Smartphone Distraction and Scripture Meditation
Recently I was teaching a group of teenagers from our church, and it hit me that every single one of them has grown up in a world where the smartphone has been a present reality. It was circa 2005 when the IT guy for our church told me that one day, very soon, we would be walking around with computers in our pockets. I left the conversation thinking, “Is this guy for real?” Indeed, he was.
The iPhone was rolled out 19 years ago on June 29, 2007, and it has drastically changed the way we live our lives—how we communicate, how we use our free time, how we get information and how we relate to one another. Many people alive today do not have memories before this monumental shift. But for all the conveniences this shift has provided, we need to understand that the smartphone provides us with new ways to express sin. Therefore, much wisdom is required to navigate life with devices in a way that reveals that we have surrendered our digital habits to Christ.
If we allow our hearts to pursue an over-indulgent use of our devices, the negative impact is far-reaching, but perhaps, what is most threatened is the health of our relationships. In this post, I want to address how our relationship to God is affected by excessive time on our smartphones, specifically as it pertains to meditating on God’s Word. Then, in the next post, we will address how it affects our relationships with other people.
How is our meditation hindered by an over-indulgent use of our smartphones, and how should we respond?
In Psalm 119:97, the psalmist writes, “Oh how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day.” Can we say the same thing? Are our days permeated with intentional thoughts of truth from God’s Word, or is it more accurate to say that they are permeated with viewing shorts on YouTube or scrolling endless headlines?
The reality for many of us is that an unregulated engagement with our devices has left us struggling to meditate on Scripture even in those moments when we’ve left our phones in the other room. We’ve trained ourselves to be distracted, so even when we aren’t staring into the soft glow of the phone screen, we can find our minds quickly jumping from thought to thought, desiring the next thing. As Christine Hoover says, a greedy pursuit of our devices “slices your mind into a million pieces.”¹
Meditation on God’s Word is like eating a choice filet mignon at a 5-star restaurant. With each bite, you put it in your mouth and chew slowly, savoring the flavor before you swallow. But imagine if you brought in a bag of store brand potato chips and punctuated each bite of filet mignon with a couple of chips, popping them in your mouth before you’ve even swallowed the steak. What a waste, right?! That’s kind of what it’s like when we distractedly pivot from deeper thoughts of God’s truth to think about things of lesser value.
If that describes you, what should you do? First, confess to God that you have prioritized that which is trivial in comparison to Him. Tell Him that you have not been loving His law, nor making it your meditation all the day. Do this, remembering His promise in Christ to “forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).
Second, plead with God to help you lay hold of the grace of Christ that “[trains] us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives” (Titus 2:12). You can’t build holy habits with your devices without His enabling power.
Then, thirdly, take some practical steps of repentance. Make the choice more often to deny the impulse to pull your phone out every time you’re bored—in line at Walmart, at the gas pump, in the car waiting on your kids, or taking the dog for a walk. Instead, choose to pray for someone, appreciate the beauty of God’s creation, or work on memorizing a Bible verse. This will help you retrain your mind for godliness (1 Timothy 4:7–8) and increase your ability to think about God’s Word with less distraction.
Further, when you sit down to read God’s Word devotionally, consider using a paper Bible. The Bible on your phone can be a helpful tool, but there’s only one thing you can do with a paper Bible: read it. As you’re retraining yourself, this will minimize distractions and give you the space to think more deeply. In this transition, you should also expect that you’ll likely need to redirect your thoughts back to Scripture repeatedly as you seek to meditate. This will be frustrating, but Jesus is worth the tenacity, and His grace is sufficient for the task. Like retraining our body, retraining our minds doesn’t happen overnight, but, with God’s power, you can experience the sweetness of fellowship with Him as you grow in the habit of meditation.
Smartphones don’t seem like they’re going away any time soon. There’s no stuffing that tent back in its packaging, but we don’t have to throw up our hands and say, “This is just the way things are now.” There is no generational challenge that outmatches God’s grace and His desire for us to know Him through meditating on His Word.
¹ “Are You Fighting the New Greed?” by Christine Hoover —https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/are-you-fighting-the-new-greed/
