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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Self-Centered Christianity

This past fall, I started my doctoral studies at Andrews University and my cohort emphasis is on family ministry.

And my project is focusing on mobile technology, which is primarily smartphones.

And it might morph into just only smartphones, but I'm also thinking laptops and tablets.

Mobile technology and how they are affecting family relationships and relational intimacy.

Oh, it's going to get up to a nice warm temperature today, that's wonderful.

Just to give you an idea, last year, 2014, 70% of all cell phone users were on a smartphone.

Also, in 2014, a huge shift occurred in internet usage.

Up until last year, everybody was using the internet on their PCs at home or their laptops or what have you.

Starting in 2014, the smartphone took the lead in internet usage across the board.

They said this is a mammoth shift in the world today.

85% of humans on the planet are in range of a cell phone tower.

This year, 2015, they expect that 2 billion people on the planet will be using a smartphone.

Facebook gets an average of 6000000000 like posts every day.

And with the smartphone comes constant alerts and pings and notices, and there's even some chemical processes in the brain, almost like a drug addiction.

When you get that ping, you get that high and you have to check it out and, oh.

As 1 book stated, we've never had a lifestyle that made screen communication the priority and made it acceptable behavior to ignore others.

Another book, Chapman and Pelican in their book, Growing Up Social, raising relational kids in a screen-driven world, they say this, in 2000, before the smartphone existence, the average person's attention span?

By 2014, our attention span has dropped by 40%, and now it's only 7 seconds.

Currently, our society is facing an extinction of monotasking.

The idea that as a parent I can be at the playground, but I can be plugged into work too.

Doing 1 thing at a time versus everything.

Giving one's full attention to a person or an experience.

And I know this has not been your experience, but generally speaking what we're seeing is that smartphones are hijacking family time, meal time, couple time, Time spent with God.

In fact, the majority of people check their phone as the last thing they do before going to bed and the first thing they do when they wake up.

And now in the age of Social media, the old adage used to be, know thyself.

Today with social media, it's been replaced with, show thyself.

This is what my dog did I thought was pretty cute.

You know, it amazes me how couples will put on their anniversary this long, rather intimate note to the other individual and post it on the World Wide Web.

You're the best wife a man can ever hope for and I'm so happy and they just go on and on and on I'm thinking why don't you just put a card on the pillow?

But no, they have to announce it to the whole world that I'm as happy as I can be Did you know that Facebook is a major contributor to divorces today?

All of a sudden, people are getting into contact with old friends, old boyfriends, old girlfriends.

They're feeling like their marriage is kind of at odds, and so here they're making emotional connections online.

And so that same couple that's convincing the world 3 weeks later, Oh, they're separated.

As a society, we have been trained that the customer is always right.

Everyone can be their own movie star on Facebook and control their image, their pictures, their posts, and they really have 1 common denominator, me.

Now, please don't hear what I'm not saying.

I get on Facebook from time to time and it can be a wonderful tool for good, but by and large, Could these things be making us more narcissistic, more self-centered, more independent?

Time Magazine seemed to think so just a few years ago.

Their cover story was a girl on the front taking a big selfie, and it said, the me, me, me generation.

They got a lot of flack for that from that generation.

But is it really a generation, Or is it kind of a new fad across the board?

And even in the church, we often think about how I want it to be, rather than what would best suit others.

So today people shop for a church based on things that they want.

Nice building, lots of programs, sophisticated worship service, instead of perhaps where they could be of greatest service.

What gifts do they have that they could bring to this church?

Everything's decided on popularity, on culture, and preference, rather than on Scripture and on mission and furthering the gospel in our sphere of influence.

People are no longer asking oftentimes what they can do for their church, But what can the church do for me?

Second Timothy 3 says, but know this, that in the last days perilous times will come for men will be lovers of what?

The Spirit of Prophecy tells us that sin originated in self-seeking.

Another place it says all sin is selfishness.

I want to read you an excerpt from Desire of Ages.

First chapter, first few pages, it's on 20 and 21.

It says, There is nothing but the selfish heart of man that lives for itself.

Nothing but the selfish heart of man that lives for itself.

Well, she goes on, no bird that cleaves the air, no animal that moves upon the ground, but ministers to some other life.

There's no leaf of the forest, no lowly blade of grass, but has its ministry.

Every tree and shrub, every leaf, pours forth the element of life, without which neither man nor animal could live.

And man and animal in turn minister to the life of the tree and shrub and leaf." So everything just kind of has its circle of life, sometimes we call it that.

The flowers breathe the fragrance and unfold their beauty in blessing to the world.

The sun sheds its light to gladden a thousand worlds.

The ocean itself, the source of all springs and fountains, receives the streams from every land but takes to give.

The mist ascends from its bosom, falling showers to water the earth that it may bring forth and bud.

And she later calls this process the circuit of beneficence, receiving to give.

That's how the universe was meant to function, until man comes along and his selfish heart that lives only for itself.

Kind of like the Dead Sea, It just continues to get saltier and saltier and saltier.

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Self-Centered Christianity

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