Earlier this week Pope Francis made a provocative challenge to the Church. What if we loved the Bible like we love our mobile phones? We never leave our phones he said, we feel lost without them, we keep them always by our side. What if we gave the word of God the same attention?
Knowledge of God's word he said, was essential to Jesus victory over temptation in the desert. If it was so for the Son of God, should it be any less so for his followers? The problem isn't just that we don't spend much time with the Bible, but that what instead preoccupies us – our mobile devices – is actually making us dumber. Our digital distraction is damaging not just to our spirituality, but our humanity. Here are three ways our mobile obsession is making us dumber, and one thing we can do about it.
Losing our minds
In his book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, author Nicholas Carr explains how our use of the internet is rewiring – and actually damaging – the way we think and learn. The book uses various scientific studies to make its case that although the internet can make us feel intelligent, it actually makes us more stupid. Web surfing, with its deluge of links, adverts, and unlimited possibility is an intense stimulant for the brain.
When a user sees a link online, and they will see hundreds at a time – they face a dilemma – 'to click or not to click'. Many links, and therefore many choices, will interrupt one even when reading a longer piece of text online. This interruption impedes proper focus and attention. It means we never simply 'get lost' in a text, as we might with a printed book, because the screen is always demanding more attention. The consequence is that our long-term learning is damaged: we lose our capacity to take deep thoughts and complexities from our 'working memory' into our 'long-term memory'. As Carr puts it: 'We become mindless consumers of data.'
Most won't need to read the neuroscientific studies to know this to be true. When we mindlessly scroll our feeds we just don't have time to read, reflect and read again. We get distracted, always looking for the next thing. This is especially so when searching on our small mobile screens, constantly giving us new 'notifications'.
We're also less likely to be willing to really read and study things we might disagree with. Such thoughtful study takes time we don't want to give. Instead we're invited to simply react to the world. Like or dislike; retweet or angrily subtweet.
The Bible, by contrast, has no clickable links. Much of it is long, complex, and doesn't try and win you over with a clickbait-y headline. The Bible can't offer the novelty of internet buzz and scandal. Instead it offers the wisdom of the ages. We shouldn't read it just to become cleverer, but neuroscience suggests that it's the kind of reading that will do just that. I suspect that what is true of our brains is true of our hearts and souls too. True growth takes time and attention, but we must be willing to commit.
Can't let go
Our phones are 'always with us', Francis said. They are useful of course, so its handy to keep them close by. In our pockets we store the power to communicate with anyone on the planet, get directions to anywhere, Google any question we have, and even catch Pokémon. No one could say mobile phones are inherently bad, they can be quite brilliant. But the fact that they rarely leave our sides – or that we can't let them go – should be worrying. If anything holds that kind of power, where we just couldn't give it up because it's too important to us – then it literally has control of us.
I want to be available to people, I want to feel in control and I want the freedom the phone brings. But if I can't give it up, that makes me a slave.
Are you with us?
The popular observation is of course how much the downward gaze at a mobile device pulls us out of human interaction. A gathered family sits at the dinner table, all transfixed to their screens. A couple sit opposite each other on a date – but neither is present. 'Are you listening?' a frustrated friend asks the other, distracted by a buzzing phone. No one wants to be ignored. The Bible speaks much about the value and cost of true community. Christian love demands that we be loving and present to one another. The phone is just a tool, but we can make it a deadly master.
Where does that leave us? We know that phones have changed the way we communicate, but they change the way we live and learn too. We can't stop technological advances; indeed we should celebrate the good they bring, but we mustn't lose our souls in the process. In Lent, a season of resolve – it may time to push ourselves more than we'd like, and give up the things we think we need the most.
Bible study, compared with scrolling the news feed, may not sound particularly enticing. But we may be surprised what we find. If we could truly 'get lost' in the words of Scripture, we could find ourselves taken into a different reality, a bigger story, one that helps us to imagine, learn and be truly challenged. A lot of people say our technology is stealing our humanity. If we want it back, then the words of God – who made us in his image – might just help.
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