Lent is one of the most important seasons of the Christian calendar. It marks the six-week period leading up to Easter. And just as Easter speaks of resurrection - life out of death - so Lent reminds us that before we can experience renewal in our lives, some things may need to be buried. We cannot go with God and stay where we are.
Historically, Christians have used the period of Lent to make intentional changes to their lifestyle (Spiritual Disciplines) in order to remember Christ more vividly and to grow spiritually. This they often do by fasting, by setting aside specific times of prayer, by meditating on scripture, by sacrificing some sort of pleasure or comfort, or by engaging more deeply with acts of service. Doing these things keeps us focused on the spiritual and truly important things in life.
Some consider Lent observance to be overly religious and even legalistic (following rules in order to get something from God). Yes, there is the danger of Lent becoming an empty ritual that leaves our hearts untouched (Matthew 15:8). Observing lent to improve our standing with God, to prove something to ourselves or others, as a little spiritual pick-me-up or project, to lose weight even - is a very serious mistake. Yet it is also a very serious mistake to assume that faith does not demand action.
The right motive of Lent is doing what we can to make ourselves more available so that we would see that God is truly enough. And the place where God has always done this with his people is the ‘wilderness’. The wilderness is the ‘away place’ where the allures, the lusts, the distractions of life start to lose their hold on people. God wants to be alone with us and for us to be still in his presence.
While the people of the bible could physically get away from the world and its trappings, for the most part you and I can’t. But while we may not be able to get away from the world we can stop the world from getting to us. How? By changing your relationship with your phone. Today, we can be completely alone yet completely submerged in worldliness. Our phones are the primary portal through which the allures, lusts, and the distractions of this fallen world get to us every minute of every day.
Tony Reinke in his book “12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You” outlines, as the title suggests, twelve ways phones today are dramatically changing us and the way we live. Here are a few:
Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions and thereby splinter our sense of time and purpose.
Our phones give us the power of disembodiment (to be somewhere other than where we are), thereby giving us the ability to be something other than who we are.
Our phones feed our craving for immediate and constant approval and intensifies our fear of missing out.
Our phones erode our ability to read long and think clear.
Our phones tempt us towards unhealthy isolation, thereby taking us away from the people who need us most.
Our phones produce a buffet of mass-produced media and entice us towards visual vices.
This Lent, clarify your relationship to your phone. Is it a means to better your life, make you more productive, more informed of the things that matter? Or is it taking over your life, crowding out opportunities for good, or worse, a vehicle for greed, lust, manipulating others. Maybe it has become a cure-all for boredom, stress, and worry - a digital pacifier we've come to rely on more than God’s truth, presence, and the community of brothers and sisters in Christ? Functionally speaking, is God your saviour or your phone?
Here are some practical things you can do this Lent with your phone.
Don’t take your phone into the bedroom
Use this time to think about your day, thank God, talk to your spouse, pray for yourself, pray for others, reflect on the important things of life, go to bed purposefully for what God has in store for you when the new day dawns.
Remove an app
What’s the app that takes most of your time? Remove it. What’s the app that leads you to covet, fantasize, soothe yourself, manage your image, seek validation. What’s the app that you feel you cannot uninstall? That’s probably where you should start.
Quit Social Media
Seems like a repeat of point 2 above but it deserves its own mention. The origin of the word ‘media’ means ‘middle’. The use of social media actually comes between all of us and our attempts to really know and understand each other. Many are saying that the decline we see in our communities and in our culture today directly corresponds to the rise of social media.
Remove yourself from a chat or two
In the past, our only connectivity was the house phone. It rang maybe once or twice a day and we got along fine. Today, we get pinged, beeped, buzzed, alerted over dozens if not hundreds of times - and mostly with content we didn’t really need. Our minds weren’t meant to be this scattered.
Reach for the bible before your phone
Make it a rule that you will not reach for your phone before you take time to read the bible and pray. If the bible is not the first thing you see in the day, then make it the last.
There are other spiritual disciplines Christians can practice during Lent such as scripture reading, prayer, acts of service, fasting (from certain foods, alcohol, shopping, certain kinds of speech etc). Consider these as well. But pastorally speaking, I think that phone use is probably the most damaging thing to Christians today in our ability to seek the things of God. We are too easily amused, distracted, discontented. We're just too connected to be able to say "Here I am!" Lord. Decide to do something about this.
If you do, tell someone. Get into groups of two or three and keep each other accountable. Pray for one another. Meet over dinner or coffee and tell each other how things are going. Come to church and worship together. Share what God is doing in your life through these exercises.
A final note. Hopefully this Lent guide encourages you to put something of what you read into practice. If so, that’s a great sign. If not, pause and think of why this may be. Is it too difficult? Too unreasonable? Too disruptive maybe? Of course they are. They have to be. The work of God in our lives is never easy, nor is it ever reasonable - at least to our minds. There’s always this darkened part of us that wants a God who won’t really challenge us and the choices we make. But the good news is that we also carry a flicker of light. It’s called the image of God and it cannot rest until it is in His presence. The season of Lent encourages us to leave all our lesser lights behind, enter the wilderness, where spiritual encounters await.