Pokemon Go and the discipline of silence

“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)

I’ve been leading a book study this summer through Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, a classic book on the central spiritual practices of the Christian faith: prayer, meditation, fasting, confession, worship, etc. This past week, one of the chapters we read was on the discipline of solitude, sometimes known as the discipline of silence. This practice is essentially about listening: having an inward attentiveness to God, even in the midst of noise and confusion
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Which naturally makes me think about Pokemon Go.

For the unfamiliar, Pokemon Go is what is known as an augmented reality game, and is usually played using a cell phone. As you walk around your world, virtual creatures called Pokemon show up on your screen as if they were actually in the real world around you. Your job is to catch ‘em all, as the saying goes. This game, which has only been in existence for about a month, has already been downloaded by more than 100 million people worldwide.

For those who do not play Pokemon Go, it is the answer to the question you have been asking as you drive around this past month: “Why are so many kids walking down the road looking at their phones?”

I am sure that Pokemon Go is great fun for those 100 million people. I’m sure that one day my kids will want to play it, and I’m already dreading the day they ask us to drop them off on Vine St in Hartford so that they can catch a Charizard. But for now, I can’t help but mourn how far reaching our electronic universe has become. I am old enough to remember the days before answering machines, when you could call someone’s house and it would just ring and ring, because no one was home. And if they didn’t answer for a couple of days, you might have to… wait for it… SEND A LETTER BY MAIL. But with the advent of email, cell phones, and texting, most people you know can be accessed within seconds, wherever they might be.

And now it seems that our phones are taking over reality itself, turning it into an augmented reality where we are more aware of the fake creature down the street than we are of the car about to hit us (just visit this page to see all the crazy incidents and accidents that have happened because of Pokemon Go: https://theringer.com/mapping-the-mayhem-caused-by-pokemon-go-ed3bcc996c87#.fkbzpf3g8), the neighbor we are walking past, or especially the presence of our God.

This is not the fault of Pokemon Go, of course. This game is simply the next step in a disturbing trend that shows no sign of slowing down. The discipline of solitude, of cultivating an inward attentiveness to God, is continually under attack as we give our unbreaking attention to our phones, computers, TV’s, or whatever other electronic gadget is in front of us.

If our desire is to be holy, to be in right relationship with God, where we are attentive to His Spirit, then our relationship with our electronic gadgets will have to be subservient to that primary relationship. I challenge you to prayerfully consider how you can make that desire a reality – and not just an augmented reality – today.