Don't Deploy Unarmed

Christian Service Begins in the Armory

“I have only missed my morning watch once or twice this term… I can easily believe that it is next in importance to accepting Christ. For I know that when I don’t wait upon God in prayer and Bible study, things go wrong.” - William Borden

Photo by J dG on Unsplash

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From the moment we wake up, we’re bombarded with inputs.

In most cases, we do it to ourselves.

Alarm goes off.

Our hand instinctively moves to our phone.

We shuffle to the coffee maker and scroll while it brews.

1.4 million new tweets about the President’s State of the Union address.

Live footage of the Mexican cartels roasting somebody alive with a flamethrower.

Endless memes about men’s hockey, Somali fraud schemes, and immigration numbers.

Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash

Modern life does not lend itself to thinking deeply about the idea of duty, of virtue, or of Christian service.

It’s more about entertainment, influence, and consumption.

Give any man a quiet room, a blazing fast internet connection, and a fully charged phone or MacBook, and chances are he’ll sit there for hours without uttering a single word. If we could measure brainwaves, we’d probably detect pleasure, but little more.

Of course, there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Man has always faced many distractions that threatened his capacity (and willingness) to think deeply.

But just because it’s not new doesn’t mean it has always been equal in intensity. I’d wager that the modern generation is the most distracted in human history, because the incentives are so incredibly potent.

A man can force himself to pay attention in class instead of daydreaming. That’s one thing.

But today’s distractions are supercharged, carefully crafted, and engineered by well-funded teams at big tech companies who are dedicated to finding better ways to hijack the body’s biological and chemical impulses and drive their products deeper into the American psyche.

And if the studies are correct, they’ve largely succeeded.

But we are called to “stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for our souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).