The Tech-Wise Family: Re-arranging the Furniture

The Tech-Wise Family: Re-arranging the Furniture April 26, 2017

Jonathan SBy Jonathan Storment

Rearranging the Furniture

“But what about watching College Football?” -Me voicing my greatest concern about this blog

Where does your television live? Assuming (perhaps incorrectly) that you have only one, where do you keep it? In the Living Room (where ours currently resides). In your bedroom? In your Kitchen? Your Den?  (and while we’re at it, just how big is your house?!!)

The default setting in almost every American family I know is that the central room of the house is also the place with the most technology, and the most attractive, most mind-numbing device of all.

Taking Aim at Television

Last week, I began a series reviewing Andy Crouch’s great new book, The Tech-Wise Family and Crouch begins by taking aim at the greatest, most tempting distraction facing us all. Our Television.

Well actually, he begins with a wonderful introduction on talking about all the ways that technology has improved our world. We should be grateful for the million different ways that it has made our work and rest more productive and efficient.

And then Crouch writes a chapter that’s worth the price of the book on what family is really for (to create wisdom and courage and form us into people of character).

And that to that end, he argues, we need to shape our lives:

“The most powerful choices we will make in our lives are not about specific decisions but about patterns of life…If we want a better life, for ourselves and for our families, we will have to choose it-and the best way to choose it is to nudge and discipline ourselves toward the life we most deeply want. We’ll arrange the places we live and the patterns of our daily lives to make the best choice easier.

In other words, Crouch sincerely does believe that technology is a gift and not a burden, but only when it is in its proper place.

Literally. ​ ​

Like, where is your television placed?

Because for most of us, our television is centrally placed in the life of our home. It is convenient, it’s easy, and if we​ are not careful it is the silent killer of our truest kinds of joy, and of our greatest potential to develop into the person God intends us to be.

We go to television for a variety of reasons, but they all are almost always motivated by the same desire, to be entertained (which actually means to come between you and something else), to be amused (without a muse, or creative spark) or distracted (to be dis-attracted from that which left alone your soul would force you to attend to).  Sometimes we use it to babysit our kids during a hectic time or to unwind after an exhausting day.

But rarely do we use the television as a tool to truly enhance greater enjoyment of life.

Using Technology To Start Conversations Instead of Stopping Them

I am​ thinking now of examples of being in someone’s home for a Super Bowl party, or an Oscar watching party, or back when The Office was on and I used to invite co-workers over just to watch the next episode. Or when my wife and I would watch the movie Silence and talk about it for hours afterward.

Those, according to Crouch, are ways of using the television in way that leads to joy. It is a way that leads toward greater connection and away from loneliness and isolation.

But if that is the goal, we should really reconsider what room we put it in.

According to the Barna research that accompanies this book, 65% of us say that our family unit spends the most time in the living room. This is potentially the greatest place for stories to be told, conflicts to be created and resolved, virtues to be taught and learned and creative habits acquired.​

Or it can be the place where you binge watch Arrested Development again.

Instead, Crouch argues, shape your living space in line with the life you want to have. Give yourself nudges to make the right choices, put the things in the center of your life that you want to grow in, and the stuff that tempts you to check out in the margins.

So for example, put novels​, and watercolors,​ and musical instruments in your living room. Put there the things that require you to participate and not mindlessly consume, and put your devices in a place where ​ you have to at least consciously decide to go and not just use by default. ​

Of all the chapters in the book, this was the one that convicted me the most, and has spurred me to action.  I realized the reason I have so many books that I never quite get to, or the reason that ​after hours of “relaxing” on the couch I am often even more exhausted and anxious, is because I have chosen to create a life that is easier…until it’s not.

Here is how Crouch makes his argument:

The best way to choose character is to make it part of the furniture.

Fill the center of your life together—the literal center, the heart of your home, the place where you spend the most time together—with the things that reward creativity, relationship, and engagement. Push technology and cheap thrills to the edges; move deeper and more lasting things to the core.

Andy’s book is built around 10 different core commitments (that I find very compelling) and this is the second one:

“We want to create more than we consume. So we fill the center of our home with things that reward skill and active engagement.”

Want a better life?

You really can have it.

And half the battle might just be re-arranging some furniture.

 

 


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