A bi-vocational church-planting pastor at King’s Cross Church in Manchester, NH. I also design websites. Married to Michelle. Father to Owen, Isaac and Silas.

Apr 4, 2016

Sufficiency and Certainty in the Digital Life

Last week I wrote about my concerns about my digital life, and my resolutions for health moving forward. After a weeks time, I’ve confirmed a few of my suspicions about why my digital life is so wanton and difficult to master.

A Common Factor: Stress

I started the week doing well — keeping to the schedule I proposed. As the week went on, I kept it up with a lot of success and gratefulness for the parameters. Then the stress of the week hit around Friday/Saturday. That’s when I relapsed into my old habits. In the heat of the pressures of the church plant, my habits for quick and easy stimuli came crashing in.

Stress is obviously universal. It’s not unique to me. Potentially, as a church planter, there are a unique set of stresses. On any given day, as a church planter, I experience at least one, if not multiple versions of the following:

A major donor loss
Pastoral crisis needs
Core team members leaving the plant
Being “investigated” by Christians in the area, and subsequently slandered accordingly.
Demonic attack — lies with power
Comparison to others who appear more successful
Existential questions about what I’ve done to my family by leaving a highly stable job to plant a church.
If people or donors leave, how will I support my family next week?
All demands, expectations and deadlines for my other job. Fill in accordingly.
What to do if the church plant fails…
Regrets for leaving a job that was highly stable…
All the above while also trying to do what we’re here for — reach people for Jesus.

There are more things, but that’s not the point. You get the idea.

I find myself prompted by these moments of stress to find relief. And frankly, the digital world in my phone appears to offer a more immediate relief than Christ. I want recognition for the work, and pandering for a like, email, RT in a given moment feels like it offers the sort of affirmation I crave. I long for some stability, and so, it would appear from my above confessions, I long for stability in the affirmation and love of others.

But that will never last will it? A tweet is always swept away in the feed. A like is always dwarfed by the need for another. Yet this shines light on why I go to these little apps for comfort in the light box in my hand. They appear to be sources of comfort and assurance. They are current. They are immediate. They appear authoritative. While my heart yearns for comfort, an app will never satisfy. Nor will the people behind them. And maybe more to the point, nor will a church plant or ministry success.

Enter Thomas Boston and Jesus

In the wake of feeling the deep pain of working through this category this weekend, I turned to Thomas Boston for help. For various reasons (to be written about at a later point), I’ve been getting to know Thomas Boston a good bit lately. Boston was a pastor in the early 1700’s in Scotland, and unintentionally became a major figure for preserving the free grace of the Gospel in the Reformed tradition.

I turned to his sermons on Philippians 3:8, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ”. This sermon is incredibly helpful, and honestly, I haven’t finished it yet. While he lived in an age of no electricity, I find his comments illuminate what my own wanton digital life reveals in my own heart. He says at one point:

All things beside Christ cannot make a man happy; but the enjoyment of Christ alone can do it. There are two things wanting in all the creatures, that are to be found in him. These are,

First, sufficiency; nothing can make one happy, but what is completely satisfactory; for if there be the least want, it mars happiness; now nothing besides Christ is such. In the most prosperous condition there is something wanting, as in paradise. Christ alone is completely satisfactory, Psalm 73:25, “He is all in all;” virtually all things. He is the heir of all, and they who have him, have all.

Secondly, certainty; what is liable to change cannot make men happy; but all things beside Christ are so, Proverbs 23:5, but he is unchangeable, “the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.” All fulness dwells in him; they that enjoy him need fear no change; not in this life, “for he loves unto the end;” nor in the life to come, “for they shall be ever with the Lord.” No change with respect to the subject, they shall never be taken from him, Rom. 8:38; nor with respect to the object, he shall never be taken from them.

Thomas Boston, The Complete Works of the Late Rev. Thomas Boston, Vol. 4:133–4 (with slight editing).

Boston holds out Christ as the only source of true happiness, and lays out those cause for this claim in Christ’s sufficiency and certainty. Christ is an unending torrent of self-sufficiency. Moreover, he is certain because he has promised to be our comfort, to love us. And he never breaks a promise, shows immaturity, tells a lie, or forgets.

My phone charges. Jesus doesn’t.

My phone must charge. Friends are weak, sinful and ultimately, undependable (like me). Organizations have problems (see previous sentence). These things cannot be vested with my source of happiness because they were not designed to offer lasting happiness. But Christ? He is perfectly, and completely satisfying to all needs. He is the only constant which gives true, lasting, real happiness.

The stress of life that drives me to the church, my phone, Facebook, twitter, my family — anything but Christ — will never satisfy because they are not completely sufficient and certain. That does not mean they are inherently sinful or faithless. It does mean that Christ, who is the only source of happiness, will be our only source of happiness that is outside the attacks and frailty of the world. The world and our hearts drive us to feel our weakness and need. And our devices make us feel like we can medicate those yearnings with the light-box in our hands. But as Boston goes on to say, “Whatever you want, if Christ be yours, you have what is better” (4:142).

At the heart of my wanton digital life is a heart malady. A heart malady that’s only rectified by knowing and loving Jesus. Yes, resolutions help — I won’t give up on those. But they are not the source of happiness. Just as devices will not satisfy, resolutions will not either. Christ alone must be my joy — and all things must be counted as loss for knowing him. That is to say, none of the stress points listed above are likely to change any time soon. But would that they would be turned into ministers to me, reminding me that this world and other people are not my source of happiness. And more importantly, would stress points turn my eyes afresh to the Savior, who graciously opened my heart to love and know him that I might be truly happy in him alone. Jesus, not devices or resolutions, will satisfy the wanton heart.