How Technology Use Shapes Character, Virtue Formation Series, Part 1
In an on-demand culture, cultivating patience can seem like a waste of time.
I’ll be writing an ongoing series on Virtue Formation as it relates to digital media, childhood and the Christian Life. First up is the topic of Patience.
Wait. Just a minute. Hold on. Give me a second. Not right now.
If you are a parent, it’s highly probable you have uttered one of these phrases at least a zillion times in the last 24 minutes. Most kids are not very good at waiting. Kids struggle to wait for Christmas, summer break, recess, and snack time. They fuss that they can’t wait for the long drive to end, to get their driver’s license, or to grow taller.
As an adult, I don’t always enjoy waiting. My husband and I are current members of the National Archives Foundation in Washington, DC because on our family’s Spring Break trip we decided joining this organization (which also allowed us to skip the line winding around a city block) was worth the price of admission a donation to a charitable organization doing important historical work. We wanted our sons to see the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights but on this day, with a scan of a QR code and deduction from our bank account, we skipped the line.
Teaching the Process
Much to my chagrin, my husband and I aren’t professional line skippers. We waited in traffic on I-95, outside the Air & Space Museum, and in the Capitol building for a tour of the rotunda. But simply watching the minutes tick by is not all that waiting entails. That day in DC, my husband and I decided how long we waited in line at a museum, but we couldn’t control how long we waited to become parents. We waited desperately, twice over, for our sons. We have waited on job offers, on mortgage approval letters, on bad news and on good news. Sometimes we have waited well and usually I have waited poorly. (My husband is far more patient than I am.) Developing patience is a skill our kids will need in life. Intellectually, we know this, but in reality we forget to look at the choices we are making in view of cultivating patience in our kids & teens.
For example, take this piece of advice I heard from a Christian commentator, “Sometimes you need to give your six year old the iPad so you can make dinner, and that’s okay.” Um. No, it’s not. Instead of anesthetizing our kids with screen time, we have the opportunity to teach them to live in the momentary affliction of short term hunger. I’m not saying this is easy or that I do it perfectly, I am saying this is worth it. We teach kids to focus on what they can do instead of on what they can’t have. A child can help set the table, get ingredients out of the fridge or make the salad. Keith McCurdy, a well respected parenting coach and family therapist loves to quote 2 Thessalonians 3:10 “If anyone isn’t willing to work, he should not eat.” He says it with humor and playfulness, but he isn’t wrong. We need to teach our kids how to be contributors, not consumers, he quips. Contributing helps form patience as we look not only to our needs, but to the needs of others.
The Wisdom of Waiting
Psalm 27:14 proclaims, “Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord!” Strength. Courage. Patience. Requiring our children to learn how to wait in the physical world is how we train them to wait in the spiritual world, a world where the battles are fierce and the enemy is real. Pastor and author Mark Vroegop puts it this way:
Biblical waiting involves embracing that you’re not in control, but you can talk to the one who is. You don’t know what’s going on, so you seek the one who does.
When we give our children a tablet or a smartphone, we aren’t teaching them to wait or to seek God in their waiting. We are teaching them to google all of their questions, be available to every single person at every single minute, and consume a never ending supply of entertainment. When it comes to our own digital media consumption, Pastor Jay Kim, author of Analog Christian writes,
We find ourselves living with a droning urgency. We feel hurried and rushed at almost all times, as though living on a treadmill set to a speed and incline always just beyond comfort level. We’re running non-stop and going nowhere. So where do we go from here?
We can get off the treadmill. We can teach our kids how to be steadfast and calm by providing them opportunities to struggle well. Allowing constant distractions in the form of digital media teaches children how to always look to stuff to pacify them in their time of worry, fear, or boredom.
Biblical Waiting
There is a better way forward though. Focussing on raising virtuous sons and daughters keeps us in check. A report from Apple shows that on average we unlock our phones 80 times a day, or roughly, every 12 minutes. Smartphones are addictive and habit forming. Yet, we seem to be fearful that if we don’t give our teenagers the digital media access they crave, then he or she will become some sort of screen obsessed mutant as soon as they go off to college. Instead, we are giving smartphones too soon and creating a mutant generation of anxious people who haven’t learned the virtue of patience.
How long did Noah wait for dry land to appear? How long did Abraham and Sarah wait for their son? What about the Israelites wandering around in the desert waiting to enter the Promise Land? How long did Daniel and his friends wait in captivity in Babylon? What about Nehemiah? He waited for the wall to be finished with a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. Elizabeth waited to conceive. The disciples waited three whole days for the Risen Lord. (Okay, that last one, they should have seen coming, but still, they waited.) And now, 2,000 years later we are waiting for Jesus to come again.
Dear Christian Parent, if we are honest, our “everything on demand” culture has made us more like the Apostle Peter. We’d rather chop somebody’s ear off than wait on Jesus to do what he wills. Teaching kids to wait isn’t only teaching them to be disciplined and self-controlled, it is also developing in them the type of character that knows how to wait on the Lord. Don’t we want more of that in our world? Don’t we want to raise patient kids who will grow to be steadfast leaders in our country, churches, businesses and homes? The internet may have changed how rapidly information moves through the world, but it hasn’t changed what it means to be human. We can reclaim a bit of humanity when we elevate the virtue of patience. It will take time, but I think that’s kind of the point.
If you missed last week’s post on why teenagers using smartphones during youth group & church is a bad idea, check it out here:
