Smart Phone or Just Dumb Me

It dawned on me the other day that I have become a slave to my smart phone. I’m convinced that they (whoever “they” are) call them smart phones because those phones have truly outsmarted all of us! Back when it was just a dumb phone, and only sent and received calls, it stayed in my pocket until I needed to make or take a call. In those days I was jealous enough of my limited minutes that I didn’t take every call, and was pretty careful about who and how long I talked when I called.

I was still the master of my personal phone!

                But, alas and alack, in the bowels of sterile laboratories in Cupertino, California, mad scientists like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak continued their wild experiments, and in less than a generation developed devises that were much more than phones. Now I find myself reading cryptic notes from other slaves, checking and rechecking the news every time I get a free moment, tweeting my occasional brilliant thoughts, tracking the blue dot that is me on the GPS, watching an occasional NCIS episode on Netflix, and a host of other things when I could be, should be, relaxing, or praying, or reading my Bible.

                Oh yeah, and I can read the Bible on the smart phone, too, although I’m not sure yet about texting Jesus.

                And it’s not just me. I watch people all across the Ohio Christian University campus, walking around, never looking up, glued to their smart phones, thumbs all ablur. The hapless few that are looking up have ear buds and brightly colored wires running down their chests into their pockets, connected to . . . you guessed it . . . their smart phones!

                So my daughter calls me this afternoon and asks, “Are you at home?”

                “No, I’m still at the office.”

                “Mom isn’t answering her phone again.”

                I get home and the phone is still in her purse from when we returned from a trip, a trip in which she did not use her smart phone one time, and subsequently forgot about it and let it run out of juice in her purse. Hmmm. Perhaps not everyone has become enslaved after all.

                Believe it or not, this isn’t an article about smart phones or our presumed dependence upon them. It about values for living, just like the name of this column implies. It’s about finding balance in our lives, and understanding what is truly important. Before smart phones, it was just something else.

                I’ll never forget back in the 80s when I was a pastor in Indianapolis. My daughter was somewhere between 8 and 10, and the two of us were in the car one Saturday afternoon, driving from parishioner to parishioner making pastoral calls. Back then I wasn’t a slave to smart phones. I was a slave to Indiana University football. (Why, I have no idea, because they weren’t much better then than they are now, but that’s what slavery does to a person.)

                Anyway, I was listening to the game between visits while my daughter chatted away about only God knows what. I sure didn’t know what because I was chained to that game, when I was suddenly and clearly aware of a “voice” and a “presence” beyond the game and my daughter’s chatting that said words to this effect; “You’re always asking for me to help you get through to Heather. Now she wants to talk and you’re chained to that radio.” I was so startled that I turned around to see if someone was in that car besides Heather and me. There wasn’t, or at least no one I could see.

                I turned off the radio, and focused my full attention to that wee girl, and never let anything interrupt a conversation with her again.

                Some may think this is a remarkable and possibly unbelievable story, and I get that; but I was there, and it changed the way I interact with children from that day to this.

                In Mark 10: 17 through 22 Jesus was approached by a young man who became a slave to his possessions, and instead of forsaking his stuff and following Christ, that young man went away sad because his smart phone, or his IU football, or his whatever, was just more important to him that the most foundational value for living of all; a relationship, not with his daughter, but with God’s son, Jesus.

                Don’t let it be so with your family and you, or more importantly with Jesus and you! Be smarter than the phone.