Productive Anger

Hello. My name is Gwen, and I’m a Match-Match-Match addict. (Hi, Gwen . . .)

It’s a new game I found a week or two ago, and I simply can’t stop playing. It’s ridiculous. It’s a silly, mindless game – find three matching items in a massive pile of junk, over and over, until all the items are gone. I think it appeals to that part of me that enjoys creating order out of chaos.

But people, I am spending HOURS playing this silly game. My phone is running out of charge by dinnertime because I’m on it so long. I wake up telling myself I won’t play it today . . . and then it’s, well, I won’t play it until lunchtime . . . and then, well, I’ll only play it until this show is over . . . and then I’ve played it for a couple hours and am still making excuses for why I don’t need to stop quite yet. Even as I’m typing this, part of my brain is thinking I should stop and play a quick game and come back to typing. Yeah, right.

I’m thoroughly humbled, my friends. The crazy app has me licked. I should probably delete it . . . but . . .

Addiction is an interesting phenomenon. And a sad one. And an infuriating one. Infuriating because of how many of us are active prey for those who would like to addict us to their product, whatever it is.

Reading Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation made me all the more aware of the intentionality of this. Those people, whoever they are, on the other side of the internet stratosphere, those people who understand algorithms and human psychology, those people are consciously and intentionally TRYING to addict us.

To their social media platform.

To their news (or fake news) outlet.

To their video games.

To their pornography website.

It's one thing when we’re talking about a middle-aged woman playing a silly matching game on her sofa for three hours when she could be doing something much more active or productive or relational.

But when we’re talking about a 13-year-old boy viewing explicit pornographic material that he doesn’t even completely understand and he’s awake until the wee hours of the morning doing so and he's falling asleep in class and his schoolwork isn’t getting done and his brain wiring is being warped to accept what he’s seeing as not just normal but required for his daily sustenance and his future relationship with his wife and children will be damaged and his self-discipline is being destroyed and his heart is being enslaved . . . and it's happening to adult men, too, and to women . . . and that was the whole point, the intentional goal of the creators . . .

PEOPLE! We should be infuriated! Enraged! How dare they!! How are we allowing this to happen?

This is weighing heavy on me these days, friends. My problem -- others' problems -- our society's problem. The Spirit won’t let me let it go. Shame over our behavior may be appropriate, but it's not productive. Shame doesn't help, but anger might. Get BEHIND me! You have no right to my brain and my heart!

I know I’m not alone here. Keep fighting the battle, brothers and sisters.