What Would He Say Today??

I'm reading a book by Richard J. Foster titled Freedom of Simplicity right now, and this morning I read the following things excerpted below:

We also need to have times when we fast from the media. It is amazing to me that many people are incapable of going through an entire day concentrating on one thing. Their train of thought is constantly broken by this demand or that interruption. The newspaper, the radio, the television, magazines — everything interrupts their concentration. Some people are so enslaved to television that if it were taken away they would go through withdrawal. Obviously, there is a time for the various media, but there is also time to be without them.

We can also learn to fast from the telephone. This instrument is a wonderful invention, but it controls many people . Some people will stop praying in order to answer the telephone. Can you imagine anything more absurd? I want to let you in on a secret: we don not need to answer that gadget every time it rings. We are not its slave, but its master.

The bolding above is mine, and it is there because it's no longer true. In our society we have long since reversed roles. The phone is the master, and we are the slaves. But the author can be forgiven for getting the wording wrong. When he wrote this book in 1981 the situation was a bit different.

1981???

1981???

Yes. The above social commentary is now more than thirty years old. I was eleven years old when this perceptive author saw where things were going. And he wasn't very happy about it. What a prophetic voice. As I read his words, I kept thinking to myself, "And what would he say today??"

What would he say today.

In a recent intimate gathering at our house a guest married Foster's two concerns into one. This person: a) left the conversation at hand,
b) got news via the cell phone in hand,
c) and then proceeded to inform the rest of us
d) who were sitting around the Christmas fire
e) of news we didn't need to know
f) which involved a fallen politician
g) (who is well remembered for being busted with a hooker)
h) who it turns out is going to divorce his wife.

This example is extreme (for someone coming from my perspective, if not for society in general today), but I am equally busted. The finger points back at me too. Picking up on the book where I left off, the next words are:

When people come to visit us, we should not insult them by interrupting our conversation to answer the telephone....

Uncomfortable. I'm feeling a bit uncomfortable.

Because I do that.

I answer my cell phone pretty much any time it rings.

I do it when with with a friend.

I have stopped praying in order to answer the cell phone too.

That's ok today, isn't it?

Or have I been lulled into a habit at the kind of pace that keeps the frog in the kettle even as the water begins to boil?

Perhaps this frog didn't notice the water temperature was changing.

Perhaps I've gain a few habits that would have been more widely lamented in 1981.

What would Richard Foster say today??

Indeed.