Is Your Smartphone Shaping Your Soul? A Warning for Modern Christians – Highlight Episode 374

Phones have become powerful shapers of attention, habits, and spiritual health in everyday life. Ray, E.Z., Mark, and Oscar explore how digital tools, while not inherently evil, can easily drift into addiction and function as substitutes for stillness, prayer, and dependence on God. They discuss how social media is intentionally designed to capture attention, rewire desires, and normalize sin through constant stimulation, comparison, and distance. The guys also examine the relational and emotional costs, including loneliness, anxiety, and the loss of meaningful face-to-face interaction. Throughout the conversation, they offer practical steps for reclaiming attention, setting boundaries, and modeling healthy habits at home. Ultimately, the call is to fight distraction with intentionality, examine the heart honestly, and choose to let Christ shape daily rhythms rather than a screen.

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Learn more about the hosts of this podcast.
Ray Comfort
Emeal (“E.Z.”) Zwayne
Mark Spence
Oscar Navarro

Transcript

From Boxes To Awe

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You know, we live in these boxes in our brains that we don't go outside of them. And like when you give yourself the opportunity to gaze even upon God's creation, it creates space for awe and worship. And we just get in our ruts and our routines, just our head always down. Looking, I mean, you know, it's proverbial now, but you go out in public and everyone, you see family sitting at dinner at a restaurant, everyone's looking down, you know? And again, we're not saying it's it's wrong to use your phones. They're gifts, they're a blessing. But are we so regimented in that habit that we don't break away and discover things that we lost like a long

Phones As Gifts With Boundaries

SPEAKER_01 0:35

time ago?

SPEAKER_02 0:35

We need to put boundaries on our phone because it refuses to put boundaries on itself, right? And I forget who it was it that said that there's blessing within the boundaries of God's precepts, right? If you if you want to be blessed by God, you have to stay within his boundaries. Yeah, you can't go outside of those boundaries to find fill in the blank, right? Uh, Luke chapter 8, verse 14, it describes those choked by the cares and the riches and the pleasures of life. Notice it says choked, it doesn't say smothered or stabbed or struck, it's choked slowly, silently, without drama, right? It's not gonna argue with you. So, how do we now win this fight with our phones? Just one step at a time, right? Because it wants to distract you from prayer and from reading and from learning. And we we maybe we disguise it as learning. I don't know if you guys are kind of like me. Like I in my Instagram, I will save posts and I'll put them inside of a folder, and I will get to that folder on working out someday, right? And in the meantime, that folder is called maybe uh arms or chest or legs, and it's filled with like a hundred different uh videos that I will never, ever, ever get to.

SPEAKER_03 1:53

So it's it's one one thing at a time.

Choked By Cares, Slowly

SPEAKER_03 1:56

There's an addiction that I can feel with it. I I may have mentioned this before many years ago on the podcast. When I was in I was in Australia with Sue, way back when I was 20 years old, my uncle took me to a casino and I tried one of those one-armed bandits. You know what a one-arm bandit is? Do you slot machine? Yeah, it's before I don't think they've still got them. I think they're more automated. But I I just felt that and I I put my money in them and went and stopped. And I just couldn't, yeah, for about five minutes there, I was absolutely addicted. My point is, my phone, especially on shorts, has that same feeling of addiction. I cannot stop sometimes. Yeah.

Addiction And The Slot Machine Parallel

SPEAKER_03 2:34

One after the other. And I have to pull myself together and say, stop this. This is not redeeming the time. This is wasting time.

SPEAKER_01 2:40

Yeah. I mean, Mark, while phones can actually help our spiritual disciplines, I mean, I I use my phone constantly for you know the word, for researching things spiritually, all kinds of stuff. But but it can, on the other hand, be detrimental. If it's on the other hand. In terms of our spiritual disciplines.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

For sure. You know, it's kind of quietly becoming our becoming our functional God, right? It's the first thing we check in the morning, it's the last thing we look at before we go to bed. You know, think of King David. He said, Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things and give my life in your ways. You know, if if David needed that prayer to turn away his eyes from looking at wicked, worthless things, how much more? And he didn't have a smartphone, right? How much more us. So I think that anything, something rather, is always trying to vie for your time, vie for your attention, trying to grab a hold of you. And it is studying you

Designed To Hook Your Brain

SPEAKER_02 3:36

and it knows you, it knows what you like. You can see that through the algorithms and the things that begin to show up.

SPEAKER_00 3:43

I want to go back to something that Ray was talking about because it's it's really important and true. And that is social media was created, and for that matter, the the version of the internet that we are experiencing now was created to be addictive. Uh, and and many people now, many engineers have have left andor retired from places like Facebook and Google, and they've come out and written books and now regret the work that they did. And one of the things they focus on, as a matter of fact, I don't know if you knew this or not when you mentioned this, but they focused on the reality that they actually looked at casino behavior and slot machines and the way that they created the uh experiences that we have on our phones. And so one of the things for them was endless scrolling, so you never feel like you're finished or got to the bottom. Another one is like little dopamine hits of satisfaction so it feels like you're accomplishing something. Little noises, little noises, little like the color of the hearts that you see, everything is designed to give you the right kind of dopamine hit at the right time to keep you engaged and dedicated to it.

Using Tech For Good Without Manipulation

SPEAKER_02 4:51

So, how how do we utilize this for God's glory?

SPEAKER_03 4:56

And seriously, should we use the dopamine principle for the gospel? Could we, in righteousness, use those principles?

SPEAKER_00 5:04

Maybe. I think it depends on how. I would say it like this. Imagine if somebody was like, I want to share the gospel with all my friends, so I'm gonna invite them to a bar and buy them shot after shot after shot, and I'm gonna get them intoxicated and they're gonna have a great time, and I'm gonna preach the gospel to them. We would say, by any means necessary, but not that mean. Right. That's sin, right? And so, in that same way, if we're using the same kind of tactics and behavior that entice dopamine hits, that entice tribalism, I think we need to be cautious. I think we ought to use our phones and social media for the sake of the gospel, but I think we have to be cautious to not parrot the ways of the world while doing that.

SPEAKER_03 5:51

I think you that you're you're right. There was a church that started that became very, very popular about 20, 30 years ago that put that principle into practice. The pastor went to the neighbors and said, What would you like to see in your local church? And he instigated those principles. Wow. And we we know who that church is, I think.

SPEAKER_01 6:08

Yeah. Well, you know, there is, I I want to say there is that principle though of tact and wisdom with

Practical Guardrails And Scripture First

SPEAKER_01 6:15

the loss. I mean, that's the whole, that's the whole uh concept of be fishers of men. You know, we we're catching men, and there's wisdom in what ways we do that. I think again, as long as it's not manipulative, it's it's not playing on their emotions, it's not ungodly or sinful, but there's nothing wrong with with uh you know dressing people in such a way to where it piques interest and it's not boring and it's you know and it's uh it's stimulating to their heart and mind because our faith is an intelligent faith. Just some things I came across too that that uh you can do Sabbath from screens, like to say, hey, this weekend, I'm just not touching my phone, I'm just gonna make that commitment, or I'm gonna go a day without my phone, turning off notifications, putting the phone to bed before you go to bed, uh establishing scripture before screen. No Bible, no breakfast, no scripture, no screen.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

You think about the people though really quick. People go, Well, I need my phone as an alarm. Yeah, go back and get yourself an alarm. Five bucks on Amazon, right?

SPEAKER_01 7:13

Yeah, using real Bibles and devotions to avoid digital drift, you know. So many things to do, guys. Uh the key is

Integrity, Accountability, And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 7:21

honoring the Lord, you know, examining our hearts, having integrity, and caring. Like you gotta care. You can't just be like, uh, whatever, I like it, I don't care. Just do some time of like soul searching. Ask your wife, ask your kids. We hope uh this is this is encouraged all of you friends listening out there. Um, that there's yeah, there's a way. You don't have to, you don't have to get stuck in the in the craziness. So thank you for tuning in to this week's highlights from the Living Waters podcast. Friends, we value your time. So we've created a bite-sized version of our podcast for listeners who want to get equipped

Highlights Format And Full Episode Invite

SPEAKER_01 7:58

without the jokes and fellowship. Be sure to check out the full episode every Thursday where we dive deeper into the topic. Until then, you can watch the full podcast episode available now on livingwaters.tv.