“There is no neutral ground in the universe,” C.S. Lewis famously observed. The author and theologian rejected the simplistic belief that the things we interact with in the world are neutral, but rather understood everything we experience to be contested space where good and evil are actively at work.

How much the author and theologian would have had to say about technology—the modern tools and services that connect us to one another and fuel our isolation and idolatry.

Because our society is inherently individualistic we miss technology’s cumulative effects. David Brooks recently looked back at the way modern culture has lead us away from one another, as well as a thriving life, noting:

As we’ve gotten richer, we’ve used wealth to buy space: bigger homes, bigger yards, separate bedrooms, private cars, autonomous lifestyles. Each individual choice makes sense, but the overall atomizing trajectory sometimes seems to backfire. According to the World Health Organization, people in wealthy countries suffer depression by as much as eight times the rate as people in poor countries.

Brooks quotes from The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighborhoods which explains, “Consumer society begins at the moment when what was once the province or function of the family and community migrates to the marketplace.” Where C.S. Lewis looked at contested space the authors of Abundant Community look at how evil wins:

People choose to yield sovereignty in exchange for the promise of predictability. Even families and communities turn over their sovereignty for the promise of a safe and predictable future.

Perpetual technological engagement necessarily moves people away from community. We leverage personal devices to make life more convenient (so we can affirm our self-importance), comfortable (so we mitigate the need for faith in risk), and entertaining (so we preempt the difficulty of forging meaningful relationships).

How can Christians enter the contested space of technology and experience what is good, true, and life-giving? One way would be by rediscovering the “habits of lectio divina [to] challenge our ravenous consumption of online stimuli,” suggests Br. Michael Baggot.

We needn’t devote our browsing to exclusively scriptural texts to learn from the lectio divina method. A more lingering attitude disposed to personal application and appropriate response would benefit our literary and news readings. The ancient monks’ most glorious libraries contained less information than the average smartphone. But their habits of receptivity and assimilation can empower us to lift our gaze from our screens ennobled rather than enslaved.

There is something redemptive about the image of looking up from our screens ennobled. Perhaps it is for the good of others—that we may fully engage with those God has brought into our lives—but perhaps it is first for ourselves. Br. Baggot concludes:

Undisciplined device usage disrupts the concentrated solitude we need in order to form an interior life that will be worth sharing face-to-face. Fruitful conversation presupposes fruitful solitude.

Weekend Reading List

• Lectio Divina and The Facebook Newsfeed. Br. Michael Baggot for Institute on Religion and Public Life.
• The Great Affluence Fallacy. David Brooks for The New York Times.
• The Flight From Conversation. Lauren Cassani Davis interviews Sherry Turkle for The Atlantic.
• Why We Need Solitude in The Midst of the 2016 American Election. Ed Cyzewski for Christianity Today.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 12 (Listen – 4:26)
Psalms 51 (Listen – 2:19)

This Weekend’s Readings
Ezekiel 13 (Listen – 4:14) Psalms 52-54 (Listen – 3:19)
Ezekiel 14 (Listen – 4:09) Psalms 55 (Listen – 2:43)

By Ambrose of Milan (337-397 C.E.)

Our God comes; he does not keep silence; before him is a devouring fire, around him a mighty tempest. — Psalm 50.3

What, then, is that fire? Not certainly one roaring with the burning of the reeds of the woods, but that fire which improves good deeds like gold, and consumes sins like stubble. This is undoubtedly the Holy Spirit, who is called both the fire and light of the countenance of God.

And Isaiah shows that the Holy Spirit is not only light but also fire, saying: “The light of Israel will become a fire.” So the prophets called him a burning fire, because in those three points we see more intensely the majesty of the Godhead; since to sanctify is of the Godhead, to illuminate is the property of fire and light, and the Godhead is wont to be pointed out or seen in the appearance of fire: “For our God is a consuming fire,” as Moses said.

For he himself saw the fire in the bush, and had heard God when the voice from the flame came to him saying: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” The voice came from the fire, and the voice was in the bush, and the fire did no harm.

For the bush was burning but was not consumed, because in that mystery the Lord was showing that He would come to illuminate the thorns of our body, and not to consume those who were in misery, but to alleviate their misery; who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, that he might give grace and destroy sin. So in the symbol of fire God keeps his intention.

In Acts, when the Holy Spirit had descended upon the faithful, the appearance of fire was seen: “And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.”

And as there is a light of the divine countenance, so, too, does fire shine forth from the countenance of God. For the grace of the day of judgment shines beforehand, that forgiveness may follow to reward the service of the saints.

*Abridged and language updated from Book One of On the Holy Spirit.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 11 (Listen – 3:53)
Psalms 50 (Listen – 2:26)

Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life. — Psalm 49.7

For most of the first minute immediately after our third child was born earlier this summer she didn’t take the deep breath a baby should take, nor give way to the first joyous cry. It was an agonizing expanse of time.

I began to plead in prayer but, more than any other time in my life, felt the reality that I had nothing with which to bargain. Nothing I have, control, or can manifest was worth her life—even everything combined didn’t seem to come close. I was simply at the mercy of God.

Though our daughter drew her first breath—releasing her beautiful cry into the world—and has done wonderful since, something inside me changed that night. I was confronted with my insufficiency.

This experience is part of what Sally Lloyd-Jones gets at when she explains the story of Naaman to children in her book The Jesus Storybook Bible. Naaman’s miraculous healing from leprosy requires he leave the comfort and control of his incredible riches and power. Lloyd-Jones imagines what he must have thought upon hearing God’s plan:

“I am Naaman. I am important. I should do something important so God will heal me!” And he rode off in rage. (Of course, you and I both know, that’s not how God does things. All Naaman needed was nothing. It was the one thing Naaman didn’t have.)

The Scriptures do not speak of our temporal reality in order to demean us, but to awaken us. Though we have much, the way to eternal life is to have nothing. Though we succeed, the way to transcended peace is to release it all and rest in the mercy of God. As the Psalmist writes:

For God sees that even the wise die; the fool and the stupid alike must perish and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations, though they called lands by their own names. Man in his pomp will not remain; he is like the beasts that perish.

For though, while he lives, he counts himself blessed and though you get praise when you do well for yourself—his soul will go to the generation of his fathers, who will never again see light. Man in his pomp yet without understanding is like the beasts that perish.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 10 (Listen – 3:16)
Psalms 49 (Listen – 2:10)

Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever. — Psalm 48.12–14

What a person does with their success reveals their character. This may be why, as a culture, we are fascinated with movements like The Giving Pledge—where, according to their site, “the world’s wealthiest individuals and families dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.”

To look at the opposite end of the spectrum, what a person leaves behind in their success reveals their character. For a real-time case study on this we turn to Uber CEO and cofounder Travis Kalanick. Thirteen months ago I wrote:

Uber’s plans for the future don’t appear to be focused around making life better for drivers. The company recently lured 40 robotics engineers away from Carnegie Mellon. Drivers are a stop-gap until the robots take over.

This year the company has taken those 40 robotics engineers and launched Uber Advanced Technologies Center—which, as I write today, is in the process of testing their first self-driving cars in Carnegie Mellon’s hometown of Pittsburgh. Soon-to-be left behind? The first-generation immigrants who make up a majority of Uber’s drivers—not to mention every middle class driver trying to make ends meet.

Uber isn’t a case-study in wickedness (nearly any organization could be used to demonstrate institutional brokenness), nor are any of the philanthropic billionaires exemplars of virtue (a person can give money for scores of self-serving purposes). Yet as we consider the lives of others we find the opportunity to reflect on our own decisions and trajectory.

Success is revealing. This is what makes the prophetic images in Scripture so powerful. What we see, especially in the Psalms and gospels, is what happens when God succeeds.

There is something profound about the imagery in Psalm 48. We are asked to picture ourselves walking in the city of God. The last time humanity walked with God was in the garden—now the garden has been cultivated through God’s grace in our labor and we walk with him again.

What is left behind? Sin. The death and decay of our world, the pain and suffering of living in brokenness—all has been left behind—all that was lost has been restored.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 9 (Listen – 2:05)
Psalms 48 (Listen – 1:28)

You shall tear down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and burn their Asherim with fire. You shall chop down the carved images of their gods and destroy their name out of that place. You shall not worship the Lord your God in that way. — Deuteronomy 12.3-4

Scripture explains the concept of idolatry as the practice of wrapping one’s identity, success, and pleasure in anything outside of God. The concept of idolatry is often reduced to an ancient and individual problem. Yet when we consider idolatry’s modern and communal—or social—expressions we find it not only in our own culture, but even inside communities of faith. David Powlison explains:

What happens to the Gospel when idolatry themes are not grasped? “God loves you” typically becomes a tool to meet a need for self-esteem in people who feel like failures. The particular content of the Gospel of Jesus Christ—”grace for sinners and deliverance for the sinned-against”—is down-played or even twisted into “unconditional acceptance for the victims of others’ lack of acceptance.”

More often than not Israel didn’t worship other gods through their idols, but worshiped their own God through idols. This is the case after they crossed the Red Sea. The people crafted a golden calf and cried out, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!”

The same happened in Deuteronomy when God commanded Israel, “you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way.” Idolatry, we learn, does not stand in contrast to worship—idolatry is any form of worship that is polluted with self-created, self-serving, self-focused practices.

Idolatry becomes more insidious as it gains steam in a culture. “All societies are addicted to themselves and create deep codependency,” Fr. Richard Rohr observes in his book Breathing Underwater: Spirituality and the 12 Steps. He continues:

There are shared and agreed-upon addictions in every culture and every institution. These are often the hardest to heal because they do not look like addictions because we have all agreed to be compulsive about the same things and blind to the same problems. The Gospel exposes those lies in every culture: The American addiction to oil, war, and empire; the church’s addiction to its own absolute exceptionalism; the poor person’s addiction to powerlessness and victimhood; the white person’s addiction to superiority; the wealthy person’s addiction to entitlement.

Communities fall into idolatry when their individual members stop questioning what’s normal. The Church is supposed to be more diverse, loving, inclusive, joy-filled, and sacrificial than any society in which it is incarnate. Anything less is an idolatrous reflection of the tribalism, indifference, division, apathy, and self-preservation that is native to our broken world.

Weekend Reading List

• The Echo Chamber of Idolatry. Michael J. Ovey for Themelios.
• Self-Critical Thinking. Fr. Richard Rohr for the Center for Action and Contemplation.
• Idols of the Heart and “Vanity Fair”. David Powlison for The Journal of Biblical Counseling.
• This is Water. David Foster Wallace for the 2005 Kenyon Commencement Address.

Today’s Reading
Ezekiel 5 (Listen – 3:28)
Psalms 42-43 (Listen – 2:39)

This Weekend’s Readings
Ezekiel 6 (Listen – 2:49) Psalms 44 (Listen – 2:44)
Ezekiel 7 (Listen – 4:32) Psalms 45 (Listen – 2:17)

Monday’s Reading
Ezekiel 8 (Listen – 3:21)
Psalms 46-47 (Listen – 2:15)