Navigating Technology: Balancing Digital Life and Spirituality

"i think one of the reasons that studies would show that like depression discouragement suicide all those things increase with the use increase with the increased use of these things is because uh when you like like people i don't know if i can thoroughly explain this but it it has something to do with like people get a little bit of a high when somebody sends you a thumbs up when they give you a like when they uh when they send you a friend request when they um all those things but but um like on on social media you you only we're inclined to compare ourselves with each other and so everybody everybody is just posting their bests on their their sites even they're almost doing a performance right if they're if if they're videoing something that they're going to post with the whole world they're they're posting their their best they're not posting their their worst even if they post their failures they're posted in a way that makes it still seem like they're a good person handling handling their failure well or or whatever and and so you only see that part and then you compare yourself and you don't meet up with other people or all these things just take away from the reality of life" [00:44:11]

"i find it amazing sometimes how accurately how accurately they they name some of these things like face book that's exactly what it is you see the face of of people or even even www world wide web what is it it is a web that covers the whole world just like one great big spider web and yes it catches many people just like webs catch insects um i i've i've marveled at that in like other ways i marvel at it when i when i drive past the downstream casino and i think what a perfect name for a casino just downstream um oh and uh anyways some when when i think long about these things it just doesn't it it just makes me long for just you know old sages people people who can meditate who can think deeply without without even books let alone the internet makes me want people who actually have experience in life who have lobster claws for their hands and calluses on their knees and anyway i i just i just think it's good to be reminded of these things" [00:46:14]

"i just wanted to say that i agree with brother dwayne that when lloyd made the list um i i found myself cringing quite a bit like yeah there's there's there's a lot of room for improvement um and i do agree that obviously like i'll just i'll just use will yoder as an example i mean there there is there is a practical application to um to um owner operators that with a smart device but there are also there is there is an easy avenue to uh temptation there as well and uh and i also agree with dwayne what he said about um it's pretty easy to to say that like let's just okay let's just just pile them up and burn them like however then we would be building walls you know walls of safety around our children that are actually really false because once they get to a certain age that they would just explode out of that and and have no no good knowledge about the dangers of it uh to apply to life and so i think from the the things that i can take away from uh lloyd's discussion here was that more emphasis should be placed on on like that one researcher had said like you're the parent there there is no room for negotiation with the rules in the household set the boundaries this is the the household rules but the boundaries apply to you too like i mean the sons are gonna do what the father does and so um the uh yeah anyway lots of lots of room for um improvement in my life there" [00:49:47]

"i'm glad that i'm an older generation but even though i had tv growing up but i gave it up 40 years ago i just not as a christian i thought it was all about the me generation is i don't need it with this stuff i i have my own ego to deal with i don't have to watch television and and all that foolishness but um uh now it seems younger for the younger generation i don't know what you call them there but it's it's uh it seems as lloyd and dwayne and tyler what up it's it's harder on them it's we don't know where it's going but um some biblical thoughts i wrote down as would be um of course it seems to be entertainment and of the four soils the thorny soil was iraqi uh i mean that's a thorny authority the key cares and pleasures of the world and drowns out the truth and brother michael ostringer did a wonderful thing on the cell phone years ago it was great and i i it was long it's about six pages i read it michael ustringer and it was great and i don't know you know anyone really takes heed to it that much but it was great on the dangers of the cell phone i still have that and i i told michael i agreed which is about everything he said on it i used one for work gps but i've also looked at foolish things on there and you know if you look at one thing you call it artificial intelligence they will they will program other things to come up that you never asked for you know for example i uh someone at work said a young guy said there's a white basketball player named white chocolate look google them up and watch the video for thing so i can get every time i google i get about oh white chocolates different white chocolates and different basketball players and all i just did one time and i get a half dozen of these other things that you know how if you you let you let him in uh he can he'll give you six more demons in there something like that but uh and duane says it it does warp our thinking it wops it whops you thinking and tv when i was growing up it was you thinking okay this is a drunk does everyone laugh this is a homo lets everyone laugh you know the way the world thinks it whops our thinking so we would laugh at drunks we don't talk about the drunk that abused his his wife and the children go up in that family and how terrible a synod is are the homosexual who's going to be lost forever but we can laugh at sin by these you know these electronic vices the video how how evil it is and yet people we just poo poo we can poo poo that's how a drunk walks and that's how a homo walks and talks and it's evil it is so strong he is the roaring lion and he's trying so hard to to get us and that easy way is to through that i and you know i well maybe yesterday i worked a few dollars yesterday and someone went in to take a delivery they said i don't wanna go to that person they stiff you that means they don't tip you and uh i said well maybe it'll be bill gates maybe he'll give you a million dollars like this and well he's he's the richest guy and he said no he's not the richest guy don't you know who it is it's bezos it's he's amazon amazon's the richest right lloyd lehman that's it's all the the cell phone whatever if it's an amazon computer yeah so it's it's you know and i thought bill gates i guess he's he's probably in the pool you're not in the poor house but it's all about the internet or something like that but um osama said i will set no worthless thing before my eyes we should do that i mean we should do that helen keller she wrote if i had three days to see what you would see i don't think she'd put down in one of those days i want to go before a computer and look at all this this gobbledygook and all that stuff that's out there i mean we have our eyes we can see the constellations at night they declare the glory of god we don't have to look at a little screen and show okay this is this is ursa minor in ursa major and that is uh what do you call the oh the all these names for the stars you can look at the real thing in life face-to-face communication and i know we all know that but it's we need to we we need to go over that it's face-to-face communication i mean can you imagine if if max said to lisa before he proposed to he did it on the cell phone and then she said like that there was no face-to-face communication that that that's so you know can you imagine doing you know you just i mean this is so ridiculous and that's that's you know not just uh like that and uh uh brother dwayne's message dead to the world yeah we should be dead you know dead to the world in the sense that it's uh we don't care about the next thing my my wife likes to read every day i go to work i just thought okay here's the weather forecast for today and i'm not interested i'm not interested if a tornado comes i'll come back if it's a flood i won't come back you know i'm not going to work but she loves to tell me this is how it's going to be when you go out you know all the the last thing i said sarah i just don't want to know life has surprises let it be as it is but um one of the things in the old testament when uh remember the prophet dwayne knows that guster i guess most of you that the prophet he went before uh he said told another prophet yeah hit me over the head wound me and the other person didn't so he i don't know if he killed him or he struck him down but then he said another guy hit me over the head and so the private did and he hit the prophet over here and he wounded him in the bloody he put a kirchhoff on his neck then he went to ahab and he told ahab the story about there was a certain man who had a prisoner and and you know and i was to got him life and death but he escaped through my hands and what's the consequence and ahab says you know the rules it's your life for his and he said that yeah but i got busy here and there it was busy here and there so we get busy here and there with this foolish computer busy here and there and we're wasting the time today is the south the day of salvation that's not you know we redeemed the time like that and uh and then you didn't mention lloyd but of course you know from the doctors you know there's cacadian things that's when you sleep at night you're cacadian things tyler you can you get all upset when you watch that screen you get rhythms cacadian rhythms all messed up so you will have nightmares what is it kirk how do you mind saying am i saying it wrong cacadian rhythms circadian rhythms from boston i'm from boston we talk different and it's a cricket yeah and rest is messes up your sleep patterns and you can have wild dreams and all because you're cacadian and circadian things and and that's uh that's another one and uh i hope that you and javi lloyd you have less use for that you know the good old letter writing was a really it's a skill the letter writing and it takes time and patience and and that's that's really something and um the uh yeah the ethanol electronic gadgets um uh that's it's uh it's trying to one of them is to try to beat the curse you know as far as work by the sweat of your brow you know it's not just you know any type of electronic you know things try to beat the you don't want to be a ditch digger or all that you you want use the forklift and all the other thing and so it is with these quote mind things it's trying to i didn't read it but i knew it was a a book called the brave new world right the brave new world talks about america or any country will be destroyed from within they're going to be destroyed by their toys the toys and the cell phone can be a toy and it also can be an access you see one bad picture of a woman and then pornography can come in and you know for anyone who who who had that problem that can do it it's a it's a bad thing for all of us all men even me you know a guy if we could i could look at that and say hey that's not and look at that and so it is a danger it's a it is a poison to be avoided over those certain things and but there is good technology and bad technology as brother dwayne and all brothers said but anyway we need that lord that we need a lesson like that because uh satan is trying to destroy us our families i guess that's why the amish they didn't like tv because it keeps keeps one person in one room one person in the other room went right and you wouldn't have your family time together you wouldn't eat together you wouldn't have devotions together you couldn't sing together and that's what were you amish yeah and that's one of the reasons for the tv but this is ten times worse the cell phone and yet you know we can gobble it up like a like a fish and we don't have anything to you know to uh to say about it satan satan gets an a plus that's not let's be aware of his devices and i really think that michael ostringer did a good one on the cell phone correct me if i'm wrong i'm too radical and still i'd be magnified i appreciated the message but i i think i appreciate the recommendation for smashing or burning but that's just me i know that there's a lot of practical things that have been done with the cell phone but it seems like at some point there's a natural separation of uh of these things like the world is going to head to the furthest point uh like as lloyd said in his uh sermon that that we're just the guinea pigs and right now like uh anyways i i just remember this it was this um commercial that i saw on television before i stopped really watching tv and it was uh it was actually an apple apple phone um commercial and uh on one side of the street they showed all these people who lined up down the sidewalk and they were they were grayed out and looked like they had all these old style clothing and and stuff on it and then and then they they zoomed over real fast to this other corner and there was there's all these people and they're lined up to get the apple phone and and they were like they had color and they were happy and they were they were doing great and i i just noticed that um as time has moved on that you cannot use your your older phones like they little by little weed them out they they give you bad updates and and it starts to make it more difficult to use it like you can't just like i i could hardly even use uh a flip phone when i had it for the functional purpose of just calling or receiving text message so i i'm saying like somehow i feel like there's going to be there's going to be a separation thank you brothers for sharing your uh your thoughts thank you uh lloyd for being brave enough to speak on a subject that uh probably was by and large researched on the very subject you were speaking about that takes bravery the lord the lord protects you um but nevertheless i'm grateful for brothers that are willing to talk about these things and and uh seek the lord in them um just to add a few points uh one one point to your to your pluses to your good side the tremendous amount of time that we can save that i save per day um with a device adds up quite quite profoundly surprisingly it's amazed me um what are you going to do with that time that was the question that really struck me what are you gonna do when you're bored when you got nothing else to do when you've got all your work done in an hour and a half that normally would have took almost a whole day connecting with people figuring out where they are what's going on what do they need you can whip through that in no time with the proper infrastructure so what are you going to do whether you have saved time with that device or whether you are as david and the old testament i don't think i don't think the smartphone was his downfall it was a good people that could handle whatever he needed done and afforded him with extra time um you can create the same scenarios in uh in a lot of situations what are we going to do with that extra time um let's let's invest that wisely and our families and our brotherhood we have a we have a site where i can connect with all my drivers as a group within seconds check in on everybody doesn't bother me i'm not looking for interpersonal relationships necessarily the fact that we have a group where we do that as brethren that does bother me um i i must confess that that we we're content with with checking in on each other that's shallow it does bother me a brother sends out a message you know i would anybody be interested in going witnessing as far as i could tell there was no response um had we have talked with each other about that we could have maybe stirred up in each other a desire to go witnessing i could have asked her brother i mean yes i would have liked to go witnessing but i'm carrying a touch of flu is it a good idea to go or isn't it so let's be careful let's be very very careful on that level business is business and but brotherhood relationships family relationships are way more important than business there's there's no there's no trade-off um if we're using technology and we're efficient in our business let's use that for an opportunity to invest in our in our other relationships if you've saved a lot of time not having to call every one of your drivers then take that time and call a brother converse and stir each other up in the faith that's what we're here for the lord be praised yeah i wanted to share my appreciation for the for the thoughts too and a lot of what was been shared uh by all the brothers not sure if i can actually share my thoughts thoroughly or well enough but um i had to think of my memory started going back into what i could know about technology and and then like my grandparents they hardly had any at all and the basic the basic pattern of of the home where my grandparents and my parents came from would have been like you get up in the morning and and you work um do your chores and you eat breakfast and whatever different families did our my dad never had any any kind of bible reading or devotions we went to church for that and but i think other families might have spent some time in anyways then in the four noon there'd be work and there's there's no cell phones of course in at noon it'd be lunch time and then i thought of my uncle he would sit down and read the newspaper every after every meal not every meal but after lunch meal um and my dad kind of did that too in the family life and in our home got red and we didn't have a lot of newspapers in our home but sometimes we did get a for short time but usually we didn't have the newspaper that much so uh so how do we use how do we use yeah so are we using our time in a working manner with whatever we have uh my time my thoughts also went back to on in the past asylum gomorrah or they they had no technology to my knowledge minds were filled with wickedness i grew up not being trained in that my mind was full of wickedness very harmful it's um technology is an easier route maybe in many ways of these these wicked things but the warning i would have about that just because we don't have a certain thing we're not very safe we're not there's really not any safety for us and doesn't mean that we should not care about what these cell phones are doing i i just i see these patterns that were shared and i i agree with them i i think we do well to to discipline ourselves as much as possible so i could think if maybe if we get different jobs uh we could come up with a fairly safe solutions here and there we would have a lot more strength we would have more time to think with more more time to fellowship we could maybe work together as a community and maybe more efficient um who's willing to sell all they have and do this um these are these are questions that go through my mind and i'm not i'm saying this not because i think we should be doing that but i'm saying this because we think there's safety in something that is perhaps not so safe again i agree with all these patterns i see um so i'm not sure if i'm i'm not sure if i'm making myself clear" [00:52:29]