Our obsessive online habits tell us more than simply poor time management and psychological harms, they tell us about our soul’s longing for God. In this post I want to talk about our soul’s longing for God in social media and how only God ultimately can satisfy that longing.
Obsessed with Social Media
Every class, my 17–18-year-olds drop their phones in a holder and listen to my lecture. They then work in groups to discuss the material. Many finish early and chat, enjoying each other’s company. In the last few minutes, students often retrieve their phones, and the lively chatter quickly fades into silent screen-staring. This change is what Haidt calls “phone-based childhood,” where heavy phone use harms social and psychological well-being.
Our Soul’s Longing for God in Social Media
In a recent talk, I gave a biblical reframing of Jonathan Haidt’s excellent book, The Anxious Generation. Haidt asks why Gen-Z seek social media and why it causes so much harm. He notes that we all have a “God-shaped hole” in us that longs for transcendence, meaning, and worth. Social media capitalizes on this longing and fills it essentially with garbage. A steady diet of junk food leads our psyche to malnourishment and spiritual degradation. To be clear, Haidt himself is an atheist but finds it impossible to deny the deep longing in our heart for something like God.
Our Soul’s Longing for God in Awe in Nature
As an alternative to the junk food diet for our souls, Haidt mentions awe in nature as a spiritual practice that has plenty of data to show that it satisfies our spiritual longing. Seeing grand landscapes, like the Grand Canyon, or expansive fields of the stars, fill us up in a way that is irreplaceable. It is not hard to see how an obsessive phone-based existence takes us from these sorts of experiences.
Awe in Nature Filling Us with Delight
Haidt’s findings are on the right track. Why does nature fill us in this way? Why is it that nature has such a profound effect such that it fills us in this way? The Bible says that we are part of God’s creation and that God created everything good (Genesis 1). Creation from God is good. The Bible also says that nature declares the glory of God (Psalm 19). The reason why awe in nature fills us in the way that Haidt describes is that in awe of nature we finally get to see creation singing about its goodness and worth. Awe makes us listen to creation like we’re intently listen to a song because creation is a song. In awe we have a direct insight into the true nature of things as God has made them: that creation is good and it loves to sing of its goodness to the one that made it so.
Awe in Nature Filling Us with Sorrow
This is not the only effect of nature. In experiences of awe, nature also has another effect on us: sadness. Others have recognized the sort tinge of sorry that awe experiences bring with them—whether in nature or something else. Awe experiences of music are often like this, we it both delights us but also breaks our heart. The same occurs with awe in nature. C. S. Lewis puts the point this way in his sermon The Weight of Glory:
“At present, we feel we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and the beauty of the morning but they don’t make us fresh and beautiful. We cannot mingle with the splendors we see. We feel cut off from something.” (Weight of Glory)
The implication here is that Genesis 1 and Psalm 19 tells us half of this story. Half of the story that the world, nature, is singing the glory of God and calling us in. But it does not tell us how we can get in. When we look up from our phones and into nature, we finally see something that is truly beautiful and it speaks to our deepest spiritual longings. However, it does not tell us how to get into that radiant beauty that we see. The Bible says that at one level, we want to go in and this is why the awe of nature fills us. But at another level, we do not want to sing the song because we know that there is something flawed in us.1 {Keller Sermon}
Social Media’s Fails to Help us Sing
This flaw and lack of worth is evident in why social media is so powerful at captivating us: it feeds into our need to sing with creation that God has created something good and beautiful. We would not seek so much validation through social media if we were confident of our worth–we seek it because we know that we lack something. Our soul longs for God in social media but we cannot sing the song of our goodness like nature can. We are deeply flawed people and so we listen to the song that creation sings about its goodness and worth. But we cannot sing this song because we know of our own lack of freshness, beauty, and worth.
How to Sing with Creation
How can we begin to sing? The Bible tells us. In John 1 we read that in the beginning God made all things and then becomes part of his creation. The eternal was born. The immaterial spirit took on flesh. He dwelt among us as Jesus of Nazareth. He did this not so he could just hang out with us but so that his creation and his creatures could kill him. When he was on the cross before his death was complete, he looks up to the father to sing the song that we wish to sing, the song that creation sings, and God refuses to hear him. Christ is the only one of us who could sing of his worth and goodness. He’s the only one who could join with nature and sing, “You’ve made me good and worthy!” Yet, God did not hear him. God forsook Jesus’s song so that by accepting Christ’s worth, we could sing his song. Here is our deepest spiritual nourishment.
The greatest tragedy of our poor relationship with social media is not psychological, social, or even simply “spiritual”, it is cosmic, eternal, and evidence of our heart’s deepest longing to sing to its creator. Haidt is on the right track but does not go deep enough. The Great Rewiring puts on public display our desire for our worth and only through Jesus, will we sing of this worth with all of creation. Do you trust him for that? This is our fundamental hope.
Conclusion
The longings of the human heart are something we ignore to our peril. We must listen closely to it. In future posts I hope to explore more the longings of the heart, beauty, and what they point to in Christ.
- The song of creation and other metaphors came from Timothy Keller, The Song of Creation, Sermon, The Gospel According to God (New York, 2000), https://gospelinlife.com/sermon/the-song-of-creation/. ↩︎