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One summer, when I was in college, I worked as a youth pastor for a small church in Indiana. One of those weeks I served as a counselor at a church camp. I’ll never forget the pastor who preached that week. One night, he said something like this:

I drove many of you all up here on the bus, and I all heard you talk about was the movies and television programs you had seen recently. Folks in my church say, “I wonder why our young people are not hearing the voice of God anymore.” WELL, I DON’T WONDER!

And this was 1967 when about all there was to distract us was television and movies (which I wasn’t even allowed to go to!). Now it’s ubiquitous screen time with its social media. Additionally, literally thousands of engineers at YouTube are figuring out how to make us click one more movie clip to watch.

And it’s not just the kids. I’ve seen mothers at restaurants ignore their young children while they’re texting with their friends.

I’ve written about Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism before, and I’m trying, not always successfully, to be more intentional about my use of technology. Ignatius said way back in the 1500s:

The other things…are created for the human beings to help them in the pursuit of the end for which they are created [to love God and serve people]…It is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things…and choose only that which is more conducive to the end for which we are created. (From The Ignatian Adventure by Kevin O’Brien.)

I thought of all this today when I read God’s call to Moses in Exodus 3.

Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3.10, ESV)

Our kids and our neighbors are not “in slavery,” but many are enslaved. I’m wondering how God may use us to help free them so they can hear the voice of God.

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8.31, 32, ESV)