Audio Transcript

We close out the week with an email from an anonymous listener. A young man writes in to ask, “Pastor John, I would consider myself addicted to the Internet. Not to Internet pornography. Not to video games. I’m addicted to email and Twitter and blogs — and much of what I am addicted to is solid, gospel-centered content and articles that are genuinely interesting and thoughtful and edifying. I think I may be overdoing it because my attention seems to be taken off of the people around me and making a detrimental impact on my relationships. Is this a problem? If so, how would you correct me? What spiritual forces are at play in my heart? And do you have any strategies to help with this?”

My first thought when I hear that question is that I want to encourage us, I think, to almost suspend, or at least minimize, our use of the word addiction. I don’t mean there is no such thing, but I think it would be helpful if we began to us some other more explicit sentences or words.

Name the Real Problem

Here is what I mean: If I were this person, I would say this: “I read Twitter, Facebook, blogs, news (or whatever) to sinful excess.” Whatever the activity is, I would say, “I am involved in this to sinful excess.”

Secondly, let’s say: “I am drawn to do this with an intensity of desire that is out of proportion, perhaps sinfully out of proportion, to the value of what I am reading and the value of other things I may not be doing. The desire is stronger than it ought to be for something, say, as inconsequential as Twitter, and my desire for other things that may be more consequential is smaller, so I have a sinful disproportion of desire.”

And the third thing I would want him (or her) to say is: “I am regularly going against my best judgment, and this is sinful because I am giving in to an intensity of desire against my best judgment. So talking about our compulsions in this way, it seems to me, has the advantage of making some things clearer and being much more hopeful in our ability to address them in biblical ways.

It names the problem of sinful excess. It names the problem of disproportion of desire. It names the problem of contradicting our own best judgment. It doesn’t use this almost therapeutic or medical word of addiction, which, in a vague way, covers all these specific sins. So it is hard to deal with sin if it is cloaked with vague language. So I think we need to get more specific.

Four Ways to Work Toward Change

So let’s step back now with that little bit of introduction and talk about the issue of compulsions driving us to Twitter and blogs — even theologically good things. And this could be any other good thing we do compulsively as well. So this is not the question of addiction or compulsion to pornography or gambling. This is a good thing that is being talked about here.

So the question here is not, Is it wrong to do? but, Is it wrong to do it this much? Is it wrong to desire it with this level of intensity in proportion to other things? Is it such that I am ruining my best judgment by caving, and why would that be? Why am I not acting in accordance with my best judgment?

So, in other words, a God-pleasing life of faith and love and holiness is a life not just of avoiding bad things and doing good things. It is a life of doing good things with good motives in proper proportion to other good things. That is what he is really wrestling with. So here is my strategy. I will just close with these four ideas.

1. Saturate yourself with Scripture.

Be saturated with the Scriptures so that God’s revealed proportionality becomes instinctual. It is very difficult to come up with lists or timeframes about how many blogs to read or how much time to spend on Twitter. And you just can’t do it. It has to become instinctual — the sense of holiness and proportion in the Christian life must become instinctual. I don’t know any other way for that to happen but to be totally immersed in God’s proportionality as it is revealed in his word by reading the Scripture over and over again.

2. Pray for discernment.

Let’s pray that God would make us discerning and would overcome blind spots, because a lot of us just don’t have even a clue that our lives are out of proportion in this regard.

3. Balance your desires.

By God’s grace, we should seek to bring the intensity of our desires into balance with the diversity of good things God gives us to do: relationships at home and work and church, as well as all these other good things that we discover through the Bible reading that we are doing. So we must bring our desires into balance according to the diversity of good things God has put in front of us.

4. Rely on your church.

We should be in a church with solid, biblical preaching and a network of people who will help us see when our lives are out of proportion, and help us change.