(upbeat music) - Welcome back to a new week of episodes on the Ask Pastor John podcast. Last Friday in episode 577, we talked about the dangers inherent with digital communications technology. I think we all sense this is a topic that's important, and yet we really don't know and understand what all the dangers are of that technology at this stage.

This technology, of course, is wrapped up into all of our lives. We're using it right now, and I'm on the phone again with Dr. Bruce Heidmarsch, a historian and the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College in Vancouver. Bruce, most of us simply cannot disconnect and become digital monks, so we need to master the art of technology fasting.

What are some practical helps for doing this well? - I think that's really good, and I wanna talk a little bit about fasting, 'cause I think that's the right kind of way to begin to think and reframe this. I think the first thing we need to do in our churches and in our discipleship context is to do what you've just done, is to name it, to name the task and to acknowledge it, because it can become invisible.

It's just, it's the environment you live in. We need to acknowledge that we're going to need to experiment with disciplines, with practices that help us live in this world, and see what helps. And maybe we will need, I'd like to make a call for some people to be actually to be digital monks, and some people to be digital hermits, to preserve and report back what it's like to live another way.

"It won't be long," says the historian, "until we have no one left "who'll be able to remember what it was like "to live before computers or to live before the internet. "We'll have no one left who is formed "in their mind and heart "and their habits by another reality." And some digital hermits, like it's good to have some astronauts who can report back what it's like to live in another reality.

I think there may be some people who actually are called to see how far they can unplug and live that way, not everyone, but some people. And then I think what's not required for all people at all times should be still relevant to all Christians at some times. And that's like fasting.

I think that's a great model. Saying no to something good to say yes to something better. Checking that we have not become addicted and enslaved. And making space for God. And I think here's where realistic practices that limit the dangers of the technology and seeing what's going to be helpful in our own discipleship.

Once we recognize the need for it, I think there's lots of room for experimenting. I have a friend who, he's a college professor. He doesn't check his email until 4 p.m. That's his rule of life. Doesn't check his email until 4 p.m. And he actually, one day a week he sits and he just works in the kind of coffee shop area so he can meet face to face with students and they know he's available.

They don't have to just email him. I have another friend, a senior scholar, who his rule of life is he checks his email twice a day, but no more. I put away my smartphone, shut down my email on Sundays. They have one day a week when I fast a little bit digitally.

Some people will need to put their smartphone in another room than their bedroom. So it's not the first thing they look at in the morning. They can begin with prayer and Bible reading and have a space for that rather than immediately jumping on digital media. I think it's also important to have, you say no to something to say yes to something else.

So maybe while one gives up email, one chooses to write a letter to somebody with pen and ink and paper. It's a wonderful way to try to say something that has a different kind of impact. Garrison Keillor called this handmade writing. But there's other focal practices that put us in touch with creation and with our bodies and with other people.

Walking outdoors with loved ones, gardening, reading a book, slow food, taking time to make a meal over a long period of time. Focal practices that actually reground our lives and do a lot of good things. I think we can use technology to limit technology, use reminders to shut off the phone and pray, filters, I think probably everyone should have filtering and accountability software of some kind on their computers and their phones and their devices.

I think it's also important that our digital world is not by default secular. So we need ways of acknowledging that in my world of email and texting and Facebook, it's not simply a secular world. God is there, that scripture and prayer and Christian fellowship, all the things that constitute the Christian life are present in my digital world.

I don't just leave that as an alien world to God, he's there. I think one of the most important focal practices that Christians could do as, so there's some element of saying no of fasting, at least from time to time, but is to recommit ourselves. And so here's a practical suggestion, but to reinvigorate the practice of eating, of sitting down at a meal together with those that you love, of opening the table to friends and neighbors.

And that is, I just heard a lecture yesterday on a fellow talking about Christianity and Islam. And the conclusion to his lecture was, invite somebody, invite a Muslim into your home for a meal. And that was the most radical thing he felt like you could do as a longtime missionary to the Muslim world is hospitality, listening to somebody's story face to face.

They said, I guarantee you by the end of the conversation, they'll ask you about your religion and ask you about your faith. He says, I've seen it time and time again. When we were, I was concerned when our kids were sort of junior high, high school age, that we hadn't established a practice that I had experienced in my own family growing up of actually reading the Bible and praying together as a family.

And just life was so busy and everybody's pulled every direction. And what we did is my wife and I committed ourselves to getting up early in the morning before our kids and making a really big hot breakfast. It was gonna be bacon and eggs, or it was gonna be pancakes, or it was gonna be homemade scones, but making a really nice big breakfast for the kids.

And in the context of gathering around the meal in the morning, reading the scripture and praying together. And I'm just so grateful that our children will have some memory, they're adults now, that they will have a memory that we did that. And I wish we'd done it longer and done it more.

So I think we need to give attention to the ways in which it's not just saying no to some things, but it's actually reinvigorating other things that are very, very life-giving and that we ground our discipleship. - That is really helpful for parents and couples as we think of hospitality and of our homes and the embodied traditions and patterns we wanna build into our lives, especially in reaching the lost.

Thank you, Dr. Hyde-Marsh for that focus. For now, I have time for one more question for you, and it relates to the issue of workaholism, of finding our identity in our careers and the inherent dangers of this. I know you have some thoughts about this, and I wanna get your perspective next time.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow. (silence) (silence) (silence)