What would happen if you suddenly lost all access to the spiritual and biblical resources hosted on the Internet? You would no longer have a Bible app on your phone or Sermon Audio. YouTube would no longer have sermons. There would be no livestreams of Sunday worship. The theological podcasts you enjoy listening to would be gone. Ministry websites and blogs upon which you’ve come to rely would no longer be available. What would you do? How would you access God’s Word?
I assume most of you still have a physical Bible, even if you read it more often on your phone or tablet. It might be cumbersome to carry that physical Bible around, but it wasn’t that long ago when this was your only option. I have lost track of how many small Bibles and pocket New Testaments have literally fallen apart and become loose leaf from riding in my back pocket over the years. I usually carry a Bible in my sling bag now; it reduces the wear and tear on the book, but they still become quite dog-eared and worn after being used every day for a while.
What if you did not have access to a physical Bible? Maybe carrying one around with you every day is inconvenient--though I would recommend the habit, even if you buy a cheap copy solely for that purpose. But there may be many different circumstances where you might not have a copy of the Scriptures with you. How much of God’s word could you access in those circumstances? How much do you know by heart? How much is actually memorized and not just verses you think you are familiar enough with to remember the sense? How many of the psalms could you sing? How much of the Sermon on the Mount could you recall? How many of God’s promises in the gospel could you repeat and ponder by memory alone?
What if there were no midweek emails from your pastor, no articles and essays shared during the week, no digital resources upon which you could rely? Have you collected significant books that will feed your soul and to which you can return again and again, always learning from them and never tiring of them? One of the games we play at the table with our children is to imagine you are stranded on a deserted island. The questions we pose vary, but the most common one involves what books you would carry. If you knew you would be there for ten years, without any human contact, if you already had a Bible, and your survival was taken care of (this is so the 10-year old does not have to include the SAS Survival Handbook as one of his choices), what three books might you take with you? Do you have those books already in your personal library? Are you already reading them, and re-reading them? Would it take being stranded on an island without our smartphone, tablet, and TV to make us put down our devices, pick up an edifying and important book, and read?
I expect we are still some ways away from losing all access to Christian Internet resources, but I doubt the wisdom and long term viability of building so much of our spiritual and devotional lives around resources that rely on an Internet connection and a battery. I am not against technology; I use a number of digital and Internet resources in my daily habits and weekly study routines. But if we are not acquainted with handling and navigating a physical Bible, if we do not have a significant amount of Scripture committed to memory, if we would be unable to sing praise and thanksgiving and lament if we could not stream our favorite Christian music, and if we have not fed and filled our minds and hearts with the great and glorious truths and stories which help us see God more clearly in this world, then we will find ourselves ill-prepared for a world where Christians are locked out of the Internet and all online orthodox resources are banned for spreading hate and violence. We will not be ready for real persecution, not just inconvenience but the kind where you find yourself in a re-education camp without a Bible of any kind.
This may be a good time to start memorizing one verse of Scripture and one catechism question and answer every week. Begin singing the same psalm (or a few stanzas of one of the longer psalms) in your daily worship for a month. It won’t be long before you have learned it by heart even without trying to do so. And read good literature, edifying literature, the kind of books and stories that will feed your soul. We need the blessing and help these habits will give us anyway, but they may be even more important to us in the future. --JME
