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South 18 Woodham Focus
South Woodham Focus
We hear a lot of talk these days of a 'work/life' balance, and the importance of getting that balance
right. In the Gospels Jesus often makes the point that times of solitude are essential for our spiritual life
and our sense of well-being.
The world we live in now has never been noisier or calculated to keep us 'busy'. Many of us can
remember when the television finished at midnight; when there weren't such things as email and social
media; when the only telephone you had was plugged into a wall. Life was simpler, we weren't always
'switched-on', it was so much easier to be alone, to lose ourselves in our thoughts, to use our imagination,
and, to have a spiritual life.
There was a programme on the radio last week about what smartphones have done to our kids. In the
trailer for the programme a few facts were mentioned: 80% of kids under sixteen have a smartphone;
the smartphone has induced in them feelings of anxiety, of negative body-image, an inability to imagine, and the stress of being
constantly 'in touch'. Why, it has to be asked, does a child under sixteen, need a phone that does anything more than receive
and make phone-calls?
But what applies to children and technology could apply to so many of us: we've become slaves to it: it rules us. It can't be a
coincidence that with the rise of technology has come a fall in religious observance: God has been displaced by all-day-andnight
television, the computer, the smartphone. And yet we know, if so many surveys are right, that we're less happy today than
we've ever been, children included. If that's the case, you'd think people would use all this technology less, but they don't,
because technology has become an addiction: how easy it is to send a text, surf the internet, look at thousands of photos, rather
than read a book, speak to a friend, go for a walk or, indeed, to pray. In short, we haven't got the balance right anymore and
the simple truth is, if we replace God with something else, we'll be unhappy.
That radio programme is perhaps an indication of a reappraisal, or a realisation, that our relationship with technology is out of
kilter, and, if we're to be happy we have to spend a lot less time staring at screens and having our lives run by geeks in California.
As Christians too, we have to find the right balance and give God his fair share of our time, which is simply what prayer is:
making the time to talk to him, and listen to him. But to do that we have to have times of quiet, without distractions, especially
the distractions of modern technology. God isn't interested in texts or emails or messages on Instagram: he simply wants us to
have a real relationship with him, a relationship based on that straightforward social-medium we call 'prayer': we talk to him
and he talks to us, directly, not via a screen.
SW CHRISTIAN COUNCIL
SOUTH WOODHAM
FOCUS