Pastor’s Corner: “Dumpster Diving”
Philippians 4:8-9 (MSG) – 8-9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
Many of us would not even consider spending time scrounging around a dumpster to look for dinner. Yet what we don’t realize is that we spend most of our day feeding on a steady diet of garbage for our minds based on what we watch and read. Do we not imagine this has an effect on our hearts and minds? Could the extraordinary amount anxiety that people experience today (even among Christians) have any connection to this? Proverbs 15:14 (NLT) – A wise person is hungry for knowledge, while the fool feeds on trash. Ouch! That hits a little close to home.
Garbage in and Garbage out. A man named George Fuechsel, an early IBM programmer and instructor is credited with coining the term “garbage in, garbage out” to teach his students that a computer just processes what it is given. The phrase became a computer rule. It simply means that bad input will produce bad output. The phrase applies to the human mind as much as it does to the computer. What we think is important… Paul certainly thought so (Philippians 4:8-9).
We as consumers in Western society are completely flooded in an ocean of digital messaging noise. It is sensory strain to our brains. According to Forbes, as of 2017, the typical American is exposed to anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 advertisements per day! Overall general screen time is astronomically high. The average US adult in 2019 spent 3 hours, 43 minutes per day on mobile devices. That is just above the daily 3 hours and 35 minutes spent on TV.
Keep in mind that these are just averages; screen time in some households may be actually higher. We have become a world of smartphone zombies, with us constantly looking down at our smart screens every single chance we get – at the stoplights, when we’re waiting in line at the store, when we feel like we might “miss out” if we don’t get our constant metaphorical IV drip of a dopamine rush from connecting to the online world.
The sad thing about all of this is that the vast majority is distracting us from accomplishing God’s mission for us. We willingly put into our brains and hearts nonstop garbage and noise of TV and the media, while in contrast, our Savior often went off to quiet, solitary places to pray to God the Father (Mark 1:35, Luke 5:15-16). We spend untold hours per week looking at venomous sewage of our social media feeds, when instead we could be getting fed the rich, soul-nourishing power of God’s Word. Colossians 1:9-10 -Be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the Lord. Psalm 101:3 – I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.
The bottom line is that we need to spend more time with God. Remember that Christianity is a relationship with God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, and by far the most important relationship you will ever have. If you aren’t putting in time in prayer and in His Word, and instead are feeding yourself a steady diet of garbage, your life will start to produce garbage. If we feed ourselves a quality diet of Scripture and quiet time with God in prayer while having a humble heart before Him, then a true move of God will start to take place!
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton