temptation

So I’ve made a decision: I’m going to spend quite a bit less time on the Internet and on social media in particular. I realize I’ve made this declaration before and have failed abysmally in the follow-through. But I think sometimes you have to declare and fail multiple times before you are really, truly ready to make the definitive leap. I’m ready to leap, friends, and let me tell you why.

I’ve known for quite some time now that social media is dangerous ground for me. It’s a source of temptation; social media, particularly Facebook, lures me toward my most pervasive and prevalent sins — envy, jealousy, coveting and comparison. I know this, and yet I continue to come back to the source, the vehicle, of temptation time and time again.

For a long time I’ve justified my social media consumption as “part of my job.” After all, as an author I am expected to build and maintain a platform, and social media is a necessary part of that platform. I need to be on Facebook, I tell myself. I need to be on Twitter and Instagram and in the comments of blogs and here and there and everywhere, I tell myself. I need to be visible, I need to have a voice, I need to be part of the crowd, I tell myself.

Those statements you read right there? That, my friends, is the voice of addiction – the voice that manipulates circumstances and reality in order to rationalize and justify unhealthy, destructive behavior.

Back on March 21 I read a verse in Matthew that I jotted into my journal. And I’ve been sitting with this verse, chewing on it, mulling over it, ever since.

“Keep watch and pray,” Jesus tells his disciples in the Garden of Gethsamane, “so that you will not be given over to temptation. For the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” (26:41)

Right there, in four simple words, Jesus offers the solution to withstanding temptation: Keep watch and pray. And so for the past month or so, ever since March 21, that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been keeping watch, and I’ve been praying, and God has shown me, very clearly, the ways in which social media tempts me to turn away from him toward negative, self-destructive thoughts and behavior.

Keeping watch has helped me see that spending too much time on social media tempts me to commit the Three C’s: comparing, coveting and complaining.

In keeping watch, I’ve also learned to recognize the tell-tale signs that I’ve succumbed to these temptations once again: feelings of envy and jealousy, which gives rise to a pit in the bottom of my stomach, which then ultimately results in feelings of sadness, unworthiness and apathy.

{Yeah, I’m a real picnic around here. You might want to think about sending my husband some chocolate. Or better yet, some beer.}

In keeping watch, I’ve also learned to recognize what typically prompts me to turn to social media, and more often than not, it’s not because it’s “part of my job,” but rather, because I’m bored, fatigued, procrastinating, need a break or have writer’s block.

It’s no coincidence that the same week I read that verse about keeping watch and praying, I also read this in Matthew:

“The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.” (4:18-19)

In keeping watch, I’ve noticed how much time I spend on social media each day versus how much time I spend in God’s Word, and let me just say, social media wins every single time, hands-down. By a lot. I might read the Bible for 20 or 30 minutes — on a good day, an hour — in the morning, but compare that to how much time I spend on social media each day: an hour? Two? More?

Keeping watch has forced me to see how God’s word is falling among thorns and struggling to take root, how it’s being crowded out by the insecurities and worries and desires for other things like success and popularity and being known — insecurities and worries and desires that are largely fueled by social media.

On March 28, the day I read those verses about the thorns, I wrote a prayer in my journal. I asked God to help me with my social media addiction. I asked him to help me weigh Scripture more heavily than I weigh social media. “Less social, more Scripture,” I scrawled onto the white-lined pages.

Beneath that prayer I made a list titled “Do THIS Before You Click”:

1. Read Scripture – even a just a verse or two or a psalm.

2. Pet the dog.

3. Read a poem.

4. Get a snack.

5. Step outside for a few minutes.

6. Answer an email.

7. Vox or text a friend.

8. Use the bathroom. {I’m nothing if not practical}

9. Switch out the laundry.

10. Fill up your water bottle.

God has been so good to me this past month. Not only has he guided me toward watching and praying, not only has he shown me exactly how social media tempts me to succumb to negative behavior and thoughts, not only has he alerted me to my temptation triggers (boredom, procrastination, fatigue, etc.), he’s also helped me identify a number of better choices available to me when I feel the urge to turn to social media for a “fix.” I love how God knows exactly how practical I am and how intentional I need to be.

Social media is not inherently a bad thing. In fact, social media can be beautiful and life-changing and full of love and laughter and goodwill. It’s not a vice or a source of temptation for everyone. But it is for me, and I know that now in ways that I’ve not fully understood it before. I realize now that I’ve been manipulating circumstances in order to rationalize and justify my unhealthy, destructive use of social media, I know it needs to stop, and I’m grateful that God has shown me the way.

Q4U: Have you identified a source of temptation in your life? Has God helped show you the way toward battling that temptation?

[31 Days resumes tomorrow]

Sometimes reading the Bible is a little like reading a newspaper article. We get the five W’s – the who, what, when, where and sometimes the why – but we often hear little more than the basic facts of the story.

Take the reading from yesterday – the story of David and Bathsheba. We learn that David stays in Jerusalem while his men go off to fight the Ammonites. He is enticed by the sight of a beautiful woman bathing on a rooftop, sleeps with that woman and gets her pregnant, and then tries to trick Uriah, Bathsheba’s husband, into sleeping with his own wife so the pregnancy can be attributed to him. When Uriah refuses, we learn how David schemes to have Uriah killed in battle and then marries Bathsheba himself. Later, after the prophet Nathan rebukes David, we observe how David confesses his guilt to God, comforts Bathsheba after their child dies, and then gets her pregnant again with the child who will be born Solomon.

These are the facts, but I want to know more. I want to know what’s going through David’s head, not only during this debacle, but even more importantly, after it’s all over. The way this story reads, David simply picks up the pieces of his broken life and moves on, forgiven by God and never tempted by pride again. He gets the miracle cure. He learns his lesson just like that, in one try, and then takes his clean heart and rides off into the sunset.

I don’t buy it.

I’ve wrestled with the same temptation on and off for the past five years or so. Sometimes this temptation merely simmers in the background, sometimes I even wonder if I’ve nipped it in the bud for good. But when I least expect it, the temptation rears its ugly head again, sending me straight back to square one.

Like David, I am tempted by pride. I yearn to be important and well-known, a big-wig. I want to be in the “in-crowd,” included and respected. Not on the fringe, not over here in my own quiet little corner. In. The. Center.

Last week, this temptation roared out of hibernation, and once again, I succumbed. Badly.

Long story short, there’s a new Christian writers’ conference that’s got everyone abuzz, and I wanted to go. Initially I said no, which was the right decision. My family is my first priority, and because of that, I try to choose my travel obligations wisely. But then I heard my friends were going, and other writers I admire, and other people I respect, and suddenly, I felt left out. I was bitter and angry and a little bit panicky, a stream of anxious regret running through my head – I’m the only one not going, I’m the only one not there, I’m never going to make it as a writer if people don’t know me, and no one even notices that I’m not going because no one even notices I exist…

If that angst over feeling left out wasn’t enough, at the same time I realized I’d fallen prey to the same old sins, the same old temptation I’d been wrestling with on and off for five years. I’d fallen victim to pride, self-importance, envy and greed. Again.

Good grief.

And then, just when I thought I couldn’t feel any worse, I read about David. “Well that’s just great,” I thought to myself. “He gets a clean heart and never has to worry about temptation again. How nice for him.”

But that’s when I began to wonder if perhaps the Bible doesn’t give us the whole story down to every last detail. If David is anything like the rest of us – and he is, because he’s human – I suspect he wrestled with temptation more than once after his bad Bathsheba decision. I suspect pride and self-importance were an ongoing struggle for him. Temptation, in my experience, doesn’t simply disappear just because we repent and are forgiven. Temptation is an ongoing threat, sometimes a lifelong struggle, something some of us wrestle with again and again.

I suspect the day David penned the words, “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” wasn’t the last time he spoke that prayer in his heart. Although the bible doesn’t tell us so for sure, I bet David, like the rest of us, returned to those same lines again and again.

Questions for Reflection:
Do you ever find yourself tempted by the same sins over and over again? How do you try to break the relentless cycle, and how do you forgive yourself if you fail?

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