Text-mania

A friend of mine recently experienced a major texting disaster. Her thumbs were flying when with one bad thumb-move she accidentally lost control and dropped her phone. That wouldn’t have been so bad, except that the phone fell into a large container of water. I’m trying to keep it family-friendly here, but let’s just say that the next slogan for character-building week could be “Just Say No to Toilet Texting.”

I think I’ve figured out why texting is so hot—and why it seems to happen nonstop these days with some folks. I think the text-mania is because so many of us have decided we would rather talk (or type) than listen. Dishing it out, but not taking it, as it were. Tech-savvy lets us get across our own message, then skim the response. We can ignore the response altogether if we want. It’s kind of the way of our culture sometimes, isn’t it?

But it’s not the Bible way. In the book of James, for instance, we see a call for us to emphasize the listening, not the speaking. And if we’re not listening, we’re missing that call. Voicemail won’t help there.

Our call is to get our eyes off our own needs and flush out new ways to listen—and hey, texting can fit in there. Oh, and sorry about the “flush” reference.