Kenneth Liu

“When you fast…” Matthew 6:16–17

The assumption by Jesus is that those who follow him would fast. Fasting is simply abstaining for the sake of creating space for God to work.  The struggle that we all face is taking good things and making them ultimate things. Food is necessary and good. But food can become something more than just a necessity. It can be our ultimate source of comfort and pleasure. A friend of mine joked that the Food network should be called Food Porn Network. I think he’s on to something. 

 Fasting could pertain to many areas of life besides abstaining from food. For this post, I’d like to focus in on technology. For the record, I’m not an anti-techie person who’s making a call to live like the Amish. I do like my gadgets here and there. I do spend a lot of time tinkering with my computer. But I’m also acutely aware of how hard it is to pry myself away from it, thinking about it, and wanting more of it. Just as problematic is the amount of time spent using our phones, computers, etc. 

The fact of the matter is that technology can become our gods. It’s just one more good thing becoming an ultimate thing where we revolve and order our lives around. As I mentioned in my last post, our world is increasingly like the folks on the Starship in the movie Wall-E where everyone had a screen in front of them. They being ruled by the machine. We are not far off. 

As Christians, the call is to die to self. This means being intentional about unplugging and prying yourself away from your computer and cell phone in order to create space for what we were created for: relationships. There’s a part in Wall-E were two people accidently fell off their gravitating lazyboy and touched each other. They experienced something that no virtual relationships could ever replace. Relationships in flesh and blood. Being in the presence of someone else. Communicating face to face. 

Even more fundamental to our design is connecting to something transcendent. God is certainly such, but simultaneously intimate. God proves this by coming down to be like one of us and living and dying for us so that we can be reconnected to Him. Our deepest needs and desires are satisfied in Him alone. So in the end,  be intentional about disconnecting so that you can be intentional about connecting with our Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ. From the life giving power of  Jesus, we can connect authentically with the people around us.