Mark Zuckerberg is the co-founder of Meta and Facebook. In his early days, he had a motto: “Move fast and break things.”
At first, it seems appealing. ‘Let’s innovate, move forward, and not get held back by the consequences!’ It certainly captures something about the sentiment of our times.
However, let’s not kid ourselves. Our obsession with speed and busyness is hurting us. It’s also hurting others.
There was a man who once described himself as a carpenter. He said that he made up for his lack of skill by using a lot of nails.* Yikes!
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist whose latest best-selling book, The Anxious Generation, is making headlines all over the world. He speaks about the rise of smart phones and digital online culture, especially among young people: “the most rapid rewiring of human relationships and consciousness in human history,” he writes, “has made it harder for us all to think, focus, forget ourselves enough to care about others, and build close relationships.”** We all know it’s true.
My point is this. Defeat is not inevitable. We can be a part of a sanctified resistance toward something better, healthier, and more hopeful.
Do we have smart phones? Yes.
Do we get busy? Yes.
Do we sometimes get careless? Yes.
But those don’t need to be the defining qualities of our lives.
In John 15:4 Jesus says: “Abide in me, and I in you.” Abide. Now there’s a word we don’t use much anymore. It’s kind of like “tarry.” The Message puts it like this: “Make your home in me just as I do in you.”***
Abiding in Christ presumes both closeness and time. It doesn’t rush. It inhales. It exhales. It listens to the Master.
It trusts.
It transforms.
It loves.
It lives.
Think back to that motto: “Move fast and break things.” Can we all just say, ‘No thanks’?
By abiding in Christ, we can be a part of a sanctified resistance toward something better, healthier, and more hopeful.
Notes:
-*Told in: Eugene Peterson, The Pastor: A Memoir (HarperOne, 2012), 277.
-**Jonathan Haidt, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness (Penguin USA, 2024), 17.
-***Note that The Message is not a translation of the Bible; it is a loose ‘rendering’ by pastor Eugene Peterson.
-Bible quotes, ESV.
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