This week, multiple news outlets reported that the National Transportation Safety Board is now recommending that each state enact a law banning the use of mobile phones by drivers.
As someone born and raised in the United States, I reflexively cringe when someone wags their finger in my face and tells me not to do something that I might want to do. I especially cringe when that “someone” is from the government. And I cringe even if what is being forbidden is something that I know that I shouldn’t be doing. It’s not the healthiest of reactions, but it’s a product of the culture in which I’ve been raised.
Once I settled down, I began thinking about what the proper Christian response should be to the whole texting-while-driving phenomenon. On the surface, it seemed obvious: the government should butt out, but on the other hand, we shouldn’t need the government to proscribe something as manifestly foolish and dangerous as using mobile phones in the car.
Full disclosure: this is a subject that I struggle with myself. I am constantly fussing with my phone in the car, and constantly having to swat my own hand down away from my HTC Trophy and back onto the steering wheel. I struggle with this, sometimes mightily. I know better, and yet I keep failing.
But the more I reflected on this, the more I see that this problem – my problem – of texting while driving is evidence of several larger spiritual problems at work in our culture, and that not only endanger our cars, but our souls.
Materialism
This life has been given to you for repentance; do not waste it on other things.
- St Isaac of Syria
Earth you are, and to earth you shall return.
- Gen. 3:19 (LXX)
That we so willingly endanger our lives to update our Facebook status illustrates the relative importance of Facebook compared to our own physical safety. We have become immersed in a culture of materialism, defined – and mastered – by the toys and technologies around us. We can’t put this stuff down, no matter the cost. And we hardly give it a second thought.
I see this as a natural extension of our materialistic culture. Our culture has become founded upon raw consumption. From the endless barrage of advertisements, to politicians, to the encouragement of our friends and family, we are nudged at every turn to buy and use more crap than we could possibly need. Crap to fill our houses, crap to fill our faces, crap to fill our computers, crap to fill our brains. In theory, the steady stream of dollars from the purchase of all this crap keeps the jobs growing, the wages flowing, and the engine of society humming. Of course, we have to use this crap. As a result, devices are constantly at our fingertips. Spotify, Facebook, a music library, Angry Birds, and a thousand friends just a few fingertaps away. We cannot separate ourselves from them.
The old joke is that you never see a hearse pulling a U-Haul. But you never see its occupant updating his Facebook status, either. As St Isaac noted above, this life was given to us for repentance, not the pointless acquisition of stuff. A life of repentance and a life of materialism are mutually exclusive. Focusing our attention on “stuff” diverts our attention from Christ. If we are so engrossed in our devices and toys that we’re not even willing to be bothered with our own physical safety, then our spiritual safety is not even on our radar screen. If our hands are full of toys, we have no hands free to offer up to God:
We cannot live a life of prayer, we cannot go ahead Godwards, unless we are free from possession in order to have two hands to offer and a heart absolutely open…
- Met Anthony (Bloom), Beginning to Pray, p. 43
Pride
Every time I use my cell phone in the car, I not only put myself in danger, but I emperil everyone around me. Even worse, I risk causing serious emotional trauma to the families and friends of those other drivers, each of whom would be devastated if their loved one became killed or grievously injured as a result of my mobile phone use.
Yet I do it anyway. Why? Because I have decided that what I’m doing is important – evidently more important than the safety of those around me. My Facebook friends, my Spotify playlist, and my conference call are far more important than your life.
Each of those other drivers and their families are, like all others on earth, living Icons of Christ. By endangering them, I am endangering Christ. By disregarding their safety and comfort, I am disregarding Christ:
“Then they also will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them, saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’” And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.
- Mt. 25:44-45 (NKJV)
Noise
Then there’s the noise. Our inability to put down the mobile devices in the car is a symptom of our need to be constantly entertained wherever we go. The tweets, status updates, text messages, and whatnot that pour in through those devices are merely a form of entertainment, and add to the cacophany of “noise” that surrounds us wherever we go. There must be music playing (preferably our own music from our own collection or playlist), or a TV in the background, or a video game within easy reach. Every device must have Angry Birds and Netflix inside. Every office PC has a Facebook page open in some browser window. The car stereo occupies the place of honor in the center of every car’s console. Many people cannot even fall asleep without a TV or music droning on “white noise” in the background.
Smartphones and other mobile devices merely fuel our need for “noise” – both audible and visual. But with all of this noise – with all of these status updates, tweets, games, and garbage flying past our faces – how are we going to actually hear anything? How are we going to hear God? How are we going to pray?
Be still, and know that I am God.
- Ps. 45:10 (LXX)
More than all things love silence: it brings you a fruit that tongue cannot describe. In the beginning we have to force ourselves to be silent. But then there is born something that draws us to silence. May God give you an experience of this “something” that is born of silence. If only you practice this, untold light will dawn on you in consequence … after a while a certain sweetness is born in the heart of this exercise and the body is drawn almost by force to remain in silence.
- St. Isaac of Syria
It is not out of words that prayer is born: prayer is not merely the sum of our requests addressed to God. Before being pronounced, prayer must be heard within one’s heart. All true masterpieces of music and poetry were not simply composed out of disconnected letters or sounds: they were first born in the depths of their authors’ heart, and were then incarnate in words or musical tones. Prayer is also creative work, born out of a deep stillness, out of concentrated and devoted silence. Before embarking upon the path of prayer, one must inwardly fall silent and renounce human words and thoughts.
- Met. Hilarion
Inattention
Lastly, there is the spiritual danger of inattention. When I’m driving my car with a cell phone in one hand, and a cup of coffee in the other, and try to pretend that it does not impair my driving, I am fooling myself. By trying to do so many things at once, I do none of them well. My attentiveness and focus with respect to both tasks is diminished.
This sort of multitasking isn’t limited to the car. At home, we carry on conversations with our spouses with a dinner plate in front of us, the TV blaring, and an iPad our laps. At work, we plod through our tasks on our office PC’s with Twitter and Facebook running in the background and earbuds dangling around our neck.
In other words, we have come to have our mind in so many places at once, that we don’t know how to keep it in just once place. We don’t know how to pay attention anymore.
This is spiritually dangerous, because meaningful prayer requires attentiveness, or else it’s just empty words:
Prayer requires the inseparable presence and cooperation of the attention. With attention prayer becomes the inalienable proeprty of the person praying; in the absence of attention it is extraneous to the person praying. With attention, it bears abundant fruit; without attention it produces thorns and thistles.
- St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, The Arena, p. 70
If you cannot be attentive to the words you say, why should God?
- Met. Anthony (Bloom), Beginning to Pray, pp. 49-50
In Closing
Pray for me, please – as I noted, this is something I struggle with. At the end of the day, the issue of whether or not an actual legal prohibition on using a mobile phone in a car is wise is really besides the point. As a Christian, I shouldn’t be doing it. And that’s where it has to start.
