have space in this newsletter to get into the weeds on this point, but this thinking is not completely reasonable. History shows us how the early church remained a strong witness to God’s glory by not participating in cultural degeneration. They did not attend the public theatre due to their lude and profane nature.
This act did not impede the Church’s growth. Instead, it drew people to it. They saw the early Christ-followers as valuing something different; something not of this world.
Cultivating the Wild in Our Lives
George Sayer, a friend of C.S. Lewis, said that Lewis used to love to wake up and roam “the garden” in the early morning; praying, thanking, noticing God’s beauty—looking out for the sunshine. Sayer says Lewis loved “the beauty of the morning, thanking God for the weather, the roses, the song of the birds, and anything else he could find to enjoy.”
Lewis was deeply existential and mystical in his spiritual and aesthetic formation.
With regard to his spirituality, George Sayer states most of Lewis’s life experiences were not literary, but “mystical experiences of the presence of God.”
Lewis’s spiritual life was nourished by not only daily scripture meditation, and, again, mystical experience, but also through his “habit of communing with nature.”
The habit of communing with nature. This is the operative thought to consider. I’m not suggesting you sit under a tree and hum. But I am recommending that we all of us establish new habits—ones that take us away from our devices and into God.
This is not just another quick fix notion. Our bodies and minds physiologically change when we get into the wild, with limited distractions, and set our minds on moments of beauty and grandeur. This post is simply an invitation to share how we can lead in the culture by shifting away from the place we think we need to be, to a place that will actually nourish our hearts and minds.
Here are a few things to consider this weekend with regard to our engagement with digital media. Please leave your answers and comments below and let’s discuss. I’ll get things going with a few thoughts:
How can we begin to change our habits from the overuse of digital media?
Does your mood and countenance change after digital consumption of social media?
What has your most recent engagement with the natural world taught you? How did it make you feel? How does that feeling differ from time spent on a device?
Tim, I struggle with this. There is no doubt about the changes in our brains that social media delivered through our phones/tablets cause. The dopamine hit is real. I am using social to try and win people back from it all the while trying to mitigate the damage to myself. There are so many people that are owned by their phones and I feel called to fight for their attention and help to bring them back to community (face to face) and nature.
Thanks for writing this Tim. Your questions helped me put into words what I was pondering after being at the beach yesterday (I was the only one there so it felt like a one with nature experience). But it was so much more. The sun on my face, the scent of the breeze and the glittering waves on the sea was an interaction between God's creature (me) experiencing God's creation (nature). I was seeing through eyes, smelling through a nose and feeling through skin God made to experience His natural creation. I was in awe at how beautiful it was and was moved to praise God and give Him thanks. It was a holy experience and became worship. That feeling was is something I have never experienced from time spent on a device. And no device can capture and represent a real interaction with the living God.