The internet is a minefield—there is no doubt about it. For every blessing it brings (and there are many) there seem to be innumerable dangers. For every relationship forged and strengthened, there is another damaged or destroyed. For every minute of time saved through some great technological advance, there are hours wasted in distraction and procrastination. For every good use, there are uncounted evil uses. Such is the fate of technology in the hands of sinful human beings.

Earlier this year John Naish, a British journalist, released a book titled Enough (which does not seem to be widely available in the United States). He subtitled the book, “Breaking free from the world of more.” He uses the book to encourage people to stop when they have enough—enough stuff, enough food, enough work, enough information. There were parts of the book I thought were much better than others; one part I thoroughly enjoyed was his discussion about information and the incredible volume of information we are exposed to today. In one part of this chapter he writes about his approach to tackling information overload. I thought I’d share that with you.

It involves fighting—and here’s my own new word—infobesity, by restricting one’s data diet. There are compelling reasons. The glut of information is not only causing stress and confusion; it also makes us do irrational things such as ignore crucial health information. The British Government’s latest survey on our food-buying patterns shows that while we are given more information than ever about healthy eating, our consumption of fresh food has fallen. This is partly because we are too busy getting and spending to enjoy the simple pleasures of cooking. But Catherine Collins, of the British Dietetic Association, says that info-overload is often to blame for this food-choice paradox: “We are so informed that we can’t be bothered.” That’s a fantastic slogan for the twenty-first century. We are so wired to gather information that often we no longer do anything useful with it. Instead of pausing to sift our intake for relevance and quality, the daily diet of prurient, profound, confusing and conflict information gets chucked on to a mental ash-heap of things vaguely comprehended. Then we rush to try to make sense of it all…by getting more.

As I read this, I thought of the Golden Labrador Retriever (i.e. Golden Lab), that ridiculous (but family-friendly) breed of dog that has a far bigger stomach than brain. The Lab, or at least the Labs I’ve known, cannot be trusted around found. They will eat until they are sick, throw up, and eat some more. Indefinitely. Some dogs have more common sense; they will eat for a while and save a portion of their food for another time. Not so the Lab. It will eat, and eat, and eat.

I do wonder if we are this way with information today—we eat and eat and eat, never pausing to digest, rarely showing any sensible moderation.

It’s a question you’ve probably asked. Why is it that when you are looking for a house, driving slowly down a darkened street straining to see the numbers on the fronts of the homes or on the mailboxes at the end of the driveways, you automatically turn down the car radio? Why do you need silence when focusing, concentrating? You do so, I suppose, because you instinctively know that music and voices are a distraction. You know on a subconscious level that you cannot focus as well on the task at-hand when there is noise in the background. Noise is a distraction.

I find that when I am writing, and especially writing something that requires deep thought and consistent logic, I need to remove background distractions, whether that means I turn down the music playing from my computer or close the door to my office to drown out the sounds of squabbling or playing children. I do this without thinking about it. As I strain to collect my thoughts and to put words to them, I automatically turn down the music (as I did just now). I am often surprised, when I have finished my writing, to find that the music has been turned off or the door has been closed. I may have no recollection of doing so. It must be a natural reaction.

Many years ago I heard a sermon, one of the few I remember from my younger days, in which the pastor suggested that we try turning off the stereos in our cars, especially when we are driving alone, and spend the time thinking or praying. He had apparently developed the practice of praying aloud when driving alone. It earned him some bemused looks from other drivers who saw him talking, apparently to himself, but because he found it a beneficial practice he swallowed his pride and continued to talk to God. I guess this was in the day before bluetooth headsets; today it seems as if every driver is talking to himself. I often make a decision—and it has to be a deliberate decision since I am accustomed to pressing the “play” button immediately after starting the car—to turn off the radio or MP3 player when I drive. I have found such times extremely valuable. My mind can process things and mull things over far better where there is silence. This is particularly true if the song I might be listening to is one that is familiar to me as then, whether I am aware of it or not, I tend to sing along. It is hard to think deeply when singing!

In our culture we have allowed ourselves to become notoriously busy. And all the time, while we are busily going through life, there is a great deal of “noise” in the background of our lives. It may be music that plays when we drive, when we work and when we play. It may be a television that is turned on every time we have a few minutes to spare. Perhaps when we find fifteen empty minutes between picking the kids up from school and beginning to cook dinner we watch an episode of Judge Judy or catch a re-run of The Simpsons. The background noise may be a Blackberry that constantly beeps and buzzes as it receives emails or stock quotes, even when we are far away from the office. It may be a cell phone that keeps customers or employees in contact with us even on weekends and holidays.

It seems to me that, as society continues to move in its current direction, and as we become ever more “wired,” Christians have to be increasingly deliberate about moderating and perhaps removing some of this ever-present background noise. If we are to be thinking people, people who think deeply and deliberately about spiritual matters, we simply cannot allow our lives to be overshadowed by the noise of technology.

I wonder how much we miss because of our busyness. I am often challenged to think just how much of life I miss while I check my email for the seventh time in a given evening or while I follow along online with a football game that I really don’t care about. Technology, it seems, is a great distractor. Technology sticks its foot in the door of so many areas of my life. When I sit down to read to my children we may be interrupted by a phone call. As we head outdoors to play, I may do a quick check of my email and spend fifteen minutes typing out a reply that could easily wait until the next day; and then, while I play with the children, I am distracted, mulling over what I might have or should have said. Maybe we duck out of church before the time of fellowship is complete so we will have time to get home, make a sandwich and fluff the cushions on the couch before kickoff time.

Truthfully, I cannot think of anything that distracts us so fully and completely and consistently as technology. For too many of us, technology is a master and not a servant. It is our owner, not our possession. We let it run and rule our lives. We allow technology to determine the course of our lives, taking us where it leads. We determine our schedules with TV Guide in one hand, a Blackberry calendar in the other. We invest countless hours in online friendships, many of which are shallow and insignificant, while ignoring people in our local churches and communities. Perhaps while ignoring even our own families.

Technology is a great servant but an evil master. Technology is proof of the greatness and grace of God and something we ought to be thankful for. But why, then, have so many of us allowed it to rule and govern our lives? Why do we allow it to play such an important, transcendent role in our lives and in our families?

It may be as simple as escapism. Technology, and especially its many applications to entertainment, provide unparalleled opportunities to escape from reality, even if only for a few minutes. Through technology we can leave the drudgery of our lives to listen to music that glorifies freedom or to watch television or film where what happens is far more thrilling than what we experience at home and in the office. The purpose of much of modern technology is to allow us to take our entertainment with us no matter where we go. MP3 players allow us to take thousands or tens of thousands of songs with us in the car or on the train. Video iPods allow us to escape from work or school for a few minutes by watching (ironically enough) The Office or unlimited amounts of pornography. Portable DVD players allow us to keep the children quiet in the car while we take a vacation. No matter who or where we are, we can use technology as a brief escape.

Perhaps we use technology to hide. Maybe we hate to be alone with our thoughts. We have become so accustomed to constant noise that, like a baby who can only sleep in a room with a white noise machine softly humming, we can barely stand the sound of silence. Maybe we have lost the ability to think or even the desire to think, and so we anesthetize our intellects, we lull them into inactivity, by replacing them with noise.

Maybe we need constant noise from the cell phone or laptop so we feel like we are accomplishing anything. Perhaps we have bought into the lie that we need to be accomplishing something significant—something that either pays the bills or leaves us with another bill to pay—at all times. And so we take phone calls during dinner and answer emails in church. We check email compulsively and work while we should be resting.

Or it could be that we prefer the anonymity and safety of online relationships, relationships that allow us to be almost exhibitionist in what we reveal about ourselves, all the while hiding behind a mask of secrecy. We would rather tell our deepest secrets to strangers on the other side of the continent, strangers we know only by their online personas, than find and nurture deep and lasting friendships close to home.

We are busy. We are distracted. Too often we hide behind the noise. As Christians we need to ensure that we are mastering the noise, not allowing it to master us. We need to be in control of our cell phones, Blackberries, laptops and inboxes. We can and often should use this technology, but we must not allow it to control us.

I posted an article like this one in the past and did so only with great trepidation. Yet today (during the lowest-traffic day of the year) I will do so again in the hope that you’ll be willing to give my motives the benefit of the doubt. I write about this not for my benefit but for the benefit of my fellow bloggers. With Christmas fast approaching, the timing just seemed right.

I first wrote about this subject when I was the guest on a radio program and received a call from a reader of this site who asked an interesting question. He wanted to know how he, as someone who reads the blog, could serve as an encouragement to me. I thought it was a good and kind question and one I answered the best I could “on the spot.” Today I want to address it a little bit more. This could so easily be seen as self-serving, so I do encourage you to take anything you learn here, head to another blog, and apply it there!

Bloggers, or at least the bloggers who have sites that convey valuable information, typically put in a lot of work for very little tangible reward. It’s the nature of blogging, I guess. While I’ve heard that the big-name bloggers—the one whose sites draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each day—can make a handsome living doing what they do, I’ve also heard that even they make relatively little. I tend to believe the latter. The blogosphere, at least in my experience and at least as it pertains to “amateurs” like myself, has not yet found a great way of generating substantial income. Lots of people place advertisements on their sites, either banners or Google AdWords, but these tend, at least in most cases, to generate only small streams of revenue, especially since site costs increase with site traffic. As revenue goes up, so too do costs.

Thankfully, most bloggers do not blog for the financial benefits. Christian bloggers in particular work for the higher ideal of furthering their own faith and serving the church. As they do this, they can always use a bit of encouragement. This article is geared primarily towards Christian bloggers, though most of it is applicable more widely. Let me provide just a few ways you can be an encouragement to the bloggers whose sites you enjoy.

Leave a Comment. This is likely the easiest thing you can do but it can be very encouraging, especially for people whose blogs do not receive a great deal of traffic. Simply leave a comment, noting that you read and enjoyed the article. If you feel there was a problem with the article, leave a rational comment and the reason you disagreed. Just knowing that an article is being read can be a real blessing to a blogger.

Send a Note of Encouragement. Short of leaving a comment, this is probably the easiest thing you can do. Find the person’s email address or contact form and send him a brief note, mentioning that you enjoy reading his blog (and perhaps why you enjoy the blog) and encouraging him to continue seeking the Lord.

Pray for Them. I find that the greatest source of encouragement is to know that people are praying for me. Of course it is always a blessing for a Christian to know that another person is holding him up before the throne of grace, but I think in the case of blogging is also stands as validation that his efforts are sufficiently significant that they are worth praying for. So pray for a blogger and drop him a note to let him know that you’re doing so.

Tell Someone Else About the Site. When you find a site that you enjoy and that has been a source of encouragement to you, tell other people about it. While most bloggers will say (and, in most cases, truly mean) that they do not much care how many people read their site, it is an encouragement to see more people gravitate to a blog. So tell your friends!

Look For Affiliate Links. Many bloggers join affiliate programs through Amazon, Monergism Books, Westminster Books, and other stores. This means that we typically receive a small commission (of about 6 or 7%) on any item you purchase after clicking a link from the blog to the store. So if a blogger posts a link to a product on Amazon and you click on the link and then purchase the product, the blogger will receive as reward a small percentage of that amount. Also, the blogger will often receive a similar percentage of anything else you purchase during that session. This is unlikely to generate a great deal of revenue, but even a gift certificate that allows the blogger to purchase a couple of books per month is a nice little bonus. So when you are thinking of shopping at Amazon or another store, find an affiliate and enter the storefront through that person’s link. This is a simple but effective way of sending some support to a blogger. And best of all, the store foots the bill!

Look for Wishlists. Many bloggers maintain an Amazon wishlist (or a wishlist for another store). This is simply a list of products they would like to own. You’ll often see a link to this list from a blog or you can even visit the Wishlist section at Amazon and search by name or email address. You can then send a small gift anonymously or with a small note of encouragement.

Again, I trust you’ll take these in the spirit I intend them, not as a plug for you to do anything for me, but as an encouragement to take notice of the people whose blogs you enjoy and to serve as an encouragement to them for the glory of God.

Apparently Oprah loves Amazon’s Kindle reading device. She loves it so much that she featured it on her show. Amazon responded by whipping up a coupon code which will remove $50 from the price of the Kindle should you decide to order one (something they, for some reason, chose not to do when I reviewed it). I’m not sure how long this promotion lasts, but I can’t imagine it will be more than a day or two. So if you’ve been looking at the Kindle and haven’t been able to decide whether or not to get one, well, perhaps this will help your decision.

Simply click here or on this little banner:

Once you’re on the payment screen, look for the coupon code area. Enter OPRAHWINFREY and $50 will be taken off the price. Shipping is also free.

It’s Friday and that’s a good day to ramble. So I thought I’d take the opportunity to share just a couple of items of “miscellania.”

Personal Updates

I’ve had a couple of people ask for updates as to what I’m up to these days. So here goes. My fall travel schedule is very light, for which I’m grateful. In a couple of weeks I’ll be heading to Chicago to blog the True Woman conference. Yes, feel free to make fun of me for it. It is going to be a huge conference with over 6000 women in attendance. Speakers include John Piper, Nancy Leigh DeMoss, Joni Eareckson Tada, Janet Parshall, Mary Kassian, Fern Nichols and Karen Loritts. It’s hardly my usual live-blogging gig, but it should be fun nonetheless. The week after that I’ll be speaking at Chinese Gospel Church here in Toronto. Beyond that, I don’t have a lot on my schedule. And, of course, in early November I’ll be heading to Dominican Republic with Compassion International to see what they are up to over there.

I’m currently putting my spring schedule together. I’ll be teaching at a youth retreat in Michigan for a weekend in February. When conference season begins (typically March, April and May) I’ll be heading to The Gospel Coalition and, in all probability, the Moody Pastors Conference (in both cases to blog about them). In March I’ll be reading a paper at the Toronto Pastors Fellowship. And I’m evaluating a few other opportunities.

The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment continues to sell, I guess. It has just gone to a third printing which is a great encouragement. To be honest, I do not have much of a sense of what that translates to in numbers, so don’t ask! I am not yet working on my next book, at least beyond the “gathering ideas” stage. I just haven’t quite found that idea yet—the one I can spend a year writing about.

Incognito

It’s not like we really need proof of the increasing prevalence of pornography in our society, but if we did we could look to the newest crop of web browsers. The browser that has made the greatest splash in recent days is Google’s Chrome; it overshadowed the release of a beta version of Internet Explorer 8. And, of course, a new version of Firefox is coming soon (a minor update—3.1). One feature of all of these new browsers (and a feature Safari has had for some time) is what is known as “private browsing” or, more commonly, “porn mode.”

Porn mode allows a user to browse the internet without the browser maintaining a history. Google describes it this way when you open an “incognito window:” “You’ve gone incognito. Pages you view in this window won’t appear in your browser history or search history, and they won’t leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window. Any files you download or bookmarks you create will be preserved, however.” In other words, you can browse the web without leaving on your computer any trace of what you’ve done or where you’ve been. I’ll grant that there are useful applications of this technology beyond pornography—it may be useful if you are using a computer in a public library or if you have logged onto a friend’s computer to do some quick banking. But the most obvious application and the one it will undoubtedly be used for most, is finding and viewing pornography. I’m quite convinced that this is yet another example of pornography driving technology. This presents a bit of a conundrum to parents who may be accustomed to keeping tabs on their children’s browsing habits. So parents, be warned; your kids may be going incognito.

The Solas

A little while ago I was asked to collaborate on an interesting project—writing a curriculum on the five solas appropriate for teens. So I worked with InQuest Ministries and together we came up with The Solas. “When only the best will do, then the best is all you need. The 5 Solas of the reformation that make up this study are the best means for understanding the basic theological foundation on which our faith rests. By engaging with and applying the principles covered in this 5 session study we will gain an understanding of the uniqueness of our faith and why it is the best to build our life on.” In five sessions it leads students through each of the five solas. It is available online as a downloadable product. You can find information about it at InQuest Ministries.

Have you ever noticed how, when a person is looking for a house, driving slowly down a darkened street straining to see the numbers on the fronts of the homes or on the mailboxes at the end of the driveways, he automatically turns down the car radio? He does so because he instinctively knows that music or voices can be a distraction. A person cannot focus as well on the task at-hand when there is noise in the background. Noise is a distraction.

I’ve often found that when I am writing, and especially writing something that requires deep thought and consistent logic, I need to remove background distractions, whether that means I turn down the music playing from my computer or close the door to my office to drown out the sounds of squabbling or playing children. I do this without thinking about it. As I strain to collect my thoughts and to put words to them, I automatically turn down the music. I am often surprised, when I have finished my writing, to find that the music has been turned off or the door has been closed. I may have no recollection of doing so. It is a natural reaction.

Many years ago I heard a sermon, one of only a few I remember from my younger days, where the pastor suggested that we try turning off the stereos in our cars, especially when we are driving alone, and spend the time thinking or praying. He had apparently developed the practice of praying aloud when driving alone. It earned him some bemused looks from other drivers who saw him talking, apparently to himself, but because he found it a beneficial practice he swallowed his pride and continued to talk to God. I often make a decision—and it has to be a deliberate decision since I am accustomed to pressing the “play” button immediately after starting the car—to turn off the radio or CD player when I drive and find this time to be extremely valuable. My mind can process things and mull things over far better where there is silence. This is particularly true if the song I might be listening to is one that is familiar to me as then, whether I am aware of it or not, I tend to sing along. It is hard to think deeply when singing!

In our culture we have allowed ourselves to become incredibly busy. And all the time, while we are busily going through life, there is a great deal of “noise” in the background of our lives. It may be music that plays when we drive, when we work and when we play. It may be a television that is always turned on whenever we have a few minutes of downtime. Perhaps when we find fifteen spare minutes between picking the kids up from school and beginning to cook dinner we watch an episode of Judge Judy or catch a re-run of The Simpsons. The background noise may be a Blackberry that constantly beeps and buzzes as it receives emails or stock quotes, even when we are far away from the office. It may be a cell phone that keeps customers or employees in contact with us even on weekends and holidays.

It seems to me that, as society continues to move in its current direction, and as we become ever more “wired,” Christians will have to be focused and deliberate about moderating and perhaps removing some of this ever-present background noise. If we are to be thinking people, people who think deeply and deliberately about spiritual matters, we simply cannot allow our lives to be overshadowed by the noise of technology.

I wonder how much we miss because of our busyness. I am often challenged to think just how much of life I miss while I check my email for the seventh time in a given evening or while I follow along online with a football game that I really don’t care about. Technology, it seems, is a great distractor. Technology sticks its foot in the door of so many areas of my life. When I sit down to read to my children we may be interrupted by a call on my cell phone. As we head outdoors to play, I may do a quick check of my email and spend fifteen minutes typing out a reply that could easily wait until the next day; and then, while I play with the children, I am distracted, mulling over what I might have or should have said. Maybe we duck out of church before the time of fellowship is complete so we will have time to get home, make a sandwich and fluff the cushions on the couch before kickoff time.

Truthfully, I cannot think of anything that distracts us so fully and completely and consistently as technology. For too many of us, technology is a master and not a servant. It is our owner, not our possession. We let it run and rule our lives. We allow technology to determine the course of our lives, taking us where it leads. We determine our schedules with TV Guide in one hand, an iPhone calendar in the other. We invest countless hours in online friendships, many of which are shallow and insignificant, while ignoring people in our local churches and communities. Perhaps while ignoring even our own families.

Technology is a great servant but an evil master. Technology is proof of the greatness of God and something we ought to be thankful for. After all, He is the One who has endowed humans with the ingenuity that makes it all possible. But why, then, have so many of us allowed it to rule and govern our lives? Why do we allow it to play such an important, transcendent role in our lives and in our families?

It may be as simple as escapism. Technology, and especially its many applications to entertainment, provide unparalleled opportunities to escape from reality, even if only for a few minutes. Through technology we can leave the drudgery of our lives to listen to music that glorifies freedom or to watch television or film where what happens is far more thrilling than what we experience at home and in the office. The purpose of much of modern technology is to allow us to take our entertainment with us no matter where we go. MP3 players allow us to take thousands or tens of thousands of songs with us in the car or on the train. Video iPods allow us to escape from work or school for a few minutes by watching (ironically enough) The Office or nearly unlimited amounts of pornography. Portable DVD players allow us to keep the children quiet in the car while we take a vacation. No matter who or where we are, we can use technology as a brief escape.

Perhaps we use technology to hide. Maybe we hate to be alone with our thoughts. We have become so accustomed to constant noise that, like a baby who can only sleep in a room with a white noise machine softly humming, we can barely stand the sound of silence. Maybe we have lost the ability to think or even the desire to think, and so we anesthetize our intellects, we lull them into inactivity, by replacing them with noise.

Maybe we need constant noise from the cell phone or Blackberry or laptop so we feel like we are accomplishing anything. Perhaps we have bought into the lie that we need to be accomplishing something significant—something that either pays the bills or leaves us with another bill to pay—at all times. And so we take phone calls during dinner and answer emails in church. We check email compulsively and work while we should be resting.

Or it could be that we prefer the anonymity and safety of online relationships, relationships that allow us to be almost exhibitionist in what we reveal about ourselves, all the while hiding behind a mask of secrecy. We would rather tell our deepest secrets to strangers on the other side of the continent, strangers we know only by their online personas, than find and nurture deep and lasting friendships close to home.

We are busy. We are distracted. Too often we hide behind the noise. As Christians we need to ensure that we are mastering the noise, not allowing it to master us. We need to be in control of our cell phones, Blackberries, laptops and inboxes. We can and often should use this technology, but we must now allow it to control us.

We are at a strange and unique stage of human history. The combination of the Internet, electronic storage media, the rapid rate of technological progress and the fast-pace of our society, has given us unparalleled access to unparalleled amounts of information. Never in history have people had access to so much information. Consider just a few examples:

Google currently indexes billions upon billions of web pages and adds hundreds of thousands more every day (I was not able to find an exact count, but as of 2005 the page count was already well in excess of 8 billion). Almost every one of those pages contains at least some information. Amazon and other internet retailers sell hundreds of thousands of different books, videos and other sources of information. Newspapers, especially weekend editions, are obscenely large, often totaling hundreds of pages and weighing several pounds. In Spiritual Disciplines For The Christian Life, Don Whitney says that the amount of information contained in just one weekday edition of the New York Times contains more information than a man like Jonathan Edwards would have encountered in his entire life (though I can’t imagine how that is really measurable).

A 2003 study showed that print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media produced about 5 exabytes of new information in 2002. Ninety-two percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, mostly in hard disks, meaning that much of it was readily available to others. (5 exabytes = 5 billion gigabytes, or the equivalent of 125,000,000 average-sized hard drives. This was a dramatic increase from just two years before when the total amount of new information was a “mere” 1.5 exabytes. “How big is five exabytes? If digitized with full formatting, the seventeen million books in the Library of Congress contain about 136 terabytes of information; five exabytes of information is equivalent in size to the information contained in 37,000 new libraries the size of the Library of Congress book collections.” And that is the total for just one year.

Neil Postman, in a talk entitled “Informing Ourselves To Death” once spoke about the information facing Americans: “In America, there are 260,000 billboards; 11,520 newspapers; 11,556 periodicals; 27,000 video outlets for renting tapes; 362 million tv sets; and over 400 million radios. There are 40,000 new book titles published every year (300,000 world-wide) and every day in America 41 million photographs are taken, and just for the record, over 60 billion pieces of advertising junk mail come into our mail boxes every year. Everything from telegraphy and photography in the 19th century to the silicon chip in the twentieth has amplified the din of information, until matters have reached such proportions today that for the average person, information no longer has any relation to the solution of problems.” That was years ago and since then the amount of information has grown almost exponentially.

All of this points to the fact that we are facing much more information than humans did in days past. In fact, we are facing information overload. We cannot possibly keep up with the amount of information that is coming our way. Yet in many ways it is becoming increasingly important to our lives that we do just that.

Francis Heylighen, in a 1999 article entitled “Change and Information Overload: negative effects” writes about the problem of information overload as a condition that is becoming increasingly destructive in the workforce. He shows that the acceleration of change in our society has caused a dramatic increase in information, and thus an increase in the amount of information the average person needs to know.

The acceleration of change is accompanied by an increase in the information needed to keep up with all these developments. This too leads to psychological, physical and social problems. A world-wide survey (Reuters, 1996) found that two thirds of managers suffer from increased tension and one third from ill-health because of information overload. The psychologist David Lewis, who analysed the findings of this survey, proposed the term “Information Fatigue Syndrome” to describe the resulting symptoms. Other effects of too much information include anxiety, poor decision-making, difficulties in memorizing and remembering, and reduced attention span (Reuters, 1996; Shenk, 1997). These effects merely add to the stress caused by the need to constantly adapt to a changing situation.

Part of the problem is caused by the fact that technological advances have made the retrieval, production and distribution of information so much easier than in earlier periods. This has reduced the natural selection processes which would otherwise have kept all but the most important information from being published. The result is an explosion in often irrelevant, unclear and inaccurate data fragments, making it ever more difficult to see the forest through the trees. This overabundance of low quality information, which Shenk (1997) has called “data smog”, is comparable in its emergence and effects to the pollution of rivers and seas caused by an excess of fertilizers, or to the health problems caused by a diet too rich in calories. The underlying mechanism may be called “overshooting”: because progress has inertia, the movement in a given direction tends to continue even after the need has been satisfied. Whereas information used to be scarce, and having more of it was considered a good thing, it seems that we now have reached the point of saturation, and need to limit our use of it.

His conclusion is that the biggest problem facing our society is not that we are making too little progress, but that we are making too much! I think I know just what he means.

Christians are by no means exempt from the impact of information overload. Consider, for example, a pastor who lived in America in the early nineteenth century. What information was he privy to on a daily basis? If he lived in a large town he may have had access to a newspaper and perhaps even a library. He may have owned a few books, but generally he had very little access to significant amounts of information. He usually rose and went to bed with the sun, he never watched CNN, never listened to the radio, and if he lived outside of the city, may have only rarely had anyone to talk to outside of his family members. But consider a pastor today. We can be sure he has access to hundreds of television channels, hundreds of radio stations, billions of web pages, millions of books, newspapers, magazines and so on. The phone rings constantly, the cell phone interrupts his meetings and the computer beeps that a new email has arrived.

In many ways the nineteenth century pastor had a difficult life compared to what we experience today, yet, in the words of Don Whitney, “On the other hand, he never had to answer a telephone once in his entire lifetime! Despite his inconveniences, his mind, like the psalmist’s, was not as distracted by instant world news, television and radio, portable and car telephones, personal stereos, rapid transportation, junk mail, and so on. Because of these things, it’s harder for us today to concentrate our thoughts, especially on God and Scripture, than it ever has been.”

How can a Christian find time to just sit and think, or sit and memorize or meditate upon Scripture? I know first-hand how difficult it is to remove myself from this information overload, even for a few days or a few hours. I consider it a hardship to be disconnected from email and the internet, and often my job depends on having near-instant access to these technologies. It is such a temptation to begin my day with checking my email and checking my favorite blogs and news sites rather than beginning quietly with God. I have a difficult time turning off the phone and the computer so I can sit and memorize God’s Word, even for just a few minutes at a time. I have succumbed to the information overload, and have loved being a part of it. I have seen the data smog envelop my life. But, as with many other Christians, I know it has affected my spiritual life. While the information we are privy to is in many ways a blessing, in other ways it is a temptation and a curse.

Some days I thank God for the vast amount of information at my disposal. Other days I just wish it would all go away. In my more rational moments I know that this is impossible - the information is going to increase, not decrease. Therefore I am responsible before God to live a spiritually disciplined life in spite of this information overload. I am responsible before Him to carve time out of this information influx so I can just be alone with Him; alone with no telephone, no email, no internet. It is critical to my spiritual well-being that I find ways of removing and properly managing these distractions that keep me from spending the time He and I need to build a thriving, growing relationship.

My recent travels allowed me another opportunity to really put my Kindle to the test. (Because I live in Canada, several of its best features are only available to me when I head south of the border.) And having done so I can’t deny that I like it better than ever. Beyond the benefits I laid out in my recent review of the Kindle, here are five good reasons to own one.

Thousands of Free Books

Just about any book that is available in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) or in e-book format can be read on your Kindle. That gives you a vast library to build upon.

If you would like to build your library of Christian classics, visit CCEL. Browse through the library and download any of the books in PDF format. You can download books by Edwards, Bunyan, Augustine, Chesterton and just about any other classic author you can think of. There are literally thousands of titles there for the taking.

If you are a fan of John Piper, visit Desiring God and download any of Piper’s books for free in PDF format.

If you would like to catch up on classics or just browse other free e-books, visit Feedbooks. They have thousands of great titles available, all of them entirely free. Go there to download your fix of Orwell, Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy, Hawthorne…

How do you get these books to your Kindle? Easy. When you buy a Kindle, Amazon gives you an email address (your-username@kindle.com). Simply email the file to your address. Amazon will covert it and for $0.10 send it immediately and wirelessly to your Kindle. Want to save the dime? Then send the file to your-username@free.kindle.com. Amazon will convert the file (for free) and send it back to you via email (for free). You then simply copy it to your Kindle using the USB cable.

Buy Books Anywhere and Anytime

While enjoying a brief break at a recent conference, and while sitting in the back row of a university chapel, I felt the urge to buy a new book that I could enjoy while traveling home (and something that would be a little lighter to read than the Banner of Truth titles I had stuffed into my suitcase!). Within sixty seconds, using nothing but my Kindle, I had purchased a book and had begun reading it. Just like that. Using your Kindle you have access to well over 100,000 books at any time and any place.

You will also never have to worry about books going out of stock. When books run out of stock at Amazon or your local bookstore, they are always available on the Kindle. Anywhere, anytime. When the books go out of print, I suppose they’ll still be available for download to your Kindle.

Check Your Email Anywhere—For Free!

Many people pay a lot of money for the ability to check their email via their cell phone. With the Kindle you can actually check your email remotely and entirely free wherever you can get a Sprint cell phone connection. The same technology that allows you to purchase books anywhere allows you to check email anywhere. And it’s entirely free. You may wish to purchase the $3 e-book How to Use the Amazon Kindle for Email & Other Cool Tricks: Read and Answer Email Anywhere, Anytime on the Amazing Amazon Kindle… to read instructions on how to do this (and to learn some other interesting tips and tricks…like how to play Minesweeper on your Kindle).

Free Wireless Internet Everywhere

It’s true—you can use the Kindle to surf the web wirelessly…anywhere. Anywhere serviced by Sprint, at any rate. Granted it’s not going to look wonderful since the Kindle does not do color and isn’t meant to display pretty graphics, but it you want to visit sites you like to read (and remember, the Kindle is a reading device) you can do so from anywhere using the same cellular service for which everyone else pays $60/month.

Read the Bible

A quick search turned up at least eight different Bible translations already available for the Kindle (ESV, KJV, NIV, NASB, etc). They all cost less than $10. This article outlines some good suggestions for using the Kindle for Bible study. As with any other book, you can take notes, highlight passages, search for words and phrases and otherwise interact with the text of Scripture.

I have a particular interest in books that seek to give us categories through which we can understand this strange new world that is being built around us through the internet. The sheer pervasiveness of the internet has allowed it to impact our lives so deeply and so profoundly and I’m not sure that many of us really understand this. One person seeking to bring sense to it is David Weinberger, a writer, teacher and marketing consultant. In Everything is Miscellaneous he offers a tour of the new digital disorder that is happening as we move from a physical to a digital world.