Gaining the whole world

Gaining the whole world, only to lose our whole soul. Is it possible to loose only a part of our soul? How much of it are we willing to give up?

• Your time = their money (This is the slogan of “minimalist” tech company light.)

What are we actually gaining from these devices? People spend a lot of time defending tech defending these social media giants. “We get more time, more efficiency, have to carry around less things” are often the responses I hear. But if we really think about it, is the stress induced by these devices and platforms actually worth the trade off for the trivial time they save us? What if we ditched them altogether? Sure it might be saving us an hour a day, but likely that extra hour we will spend back on the device, in another app or program anyways. Not to mention the stress we feel from the devices, being away from them, etc. My point is that, sure we might be gaining something from these things. In fact, it would be really hard to make an argument counter to the reality that we do. My point is that, if we spend so much time on what we gain, we end up forgetting about what we are losing in return. In this way the “one in one out” principle of minimalism is really at play. Whether we know if or not, whether we would acknowledge it or not, when we gain something in our life, that often means that we lose something else. We see this play out in changes in our identity. When we get married, our identity of singleness goes out the window. By stepping into a new job, we have to leave an old one. So there is some sacrifice required for these things that we gain. No matter how “helpful” or attractive they are, they still cost us something. A majority of the time it ends up costing us our money, data and time. The companies use these things, our attention to fuel this broader attention economy. Our info is sold, then we’re sold into the identities we think we are picking up by buying the products. But what if the thing we trade off is actually far more valuable than our time, money, privacy or data? What if we truly are trading our souls - our selves? The dehumanizing reality of technology makes this hard to track. In our society, the messages of dehumanization are more and more commonplace. Even in institutions, like the Church, that historically have been champions of life and its value. (And I’m not just talking about abortion here, but also our overall worldview, how we spend our time, etc.) What would it look like, for Christians in this digital - attention economy, to take back our souls? Or at least place them back into the loving arms of which they belong. What if we understood that gaining the whole world, even all the things and information, connection and affirmation that technology and media produces, is still not even remotely close to the value that we can find in being known by Jesus Christ.