Do You Ever Question Your Digital Habits?

Digital Practices

For most of my life, I have believed that the way meaningful transformation works is this:

I earnestly pray for and try to generate strong feelings.

Once these strong feelings are achieved, doing the right thing will feel natural.

As I’ve talked to people my age about the things we’ve learned about the Christian life as we’ve gotten older, one of the consistent themes in these conversations is the discovery—often well after adolescence—that this isn’t how most change works. It’s not what the Bible actually teaches, and it’s not even really feasible. Scripture does have a lot to say about our feelings: “God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7); “Love the Lord with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:37); “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Phil. 4:4). These commands are indeed aimed at our emotions, and there’s no question that when Christ raises a person from spiritual death to life, he creates radically new affections, not just new behavior.

But over the past few years, I have discovered in Scripture a theme that I had missed for a long time: the theme of habits. Habits are the DNA of Israel’s year of worship in the Old Testament. God commands his people to make regular sacrifices and regular offerings; to regularly gather to hear his word and offer worship; and, most tellingly to me, to assemble at regular times and seasons for feasts and festivals that remind the nation about God’s goodness and his works of redemption. When God commanded his people to love him with all their heart, he did not mean that they should sacrifice only when they feel guilty, make offerings only when they feel grateful, or hold a feast only when they feel blessed. Instead, what God gave his people was a set of practices, a regular rhythm of actions that could train their spirits and shape them more into holiness.

Digital Liturgies

Samuel D. James

People search for heaven in all the wrong places, and the internet is no exception. Digital Liturgies warns readers of technology’s damaging effects and offers a fulfilling alternative through Scripture and rest in God’s perfect design.

Regular Rhythms

In our spiritual lives, we often seem to intuitively know the value of regular rhythms. That is why habits such as reading Scripture, prayer, and faithful membership in a local church are integral to growing as believers. But the importance of habits goes beyond the typical spiritual checklist items. Habits create habitats for our hearts; they shape our identity and train our desires so that our feelings, which can change quickly, are not solely bearing up the weight of our character.

In his bestselling book Atomic Habits, James Clear sums up how habits relate to our identity:

Every habit is like a suggestion: “Hey, maybe this is who I am.” If you finish a book, then perhaps you are the type of person who likes reading. If you go to the gym, then perhaps you are the type of person who likes exercise. . . . Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.¹

This sounds a lot like the New Testament’s theme of “becoming who you are.”² Justification is the legal declaration that Christ has paid for our sins and accomplished a perfect record of righteousness on our behalf. Sanctification is the process by which we are transformed by the Spirit more into the image of Jesus. How do these two realities work together in the Christian life? I believe an important answer in Scripture is that, by the Spirit, we pursue habits that shape our character in the direction of our justified identity. Paul writes:

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col. 3:1–4)

By the Spirit, we pursue habits that shape our character in the direction of our justified identity.

“Seek the things that are above” and “set your minds on things that are above” are commands to practice habits. What kind of habits? Habits consistent with a person who is “hidden with Christ” and “raised with Christ.” Identity and habits go together. It’s not merely an issue of feeling strong enough about your identity in Christ to seek the things that are above. It’s about seeking those things because that is where your life, in Christ, really is.

I’ve belabored this point, and there is still much that could be said about the role of habits in the Christian life. But for now, let us proceed as if we are convinced that habits matter. What kind of habits should we cultivate in the pursuit of Christian wisdom in a digital age?

Ask yourself some hard questions. When was the last time you read a book, listened to music, or had a conversation for more than an hour without checking your phone? When was the last time you sat alone with your thoughts with no email, no social media, and no streaming? I’m convinced many of us feel we don’t know how to focus, simply for lack of practice. Every area of life is saturated with noise; we fidget in moments of stillness and silence, instinctively wanting our devices to rescue us from such unsettling inactivity. Thus, a habit of resistance might begin merely with one hour each day that we intentionally retreat from digital technology.

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If you work in an information job that demands connectivity, consider taking a tech-free lunch hour, seeking out a book, a conversation, or a rewarding hobby instead of scrolling social media or catching up on the latest Netflix offering. Identify the specific channels through which the web seems to dominate your attention. Is it online news? Consider subscribing to a physical magazine or newspaper to cultivate the kind of deep reading that computers subvert. Is YouTube a default attention magnet? Instead of nibbling on clips all day, use a content blocker to restrict access during the day and look forward to watching an entire movie later. Whereas YouTube’s bite-sized format is mostly distraction fodder, losing ourselves in a truly captivating story has a way of deeply moving and refreshing us.

Generally speaking, the more our attention is diffused over a thousand minute things—which is how our attention works when we’re deeply plugged into the web—the more scrambled and exhausted we will be. There’s no magic formula for resisting this. Again, I’m not telling you to delete your accounts and throw away your devices. The key is to understand how digital technology affects us and to engage with it accordingly. For most of us, the biggest challenge is simply changing how we default. When there’s nothing that immediately commands our attention, where do we give it? Changing the answer to that question is a fundamental part of deep resistance to the digital liturgies.

Notes:

James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones (New York: Avery, 2018), 38.
The first person I heard use this phrase was John Piper.

This article is adapted from Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age by Samuel D. James.

Samuel James is an associate acquisitions editor at Crossway. He is the author of Digital Liturgies, a regular newsletter on Christianity, technology, and culture. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Emily, and their three children.

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