When Should I Get Rid of My Smartphone?

00:00:00.000 | This is Scott Anderson, CEO for Desiring God.

00:00:02.840 | You and other friends of Desiring God make possible the work of this ministry, including this podcast.

00:00:09.440 | Thanks for your part in helping us freely share the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.

00:00:17.880 | Well, we asked for your questions on technology and you have responded.

00:00:28.100 | We have a lot of them and they keep coming in and please keep sending them in to us.

00:00:32.000 | Josh in South Carolina wants to know when is it time to give up our smartphones and revert to a dumb phone?

00:00:38.800 | Arlene from North Florida asks, Pastor John,

00:00:42.000 | I've heard Matt Chandler say on numerous accounts how our love and addiction to technology is making us angry and impatient.

00:00:49.960 | I've seen it in my marriage and in my mothering. Could my iPhone be the reason I don't

00:00:55.720 | persevere in the faith? And if so, how do I keep that from happening?

00:00:59.520 | So Pastor John, two important questions on the table.

00:01:03.040 | Well first in response to Arlene,

00:01:06.980 | could my iPhone be the reason I don't persevere? Here's a text from the Bible that comes to my mind immediately.

00:01:15.880 | 2nd Corinthians 4 9.

00:01:20.080 | Demas, in love with this present world,

00:01:24.120 | has deserted me, Paul says, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica.

00:01:29.040 | And what's striking about this is that Demas is mentioned twice more in Paul's writings.

00:01:37.200 | Before this it says in Philemon 1 23,

00:01:41.320 | Epiphras, my fellow prisoner in Christ Jesus sends greetings to you and so do Mark,

00:01:48.360 | Aristarchus, and Demas, and Luke, my fellow workers.

00:01:54.600 | So Demas is a fellow

00:01:56.920 | worker with Paul in the ministry. And then Colossians 4 14 says, Luke, the beloved physician

00:02:04.560 | greets you as does Demas.

00:02:07.440 | So Demas is there in three epistles, and in two of them

00:02:12.760 | he's a fellow worker, and in one of them he has left. He has deserted.

00:02:18.340 | Demas, in love with this present world, has

00:02:22.680 | deserted me. Now, I don't know, we don't know if Demas repented. Maybe he did. But as far as we know,

00:02:30.440 | Demas did not persevere in faith, and he looks like he proved to be an

00:02:38.720 | inauthentic

00:02:40.840 | Christian. And that happens. We've seen that in real life and

00:02:45.000 | in our own day. The reason

00:02:49.840 | he left and made shipwreck, it looks like, is because he loved the world.

00:02:55.160 | Now, how does that relate to Arlene's question? Her iPhone is somehow

00:03:01.240 | involved in making her angry and

00:03:04.680 | impatient with her children and her husband, so she is rightly

00:03:09.120 | asking, "Could my iPhone be the reason that I don't persevere?" And then the answer would be

00:03:17.120 | that the world

00:03:19.960 | did not destroy Demas. His love for the world

00:03:24.160 | destroyed Demas, it seems. An iPhone does not, will not,

00:03:30.280 | destroy a marriage or mom or soul, but love for what's on the iPhone can.

00:03:37.520 | And the Lord will not say to anyone on the judgment, "I don't think I never knew you because you owned an iPhone."

00:03:45.400 | I don't think any, I don't think he'll ever say that to anybody at the judgment day.

00:03:49.720 | "I never knew you because you owned an iPhone." But he may well say, "I never knew you

00:03:55.200 | because you loved spending time on Facebook and online shopping more than you loved me."

00:04:02.680 | When Jesus said in Matthew 5 29, "If your right eye

00:04:09.200 | caused you to sin, tear it out and throw it away,

00:04:13.440 | better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell," he was talking mainly about sexual lust.

00:04:19.960 | But the principle

00:04:22.240 | applies to any

00:04:24.040 | destructive allurement, it seems to me. We may have to take radical steps

00:04:29.680 | against something that is intrinsically

00:04:32.600 | neutral or good in order to fight what in our hearts is bad.

00:04:39.040 | Why gouge out your eye when the problem is not your eye, it's lust?

00:04:44.480 | Well,

00:04:46.360 | because the eye is complicit,

00:04:48.360 | just like the phone is complicit. And yes,

00:04:53.400 | the stakes are

00:04:56.080 | infinite. Better to tear out your eye than to be thrown into hell, it says. And the poor eye,

00:05:04.440 | when God made the eye, for goodness sakes, the eye is good. I mean, this is just Jesus' radical way of

00:05:11.640 | saying

00:05:13.160 | you have to do whatever you have to do

00:05:15.400 | with regard to dispensing with things that may be good in order to avoid what may be be bad. Now,

00:05:22.280 | this brings us to Josh, because they're very related questions.

00:05:27.000 | He says, "Is it too extreme to reject the technology and the tide of culture

00:05:34.760 | by going back to a very basic cell phone?" A little flip phone, I suppose he means. "And my answer is,"

00:05:41.200 | to Josh, "it's

00:05:43.720 | probably not any more extreme than tearing out your eye."

00:05:48.000 | So Josh asks, "Well, when is it time to do that, to pitch my

00:05:53.400 | smartphone?" And Arlene asks, "How do I keep my iPhone from threatening my perseverance in faith?"

00:06:01.320 | Now,

00:06:04.120 | here, my guess is that some are going to say, "Well, look, Piper,

00:06:10.320 | since the phone is not the problem, but the heart is the problem,

00:06:15.880 | it's pointless to pitch the phone." To which I respond, "No,

00:06:20.160 | it's not pointless to pitch the phone. If that's all you do, it would be pointless,

00:06:27.000 | but

00:06:28.680 | we're always fighting on two fronts in the battle for holiness.

00:06:33.000 | We're fighting on the internal front of the heart, the heart front, to be satisfied in Jesus, to be so

00:06:39.720 | satisfied in Jesus, to see him so clearly and love him so dearly and follow him so nearly that

00:06:46.320 | nothing, not a smartphone, can control us. Nothing can control us but only

00:06:51.000 | Jesus. Of course, that's the main battlefront.

00:06:54.720 | Love Jesus more and you won't be enslaved by your smartphone. But biblically,

00:07:00.200 | we're also fighting on the external front to remove or avoid

00:07:06.760 | stumbling blocks to our faith. So you get Romans 13, 14,

00:07:12.960 | "Make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.

00:07:17.920 | Drug addicts don't fondle needles.

00:07:24.000 | Alcoholics don't keep stashes of brandy.

00:07:26.880 | Sexually supercharged eyes

00:07:29.720 | put safeguards on their computers, and

00:07:33.160 | smartphone junkies who are

00:07:36.000 | throwing away their lives or wasting money or becoming irritable and angry and

00:07:41.520 | impatient may go back to a flip phone. This is not unbiblical. This is not legalism.

00:07:47.960 | This is wisdom. This is fighting on all fronts for holiness in the power of the Holy Spirit,

00:07:54.080 | for the sake of the heart, for the sake of the Lord, for the sake of the family, in these cases it sounds like.

00:08:00.720 | So,

00:08:03.000 | it is totally legit, I would say, to take away any particular technology that is

00:08:11.440 | characteristically, chronically doing you in in certain ways. That may be a very wise

00:08:18.000 | move. And as far as when, all I know to say is

00:08:22.600 | pray and ask the Lord to make it plain when the time has come

00:08:27.440 | to take that step. Talk to wise, mature, spiritual people

00:08:32.800 | in your church, those who know you best, and seek their

00:08:37.240 | counsel. And

00:08:39.920 | always, I'll close with this, always

00:08:42.480 | put the main

00:08:45.360 | spiritual effort into

00:08:47.800 | knowing and loving and trusting

00:08:50.560 | Christ.

00:08:52.440 | Getting rid of bad influences doesn't make anybody love Christ in and of itself.

00:08:57.880 | True freedom from the bondage of technology comes not mainly

00:09:03.960 | from throwing it away, but comes from filling the void

00:09:09.720 | with the glories of Jesus that you're trying to fill with the pleasures of the smartphone.

00:09:16.000 | Fight the deceitful,

00:09:18.840 | fleeting pleasures of the iPhone with the true,

00:09:22.960 | lasting pleasures of knowing and being cared for by Christ.

00:09:29.520 | Amen. That is strong and wise counsel. Thank you, Pastor John, for thinking this through with us.

00:09:37.200 | We have recorded and released a number of episodes on technology recently.

00:09:41.720 | Two of them became very popular episodes. In fact, see episode number 636,

00:09:47.000 | which is titled "Why Not to Check Your Phone in the Morning?" and see episode number 637,

00:09:53.000 | "Don't Waste Your Mornings."

00:09:55.280 | You can find those episodes and all the other episodes at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:10:01.760 | And please do continue to keep sending your technology questions in to us.

00:10:07.200 | Well, tomorrow is Wednesday, and I cannot remember what's scheduled, but I'm sure it will be interesting.

00:10:13.160 | I'm your host Tony Reiki. We'll see you tomorrow.

00:10:15.320 | you

00:10:17.320 | you

00:10:19.380 | you

00:10:21.440 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

When Should I Get Rid of My Smartphone?

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