THE SANCTIFIED SMARTPHONE

By Rev. Harrison Goodman

Christians tend to talk about technology in predictable ways, especially to youth. All the talks I hear sound the same. They speak of warnings and horror stories. Part of me understands. If the internet were a person, would he be allowed in your house? If he spoke and behaved like what’s out there, would you want him in front of your folks at dinner?

It’s easier to characterize the internet as evil and give no thought to the people using it. It’s easier to blame the tool than the people who use it. Yes, parts of the internet are evil. Malicious. Sinful. Intentionally so. There’s more to it, though, because people were sinners before the internet. The internet just connects sinners across greater distances. Good or evil never rest on the thing itself, but rather on how it is employed in light of God’s will. It isn’t the internet; it’s the sin.

That said, a medium, or a tool, is not neutral. The book is better than the movie. That’s because the director made something different from the way I imagined it. The various forms of media look like the people behind them. When I was little, I liked video games. My parents got me a game called Math Blaster. They figured they could make math fun if it was a game. It would be easier than fighting with me about doing multiplication tables. Really, I only learned that math was so terrible that kids had to be tricked into learning it. The reason tools aren’t neutral is because sinners use them for sinful things, like shirking teaching your kids math. Old Adam sins more efficiently with tools. Just ask Cain about his rock.

The solution is not simply to “behave,” online or off. The Law cannot save you. The Law can’t make you holy. It can point out the problem, but it can’t fix it. The Gospel does that. The Gospel makes you holy. It sanctifies you. That’s what sanctified means: made holy. “And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:10). This is who you are now. Holy. Worthy of love by God. Baptized. A child of God. This is your identity. A product of the Gospel.

That doesn’t mean the Law is bad. You should try to follow the Law. Sin breaks stuff, online and off. The Law shows you your sin. Always. If you can look at the Law and not feel like a sinner, you’re either not really looking at the Law or not really looking at yourself. That doesn’t mean you can’t be good. It means you can’t be good enough. That is the problem most of us have online. Look at my seven likes. I took 50 selfies to find the right one. I wrote for hours. We tried our best. Seven likes. It’s not enough. The Law shows where we don’t measure up. The biggest problem is we figure that’s our real identity. Those likes must be what we amount to. They must sum up who we are.

The internet says you are what you post. You are the sum of your content. That’s a religion of death. Our greatest aim is to be viral, a word that has to do with sickness and death. But…you know…in a spectacular fashion. That’s what it takes to break through the noise. There’s so much content online that only the exceptional stands out. Nobody gets 10k shares for their average rendition of Taylor Swift sung in the bathroom. It has to be spectacular…or a disaster. That’s the baseline. The normal. We see only the exceptional and try to be exceptional, too. We try to live by works. It ends poorly. The Law rarely cuts deeper than reminders about your posts from “five years ago this day.” Again, the problem isn’t the internet. The problem is where you’re looking for comfort. Do you want comfort from your neighbor’s being impressed? By works of the Law? Comfort isn’t found in recognition by man, but in identity in God.

And that’s what your Baptism gives you: an identity in and through Christ. If you live by content, you’ll die by it. But Christ died for you. Rose for you. You’re baptized into Him. So your content isn’t you. The Law does not define you, the Gospel does. Your value isn’t found in accolades from strangers or from your trying to form a new tribe, because the community God gave you offline is full of sinners you don’t like. Identity isn’t measured in heart emojis and shares that turn faceless by the time you get as many as you covet. Rather it’s found in water and Word from the incarnate Jesus.

To look to a thousand likes for comfort is to look to something that is by nature non-specific. When you remove the specifics from vocation it always turns toxic. Parents discipline children, but yelling at other people’s kids in Walmart doesn’t go well. Masculinity without service to someone specific turns toxic. Even pastoring without a real tie to a congregation turns into a cult of personality.

Vocation connects you to someone. Ties you to them. The internet can help, but it has to connect to a real person. A real identity. We have to be intentional about how we use social media. Your use of the internet should lean into vocation, not away from it—to serve specific people in specific ways. Does this tool help you be a better son or daughter? A better hearer of God’s Word? A better student? A better citizen?

There are parts of the internet you just shouldn’t be on. If the foundation and purpose for that site is breaking a commandment, stay away. This isn’t just the elephant in the room named porn. It’s also the sites dedicated to covetousness. To theft. To slander. It’s the sites that go against the Fourth Commandment from your parents. There is nothing good to be found here and nobody to serve either.

And God gave you a neighbor as a gift. You have real people in your life, so you can’t have a life that’s lived entirely online. The internet can aid your life, but it can’t replace it. That’s good. Your real life is rooted in your Baptism. You shouldn’t want to replace that. Wherever you go, online or not, you go baptized. Holy, but not because you perfectly avoided something unclean, but because He cleanses you from all sin. You don’t measure up by content, but by Christ. You are holy in Him.

Rev. Harrison Goodman is the pastor of Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in San Antonio, Texas.