March 5

Day 266: Living in the Land of Addiction

I recall a conversation with a schoolteacher I was subbing for that day. Somehow we got on the subject of addictions. And how we all worship something.

He heartily disagreed with me, telling me that he was addicted to nothing, and didn't worship anything. But I also recall how he had trouble disconnecting himself from his personal computer in the shape of a phone. Even during our conversation.

We're all living in the land of addiction. Our consumption of social media may be the addiction we all share. A study published just this past week revealed the following:

People spend an average of 37.8 hours per week interacting with a smartphone. (That' almost a full time job!)

The average person consumes roughly 100,000 words per week from reading social media feeds. (That's the equivalent of a 500-page book!)

1/3rd of Millennials have a medically diagnosed anxiety disorder linked to social media activity. (PS: The oldest Millennial turned 40 last year!)

79% of North Americans self-diagnose as "addicted to their screen."

It takes roughly 10 years to get research back on the long-term effects of a new technology, so we're just seeing the first wave of results about how we relate to smartphones and what they do to us over time. But for everyone, researchers included, this is a catastrophic culture-wide addiction.

However, we all have our excuses, our reasons for doing so. We may see it as fun time filler. We may regard it as essential to keeping up. We may even (as I do) state that we wouldn't be on social media at all, if our jobs didn't we require so.

But that's no different from the addict who says he can quit at any time. Now is just not the time. So we justify our continued enslavement, and think none the worse for it.

This morning some of the men in our church gathered to pray together. The text for prayer Paul chose for us was Romans 6.

"But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed?" This asks the question, "How has that addiction really helped you at all?"

But the truth remains. We are all addicts. We are all addicted to something. Diving deeper, we're all addicted to something, because we all worship something. And we all hope what we're addicted to will result in some good thing we worship.

But Romans 6 also tells us that we don't have to be addicted to anything not leading to health and life. "For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace."

This tells us that while we are all worshippers, we can redirect our worship to Someone who frees us from the lesser stuff, even our addictions to social media.

I sense many of us would like to be free from the constant waterfall of data, content and relational voyeurism that we feel compelled, even trapped into consuming each day.

Jesus offers us that freedom. Freedom from enslavement to lesser things, things that do not deliver the rest and satisfaction we were all created to crave and need.

And we can have that freedom. Even while we're living in the land of addiction.