
1. My last sibling (my brother) left home for college.
2. My parents got me a personal computer for Christmas.
Another tidbit that would be pertinent to the point of this post would be that I was always the guy in school who had a lot of acquaintance friendships, but few, if any, good and lasting "let's go out this weekend" friendships.
So finding myself an only child, with few friends from school, and a nice computer in my room, I began to spend decent amounts of time on the computer...
...and I haven't stopped since. Twelve years (almost half of my life) later, I spend several hours a day most days on the computer. Lots of the time, I am quite productive. Lots of the time, I am very unproductive.
The computer has led me to some glorious things - I am quite adept with a number of computer programs that greatly add to my life and my ministry and with a wealth of information, history, pictures, music, and even surface friendships at the push of my fingertips, I have been a better person because of the computer.
But the computer has also led me to some vices - from a hard-gripping addiction to pornography, to a lesser-hurtful but worthy-of-notice addiction to games, to some fruitless and needless web browsing, I have been a worse person because of the computer.
I don't expect everyone to understand what I'm doing. But as I replace this time in my life - just for a week - with even more of what I want to do (reading, prayer, family, visiting people in my NSCC community), I hope that I am a better person.
I'll catch ya on the flip side.
Merry Christmas and may you and I both find Christ even more in the New Year.
F&TC,
- J
thats a long sabbath man! when you coming back?
ReplyDeleteI am also having a hard time with my dependence on this/these machines. When I think about my computer crashing, breaking or exploding, it frightens me how much it...frightens me. Does that make sense?
ReplyDeleteAlso now that I am (what I like to call, "inter-netted") using the computer to do ALL of my communicating, I can't imagine what I would do without it. A Sabbath is a great idea. Gambatte! (good luck or do your best)