By Nicholas Soellner
Connecting Faith and Life
When I was a school teacher, it was usually around the start of the second quarter when a student would ask, “Mr. Soellner, are you gonna keep a countdown until Christmas on the board?” More often than not, I’d humor them and let them look forward to time away from school when they would be able to relax with friends and family over the holiday. But when I’d ask them, “So, what will you do over the break?” often the response would be, “Eh, I’ll just probably play on my phone most of the time.” I felt a tinge of sadness, and I wondered why it was that so many times our default response to waiting is a digital escape.
In his book, “God or Nothing: A Conversation on Faith,” Cardinal Robert Sarah addresses this situation in a sobering manner, writing, “A Godless society, which considers any spiritual questions a dead letter, masks the emptiness of its materialism by killing time so as to better forget eternity.” While it probably wasn’t a reference to Clint Black’s song “Killing Time,” Cardinal Sarah’s words illuminated the heart of the matter: If we as Christians truly believe in the gospel, why is it that we rely so heavily on distractions to get through waiting for what we see as the next important thing?
With only a brief look online, one can quickly find a name for this phenomenon that routinely spirals our time and well-being out of control. “Doomscrolling,”coined around the heights of the COVID pandemic, is the aptly named habit of mindlessly consuming digital content (mostly on phones) when it has little to no benefit to our mental, physical or spiritual well-being. In the Old Testament, the prophets Ezekiel, Jeremiah and Amos spoke frequently of doom through letters and biblical poetry. The wicked kings of Israel and Judah needed these prophetic messages to warn them that things were not as they should be for God’s chosen people. Because the kings were directly responsible for their people’s well-being, the message was one of “fix this, or else!” (Cf. Ezekiel 7:26-27; Jeremiah 23:1-6; Amos 3 & 8).
Time is ultimately a gift we receive from God. We never know how much of it we will be given, and we are all called to be good stewards of our time. If time is a gift, we are then called to recognize our time and attention as gifts we give to others. The regular demands of work, sleep and responsibilities already leave us with so little “free” time. Yet our obsession with that unscheduled time is another symptom that we often overlook each moment of our lives as a gift. Do we see our coworkers as gifts from God? Our family members? How much of that time do we waste on media content that does not offer you or your loved ones a net benefit?
The Devil knows well how fleeting our time can feel, which is why he is obsessed with stealing it away, preventing us from being present in the now. In an almost providential way, Clint Black’s song “Killing Time” hints at this, when he sings, “I don't know nothin' 'bout tomorrow, I've been lost in yesterday.” Father David Abernathy once said, “Of all the demons, the one that most holds men back and prevents them from being happy is ‘what could have been and was not.’”
The good news is that we can treat this situation prophetically. If you catch yourself doomscrolling, open your heart to hear what the Lord is trying to tell you. If you’re doomscrolling, it’s often an indicator that your relationships are not where they could be. And deep down, you probably know this already. Pointing our attention at the present is why Christ taught his disciples to be vigilant and good stewards using the parables of the 10 virgins and the bags of gold (cf. Matthew 25:1-28).
Satan’s desire is to trap us in the past or make us anxious for the future so that we neglect the present. As Father Abernathy concluded, in faith, we must leave the past to the mercy of God and the future to His providence, for only the present is in our hands.
Nicholas Soellner is program manager for the Diocese of Evansville Office of Catechesis.