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South Bay SDA Church

Jeremy Arnall

Mind Over Matter

Be honest with ourselves this morning and state the obvious, these devices have wreaked a degree of havoc in our lives.

You may not agree with what I just said, but let me ask you, if you left the house this morning without this, would you go back home?

But if you left this at home, Would you turn around?

A phrase I learned a while back was a phrase called digital dementia.

It's the idea coined by a neuroscientist that Constant use of digital technology can result in the deterioration of cognitive abilities such as short-term memory.

No longer do we memorize phone numbers or directions or even lists because It's all right there with us.

Literally like a second brain in our pocket.

Because of it, we, you might argue, have grown a bit lazy.

I mean, if I were to ask you of your good friend's phone number, You might have to pause and think because you're so used to hitting that speed dial.

Simon Sinek in an interview a few years back noted how dopamine, which is a chemical in our brain associated with motivation and pleasure, is released when we use social media.

Dopamine is what makes people repeat habits like drinking or smoking or gambling.

And while we outlaw these habits for those under a certain age, as though adults could somehow handle it.

Many allow young people whose frontal lobes, interestingly enough, are not even fully developed until the age of 25, to use social media freely, as though somehow that won't affect them like these other stimulants will.

But social media is an industry that has capitalized and, yes, monetized its service based on its ability to trigger the release of dopamine in our system.

So it is that we have Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter, all deliberately designed to grab our attention regularly throughout the day.

In fact, people refer to these services as feeds.

They call it a Twitter feed, a Facebook feed, et cetera.

In reality, that is what they are, for they feed our egos and they feed our curiosity.

Like rats in a laboratory, we hear the ding of not a bell, but a phone, and we reach for the phone for another shot of dopamine for our system.

You say, you're being rather harsh there, aren't you?

Today, society is by and large, let's just face it, addicted to social media.

It was the television and I guess for some it's still the case, but if at least now you have something to scroll through, stroll through, whatever you want to call it, during your commercial breaks.

And it's not just social media, even texting, phone calls, and emails are now with us via our phone notification system so that in our daily interactions with others, by and large, the phone gets primary attention.

You'd be talking to somebody and all of a sudden, right?

And they try to be so suave as they pull out their device, which is clearly telling me that they think this is more important than me, right?

And now we have modern devices like a smartwatch.

So they'd be talking to us and we'd be looking at our watch like it takes that long to tell what time it is.

And here's the deal, even if they don't take the call, they still interrupt the conversation and suggest, or at least imply unwittingly, that this might just be more important than you.

And so While we would never think of handing alcohol or gambling to our kids as a coping mechanism, we somehow think as a society that giving them a phone and access to social media is somehow going to help.

Truth be told, it's not just about the kids.

We can go on like it doesn't matter, like it's not there, but the truth be told, it is making us into shallow thinkers.

Deep thinking is becoming more and more rare as we remain distracted by media and technology.

Much of the shallow thinking in the world today appears to be due in part because of the sheer quantity of information thrown at us and the distracting manner in which we choose to receive it.

Perhaps you too have tried to put 1 together.

First you want to gather the pieces of similar colors together, the light blue for the sky, the dark green for the tree pieces in another pile.

And so your strategy is to have the blue pieces over here and the yellow pieces over here.

And when you have all the piles, what do you do first?

You work on the outer edge because that gives you a framework.

You're organized when it comes to putting puzzles together.

It's hard to see the big picture, though, without the box, without putting this organization to your work.

Today, because of self-inflicted schedules, because of our desire for more of everything, more choices, more income, more friends, more social media, more media devices themselves, more, more, more, you name it, we find ourselves overfed and thus quantity is overtaking quality.

Because of this, we seldom take time to sit back, as it were, and carefully consider the pieces of the puzzle we're trying to put together.

Like the endless scroll on Facebook or Instagram, we keep taking puzzle pieces and putting them on the table, but we fail to see if the piece even goes with the puzzle we're trying to put together.

And the pieces that do not go are never reviewed thoughtfully enough to assemble the big picture.

This morning, I want to encourage us with the good news that Scripture offers a way out.

The title of the message this morning is, Mind Over Matter.

Please, Lord, we are a mess and we need you to clean us up.

Would you please help us to be honest this morning with ourselves and with you?

Help us not to just think, boy, I wish so and so could hear this.

Help us to see that we might see the big picture you're trying to put together with our life.

So Lord, please send us your Holy Spirit that we might see Jesus in his name.

In the fourth volume of the Testimonies for the Church, a wonderful series that is designed for the church of this day, written over a hundred years ago, we read these words.

The mental faculties, page 414, The mental faculties must be kept under the control of the will and the mind not allowed to wander or become distracted with a variety of subjects at a time, being thorough in none." Now that's some relevant information for us today, isn't it?

In her book, Switch on Your Brain by cognitive neuroscientist Dr.

Caroline Leaf, we read the following, research shows that 75 to 98% of mental, physical, and behavior illness comes from one's thought life.

This staggering and eye-opening statistic means only 2 to 25% of mental and physical illness comes from the environment and genes.

Now I've shared this before, this quote, and I've had it challenged to me that there's no way you can tell me that, that, that, what is it, 75 to 98 percent of our health issues are related to the mind.

Well, it just so happens that this isn't new information.

Back in the, about over a hundred years ago, we had a lady who I believe was inspired and wrote these words in the fifth volume of the testimonies for the church, page 444.

Sickness of the mind, she writes, prevails everywhere.

Nine-tenths, 90%, of the diseases from which men suffer have their foundation here in the mind.

So yes, Harvard and other scientists are starting to recognize what we were told all along.

Proverbs 23, verse 7 says, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.

Or the mind-body connection is apparent from passages like Proverbs 17, 22, which reads, a merry heart does good like medicine, but a broken spirit dries the bones.

In the book Ministry of Healing, page 246, the power of the will is not valued as it should be.

Let the will be kept awake and rightly directed, and it will impart energy to the whole being and will be a wonderful aid in the maintenance of health.

It is a power also in dealing with disease.

It's a power also in dealing with disease exercised in the right direction it would control the imagination and be a potent means of resisting and overcoming disease of both mind and body.

Indeed, our Health is greatly dependent upon our minds.

Yes, diet, exercise, sleep, and water, these are all critical components that impact the brain's ability to function well.

You can eat the furthest thing from a living creature.

But if you don't control this, you're feeding a sick system.

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Mind Over Matter

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