The way out is not the same as the way in

Some thoughts on escaping the drain, and some links for your thinks

I took the dogs for a hike, into the woods and the wild, away from the internet¹. Scout knows the way, though there is not a defined trail quite yet. I trust I can follow her and she’ll get us there and back, even if it is a slightly different way than last time. There are a lot of things she cannot, or does not, do: hunt, find shed horns, ride in the car without shaking and trying to dig a hole in the floorboards the entire time. But she has a nose for the right path and I trust her.

Following someone or something you trust is important in the wild, but even more so on the internet. The Internet is a flatland, where it’s easy to make caricatures of people for better or worse, and it’s easy to forget that people online are not all-good or all-bad. Some people writing or posting content online have outright ill intentions. Others of us are just making stuff up as we go, making mistakes by accident or ignorance, trying to do right and backtracking when we can.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell who to trust because really—this is all new to all of us. No one has already lived this day. There is no one coming back from the future to tell us how to choose our own adventure wisely.

Except Jesus, of course. He referred to himself as the way, so we could have a path to follow into the unknown future which he knows fully. He is an eternity behind and before us.

Banks of the Seine, Claude Monet

Earlier in the week I hiked a new trail with a friend. Neither of us had been there before, but it was a loop trail around a reservoir so we just chose a direction and took off, trusting it would lead us back to the start. It didn’t matter if she was in front or if I was. We alternated, one following the other at different times, but both of us trusting the way we were following.

If everyone were on the same way it would be easy to choose who to follow, or when it was okay to take the lead yourself. And if it were easy to know what way everyone was going, it would be easy to know who to follow. Who is headed the way you want to go?

I’ve read and listened to some good stuff this week from people who are strangers to me, and from people I know in real life. Some of the people I read or listen to are those who are not exactly on the same path as me—meaning, they are not disciples of Jesus. Even some of the ones who are on the same path are not ones who walk out their discipleship in a way I want to walk. But if I know this, I can still listen to them, still take what they say and what they know into account², because I have the Holy Spirit to lead me into all truth (John 14:16-17).

Probably the best question I have pondered this week was put into words by

Lisa Hensley

, and I hope, if this topic interests you, you’ll take the time to read what she has to say here:

Who is discipling you?

Who is discipling you?

Our kids were each 16 or 17 when they got their first smartphone. This was about 10 years ago, which feels like a lifetime in internet years. I was the one to encourage them to get on Instagram, and back then it felt light and innocuous. I remember opening the app, scrolling through my friends’ photos, and reaching the “no new content” message. There was an end to it, and you closed the app and walked away.

Eventually our home turned into one with phone rules: no phones at the table, no phones during a movie, no phones when we’re trying to have a conversation. This applied to all of us, and though I would bemoan walking into the living room and seeing everyone with their face down in a screen, I was/am just as bad. Now Instagram and every other app is an endless scroll with a billion side roads that we don’t walk away from—we circle the drain endlessly.

But I remember thinking back then: Someday we will all burn-out on this. And we are, thank God. The drain we feel ourselves sinking into is serving to wake us up.

Many of us effectively followed complete strangers into a dark wood and we need to find our way out, and I don’t think the answer is to blindly follow another complete stranger. The answer is to follow Jesus out, and if he feels like a complete stranger to you, ask the Holy Spirit to show you the way through his word, the Scriptures. Ask him to teach you from strangers and your children and your parents and even your dog. The point is to be discipled to Jesus and to not go anywhere blindly.

Some things that discipled me this week:

• You clicked through and read Lisa’s post, right? : )

• This one, from

  Stacy Bronec
  . “I can have the tough conversations with friends in real life, the ones that never go well on social media.”

• Read this one, and then read the comments because

  Tabitha McDuffee
  and her readers show that you can actually have civil disagreements online (at least they have remained civil as of this writing). I still believe these conversations are best had in-person, but good writing online can spur our flesh and blood conversations.

• The Case for Quitting Social Media, from Cal Newport on YouTube (oh the irony). Cal Newport is a computer science professor, author, and productivity expert. His books and podcasts have discipled me to a life more like Jesus, even if Cal doesn’t claim Christ. He’s a stranger who I follow judiciously and gratefully.

• “The heart of what Jesus is telling us, I believe, is that when Christ is centered—and what he says is centered—then it will often have the effect or impact of fracturing false tranquility among human beings.”

  A.J. Swoboda
  , Facing Toxic Tranquility. (See also: my post from last week “You keep using that word”, about peacemaking.)

• This new hike and the conversation along the way:

  

  Are you finding life off the internet? One way to do this: If you read something or hear something you disagree with online, have an offline conversation about it with someone you respect. Even better if it’s someone who thinks differently from you.

  The way out of the mess is not the same as the way in. Pay attention to who and what is discipling you.

1. There are two dogs this week because I am watching our son’s dog while he is on a hunting trip. This will be clarifying to some of you but pointless info to others, thus the footnote.

2. I do believe in looking to experts in their particular field, whether they are disciples of Jesus or not. If you have invested yourself into years of study and practice, that matters to me.