Analog Faith

The first step is to find your Bible.

Not the one on your phone or tablet.  An actual physical Bible, yours or anyone’s, ideally the oldest and most worn one in your house—full of notes, highlights, the scribbles of generations prior to you. 

Put it out somewhere visible, somewhere you sit often.  Place it where you have your morning coffee or sit and look at the birds or however it is you like to spend time.  Put a pen with it and a journal or a place or way to take notes.  When you get the urge, open it and read.  Or write.  Jot down a question or a verse that comes to mind.  Make a practice of this.

Maybe you already do this.  In that case, you have other options you might consider. 

Place a candle with a special scent near that Bible or in a place you like to pray.  Print yourself, or write, or purchase a prayer card of a prayer that you pray regularly or would like to pray regularly, and set it before you.  Encounter it anew each day.  Read it and pray the prayer. 

Find a set of prayer beads or a prayer aid and use it to keep your mind in the here and now. Set up a cross somewhere that you must look at it regularly, or wear one that you can’t ignore.  Find cards that help you memorize Scripture and touch them with your fingers.  Dig through old CDs to find the songs that inspire worship.  Go outside with worship in mind, and pray under a spreading oak or by a body of water.

Write a check for your tithe if you can, or give cash.  Attend the service in person. Minister at something that requires money or a signature, that demands sweat or presence.  Go to a hospital or a nursing home or a place you’d rather not be.  Commit yourself to service that bores you.  Stack folding chairs.  Write a card with a pen and stationary instead of an email.  Call rather than text.

Here is what you must not do:

Watch or read sermons or Scripture exposition or homilies or study only through a video or a reel or an online article or an email or a text. 

Consult ChatGPT or any AI for Bible instruction or spiritual guidance.

Reduce your engagement in the body of Christ to online asynchronous actions.   

I will note that there are those for whom embodied engagement is not possible. Individuals with illnesses or particular issues may find a struggle to engage bodily in some of the practices above.  And for those with accessibility issues, engagement requiring the body can be a real concern.  I don’t want to dismiss the realities of these people, and acknowledge that adaptations are required, or that the body came may need to come to the people who cannot come to it.

But for others, embracing a more analog faith may be fruitful.

The great gray slurry of content rushes in now from a thousand directions: online articles, video, AI-produced information, social media.  It sluices through the brain without leaving a mark, Scriptural or otherwise.  In this milieu, God’s word is not set apart: it is something else to be produced, consumed, monetized, forgotten.

Moreover, the technological posture of the age makes holiness a struggle.  We orient ourselves to sit and to consume; we exist before endless screens; we push a button, we go on our with our lives. We live expectation of receptivity; we forget what it means to be active.  And in doing so, and in the nature of what we consume, we lose our abilities and skills—some of those which are most vital to learning and growing in faith.

Much of today’s answer to doomscrolling and the overuse of technology (as well as the ramifications of Big Tech for our society, morality, and culture) seems to focus on taking away—on the concept of a tech detox.  But I find it is often more palatable and easier to think in terms of supplement and substitution.  Don’t delete the Bible app on your phone…but do engage with the physical hard copy of your Bible to hand.  You don’t have to swear off social media or reading anything on the internet, but cull your reading carefully and ensure that the bulk of what you read is substantive, informed, and edifying.  You don’t have to refrain from ever attending church virtually, but go in person as often as your are able.

What we don’t use and engage in, we forget.  What we forget, we neglect.  And what we neglect, we abandon.  Ours is a faith that requires active engagement and cultivation, and often the willingness and the discipline to push past what is easy to what is necessary.  Let us practice this in all the ways we can.