"For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions..." (II Tim. 4:3)
It isn't "the" internet, anymore. It is your internet. Your internet is what you create it to be. Your internet takes you where you want to go. Your internet is a direct reflection of your passions, your anxieties, your goals, your worship.
Where does your internet take you? Nowhere is it more evident if you are, indeed, accumulating teachers to suit your own passions, than seeing your internet bookmarks and browsing history, and then let's look at your bookshelves.
How do I know this? I looked at my recent browsing history!
And I made the choice, as of awhile ago, to limit my teachers.
Not because any of my teachers are anti-Gospel. Not because any of my teachers are fueling any angst or division or weirdness in my heart. I'm making the choice because, for me, there is only so much I can appropriate and apply and actually translate into my every day.
And I want what I do choose to hear, to impart faith. I want what I hear to impart a motivation to rise up, and I want to have a teacher or two who will challenge my bias.
Isn't that the opposite of "accumulating teachers that suit my own passions"? Instead, what if I chose one or two worthy, tested teachers who interrupt my bias?
As a woman, writing mostly for women, it is vital that I live my life on the bedrock of the Gospel, and make my every day living conform to how heaven thinks, how heaven acts, and it is equally vital that I learn to speak the way heaven speaks. I can't do this if I am spending a big chunk of my time consuming ideas and information - on any subject.
Trust me. You. can't. even. know. what a consumer I can be.
God is calling me to be a creator of beautiful things, of true words fitly spoken, and a creator of community. I am not called to consume (surf, read, watch, learn, research, peruse, study, take in) beyond what I can apply with a heart of wisdom.
What sort of time do you spend researching your bias, via the internet or books? Who are your advisors (internet or physical) and do they build up your faith? Are you consuming more than you are applying? And for all your application, are you better off (having more peace, more joy, more wholeness, more energy, more health, more skill, more satisfaction) than you were?
At the risk of being misunderstood as self-serving, I will also say this: not only do you need to limit your teachers, but one of the few teachers left standing in your life should be your very own pastor.
Yeah. That imperfect guy.
He keeps watch over your soul.
Have you forgotten what it means to keep watch? It means loss of sleep. It means living with a sense of urgency, because these are perilous times.
That will make any man a little odd, and a lot passionate, so cut your pastor some slack. And if he isn't a little odd...I wonder if you have a good one. That man is set in place by God to lead a peculiar people. A people of faith.
Beware what is entering your household, via your very own internet choices, girlfriend.
"For among them (deceivers) are those who enter into households and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led by various impulses, always learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." (II Tim. 3: 6,7)
Always learning. Never able to make progress.
So. many. women. want to learn, but so few willing to be taught. So many women want to go places in the Spirit, but so few willing to be led there. So many women want to lead, so few are willing to follow first. So many women are consuming far more information than they can apply. I am one of that last bunch, for sure.
What's more, so many women are consuming the wrong information - these days, usually from an internet source. Or, they are consuming wrong information through a friend who has discovered "an amazing" internet source, which means the source is the internet.
Friends, if I spent enough time on websites that inform me all about the process of having a sex change, and if I spent enough time researching the subject, if I spent enough time in internet chat rooms, getting to "know" people who have had or want to have a sex change, people who seem so nice, people who have such compelling stories, people who can cite highly scientific evidence...
...I would start to think that having a sex change might be awesome!
I'd be getting a Lifestyle Lift, at the very least. Have you seen the wrinkles in my neck?
God or Google? We get to choose. Dr. Mercola or the Great Physician? (I got nothing against Dr. Mercola...just citing a popular internet source.)
These are the last days, I believe. Limit your teachers, for we are in perilous times. And we need to be about transformation, not information. And time itself needs to be redeemed.
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