The smartphone is now seen everywhere, playing an important role in daily life and it is becoming an irreplaceable part of life. You could see these smartphone users or the bowing family everywhere in the street, the mall, the train, and bus, etc, seeing and hearing nothing around them. It seems that people has been separated from each other by an invisible wall, and nothing has been done to remove it.
The Bow Family or even worse called the Phone Freak are those who care about nothing but their smartphones and pay no attention to stuff around them. In a deeper view, these people are those who have lost themselves because of playing phones all the time. They always keep a posture of head-bowing while looking at the screens. What are they doing? Surfing, playing, watching videos, or WeChatting. They won’t give up any time for other things or take a break, or they’ll be anxious, even hysteria, crazy and irritable when they do not hold their phones. Among these bowing families are WeChatting lovers which account for a considerable proportion.
Christians are living in the world, and enjoy a part of the benefits brought by science and technology. Benefits are always accompanied by bad things. For benefits, WeChat has built a good platform to communicate as a possible communication channel and a window to reach others. However, if it is used without restraint, these benefits will be reversed and turned into liabilities. Over-reliance on WeChat will bring some negative effects.
Here are a few of its negative effects:
Firstly, in terms of its information dissemination, WeChat is convenient, fast, and covers a wide audience; however, the information it delivers is always fragmented and incoherent, which does not provide assistance to people’s knowledge growth, and even harm people’s internal creativity since it reduces people’s independent thinking.
There is a famous story told by many that if a person works all day, then when would he think about something else? This can be applied to Christians: if you are addicted to WeChat, when would you think of doing something else? Thinking is the eye of diligence, and it helps avoid blindness to hard work. To not think is to nip the thinking capacity and creativity that God gave us. Some people are submerged in the fragmentation of information, which puts these people to think that they are studying but actually, they just learned the surface of the information they learned. This would kill people’s creativity gradually.
Secondly, in the view of social interaction, the moments brought by IT cause Christians to experience both pros and cons. On one hand, the new IT development means bring convenience to Christians, which can be applied in the fellowship of Church or fellowship. On the other hand, Christians might be submerged into the information frenzy because of data flooding.
Thirdly, in the view of WeChat’s features, WeChat can be tools that can be used by unlawful users, which can cause confusion among churches and even families if they see these posts.
“I have the right to do anything,” you say -- but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”-- but not everything is constructive.(1Cor10.23)
WeChat is a double-edged sword, which can not only enrich life and provide moisture to people's growth but also causes the loss of life and destroys people’s health if used very long.
The point is that if reasonably used, it can benefit Gospel Ministry and the Spiritual Growth a lot.
Thus, Christians should treat WeChat in two sides. One is that Christians should always go with the times, including evangelism, and utilize the available means to keep up with the changing needs of the public. On the other hand, one must remember that while using these technologies, they must remember the do's and don't's. In short, use WeChat with some restraint. Do not let our eyes be filled with all kinds of information all the time.
(The Author is a preacher in Anhui Province.)
