T.J. Burdick - Detached: Put Your Phone in Its Place

If you have a smartphone, youve felt the guilt. Weve all experienced it. We use our phones too much, and we feel enslaved. But how can we fix it? We delete apps, we try to use our phones less, but inevitably we go back to our old ways. The problem is that we never address the root problem, which is ultimately spiritual. If we want to form a new, healthy relationship with technology, we need to sever our unhealthy attachments including to our phones. Thats what T. J. Burdick helps us do in this fine book. Through timeless spiritual practices youll learn how to treat your phone prudently, as a tool and not an addictive slot machine. If you want to master your tech, and not the other way around, put down your device and read this book!

Brandon Vogt, content director at Word on Fire Ministries

If left unchecked, technology addiction can be a major source of unhappiness, a drain on personal productivity, and a potential lure to sinfulness. In Detached, T. J. Burdick provides a systematic retreat approach to help us gain control over our devices and our own behavior. Based upon timeless truths of the Faith, this twenty-one-day retreat offers a helpful framework for placing our overly wired lives back into balance and well-being.

Lisa M. Hendey, author of The Grace of Yes

Has your life become too phony? Are you so attached to your phone that you never feel at rest without it, while you neglect the family and friends who are attached to you, and the God who gave you all life? If you would seek to change your priorities and grow in a life of genuine happiness and holiness, then set aside that glowing rectangle for just a while and let T. J. Burdick guide you on the twenty-one-day retreat within the wise, warm pages of Detached: Put Your Phone in Its Place. Replete with startling scientific findings, humorous personal anecdotes, and penetrating insights of the Church and her saints, this book will withdraw you from worldly technological addiction and direct you toward appropriate use of the wonders of technology, as you advance toward greater intimacy with God, and reorient toward the people and things that truly matter the most.

Kevin Vost, Psy.D., author of How to Think Like Aquinas

Whether your relationship with your phone is under control or spiraling into chaos, you need this book. T. J. Burdick uses timeless wisdom and insight to steer you into a life where you are controlling your phone, not the other way around.

Sarah Reinhard, author and blogger, SnoringScholar.com

All who desire true happiness will read Detached from T. J. Burdick. Many may be intimidated by the idea of a permanent hiatus from their phone and apps, but T. J. convincingly proves that it is possible with this thoroughly researched and shrewdly crafted approach to using phones in the right proportion and with the correct purpose.

Shaun McAfee, author of Reform Yourself! and founder of EpicPew.com

Detached

Put Your Phone in Its Place

T. J. Burdick

Our Sunday Visitor

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Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division

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Except where noted, the Scripture citations used in this work are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright 1965, 1966, 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America copyright 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana. English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church: Modifications from the Editio Typica copyright 1997, United States Catholic Conference, Inc. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Every reasonable effort has been made to determine copyright holders of excerpted materials and to secure permissions as needed. If any copyrighted materials have been inadvertently used in this work without proper credit being given in one form or another, please notify Our Sunday Visitor in writing so that future printings of this work may be corrected accordingly.

Copyright 2018 by T. J. Burdick

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Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.

200 Noll Plaza

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ISBN: 978-1-68192-359-8 (Inventory No. T2048)

eISBN: 978-1-68192-360-4

LCCN: 2018950741

Cover design: Tyler Ottinger

Cover art: Shutterstock

Interior design: Chelsea Alt

P RINTED IN THE U NITED S TATES OF A MERICA

To my children Sofa, Sara, Santiago, and Michael, who will vanquish far worse temptations in technology than I could ever imagine.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Your phone is likely no more than ten feet away from you as you read this. Its presence alone changes the environment completely, doesnt it? In that tiny device there exists endless streams of intellectual stimulation, entertainment, communication, and cat pictures.

You have held that luminescent box in your hand and felt its power. Youve come to understand that its strength is sometimes a necessary component to your day-to-day activities, a life force that draws you into its potential for efficiency, cooperation, productivity, and fun.

On the other hand, youve also felt the darkness of your relationship with that phone. Youve witnessed its ability to entice you with mindlessness and vainglory. Youve likely spent your free time (and some of your working hours) swiping and button pushing, texting and scrolling, binge-watching and game playing into the wee hours of the night, ignoring even your most loved ones in the process. Like Frodo and the Ring, you feel a special connection with your phone, one that youve come to realize is unhealthy at best, and addictive at worst.

You want more, dont you?

Since the dawn of the smartphone more than a decade ago, we have struggled to identify what our right relationship with technology should be. There are several books and studies that examine the effects of technology use from a secular viewpoint, but very few (if any) books address the spiritual effects of our screens. It is my theory that our devices, especially our phones, have led us to focus less on living happier, holier lives. Youve likely felt that same spiritual confusion and unease, which is why you have picked up this book.

I wrote this book to help you, as the title indicates, detach yourself from your phone and put it in its proper place. Your phone should be helping you achieve the spiritual heights that God has intended for you, but at this point your phone is doing more to keep you from achieving his will for your life. This book will teach you how to detach yourself from your phones addictive temptations, and ultimately move you toward living a life of heroic Christian virtue.

My Story

In 2009, my wife, Maribel, and I purchased smartphones for the first time. We were dirt poor. We had just come back from a year as international missionaries and, with only my income as a first-year teacher, we struggled to make ends meet.

We were accustomed to the old-school text and talk phones we had bought two years prior. Then one day my wifes phone quite literally blew up. Our cellphone provider made us an offer we couldnt refuse: Smartphones, surprisingly, were the cheapest replacement.