Notifications or Revelation? Choosing to Dwell in God's Word Over Digital Distractions

Recovering Spiritual Growth in a Digitally Distracted Society

My grandson has grown several inches in the last half of 2024. He’s now taller than his mother, and they both think this is a big deal! Growth came naturally for him—it wasn’t hard at all.

He’s doing a few things to help accelerate that growth. He’s playing football now and wants to show up for summer practices stronger, faster, and heavier. He has a gym membership and is being relentless about sticking to his workout schedule. For Christmas, Papa and Marmie got him a weight set and a medicine ball—quite a change from the days when Legos, Legos, and more Legos topped the wish list! I even tried tempting him with one of his old favorites—maple bars with bacon. But when I waved the prospect of that sweet pastry in front of him, he looked at me and said, “Papa! You’re distracting me!” It made me laugh, especially as I enjoyed my own maple bar with bacon!

While I’m sure we’ll have another pastry shop visit down the road, I loved his answer. He’s standing up against the very thing that can derail the growth he wants: distractions.

Spiritual growth is another kind of growth that isn’t all that hard. Our souls crave it. There are natural spiritual processes available to us that lead to growth at the soul level. When growth occurs in in the muscular arena, the evidence is a change in appearance. But when growth happens in our spiritual depth, the evidence isn’t physical; it’s a change in our very essence. Our hearts are reshaped more and more to resemble the spiritual heart of Jesus.

The very thing that my grandson is discovering—distractions are the arch-adversary of his desired growth in physicality—is also true when it comes to spiritual growth. I would wager that the distractions that keep us from spiritual growth are fiercer and more formidable than the ones facing my grandson.

The Spiritual Exercise of Reading the Bible

Take one spiritual exercise: reading the Bible. In addition to scripture reading, there are several other highly important spiritual practices that lead to growth, such as prayer, fasting, silence, and solitude. While all of these are mentioned in our sacred texts, the importance of immersing ourselves in the words that God loves is emphasized repeatedly in scripture. Colossians 3:16, in particular, offers a powerful insight into this practice. The apostle Paul tells us that the Word of Christ can “dwell” in us. Here’s what he wrote:

"Let the Word of Christ, in all its richness, dwell in you…”

You don’t need to be a vocabulary expert to recognize that “dwell” implies inhabiting, not just visiting and then leaving. There are ways of reading scripture that allow it to "live" in you, to indwell you spiritually and mentally, affecting your emotions and influencing the choices you make.

But the sentence is more powerful than what I’ve just described. The translation I’ve shared above is accurate, but there is also an alternative, and equally accurate, translation:

"Let the Word of Christ, in all its richness, dwell among you…”

The first translation draws attention to the individual who is engaging in a spiritual workout of reading the words God gave us. Over time, relentlessly sticking to this workout of reading scripture, the word of Christ will begin to indwell and inhabit that person’s soul and mind.

The second translation refers to the church, painting a picture of an entire community relentlessly opening its heart to the Living Word of God. Over time, those who enter this community become aware that they are in a scripture-rich environment, where it’s expected they’ll encounter a word that does for the soul what bread does for a hungry person.

This same idea is found throughout scripture. Potent imagery about scripture reading is embedded in the very first Psalm:

Blessed is the one…whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither—whatever they do prospers. (Psalm 1:1-3)

Further, the longest chapter in the entire Bible, Psalm 119, is devoted to the importance of the spiritual workout of reading scripture.

But reading scripture is facing a fierce and formidable adversary: distractions caused by the digital age, in a particular, the smartphone. Convincing, and alarming, data tells us that scripture-reading is losing the battle in our hyperconnected culture. The American Bible Society (ABS) tracks annual Bible reading habits of Americans. Here is the startling data:

• 50% of Americans reported reading the Bible “three to four times” per year from 2011 to 2021.

• But, in 2022, 26 millions Americans stopped reading the Bible (emphasis added). Now, only 39% of Americans read the Bible three to four times per year.

• If you want to know how many Americans read the Bible daily, here’s what ABS reports: 10% of Americans read the Bible daily.

Disconnected from the Divine

Now that you know most Americans never read the Bible, and those who do, barely read it, here’s something Americans read 223 times per day: their smartphone. Tony Reinke reports data from cyberspace: The average American checks their smartphone 81,500 times per year, or 223 times per day. Assuming the average American sleeps 8 hours per night, that means they check their smartphone roughly every 4 minutes. Since it will take about 12 minutes to read this article, that means you will have checked your smartphone three times before completing this article.

You might suspect that this article has taken a turn to become a rant against technology. Not true. There are tremendous advantages and assets given to us by technology. While cyber connectivity is no substitute for in-person connection, it allows us continual access to people we could visit rarely, if ever. For example, I live in Northern California. I enjoy regular conversations with people I scarcely would be able to visit. Some of the conversations make me laugh. Some are thoughtful. Most make me grateful for a relationship I can nurture even though living in remote locations.

Anothe example points out the incredible assets the smartphone places in our hand. The GPS app on your smartphone processes information 71 times faster than the Apollo 11 computers that steered astronauts to land on the surface of the moon. (When I read those words, I have fresh respect for the daring spirit of those astronauts!) So managed carefully, the smartphone offers genuine and powerful gifts to us.

So, if this is not a rant against culture and technology, then what is it? It’s a clear call to learn how to manage living in a world of beeps, buzzes, and hyperconnectivity—one that poses real threats to our goal of spiritual growth and living our days centered in the indwelling Word of God. Make no mistake: the threats are real—and just as powerfully dangerous as they are positive.

Right at the heart of the threats posed by the smartphone and connectivity is its addictive nature. No one, not even social media proponents, says that the social media smartphones make available in the palm of our hand is non-addictive. This is why I’m leading the spiritual community I guide through a digital detox, or a digital fast, in the month of January. The goal is not to replace smartphones with dumb phones, or to abandon social media. The goal is deeper, and more transformative. It is to confess our addiction to the eye candy that our smartphone provides 223 times a day and to attain social media sobriety. Each week our community will receive two things:

1. Questions for personal reflection and family discussion to help explore the impact of the 24/7 digital world on heart and soul

2. Easy ways to begin reading scripture again and training in how to read it so it can once again “inhabit” us at the deepest levels

If you are in our neck of the woods (Upper Room Community Church, Auburn, CA), feel free to join us.

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Below, for paid subscribers, is a sample list of questions that will be made available for members of the Upper Room spiritual formation community and a sample training in a contemplative way of reading scripture.