We can cut ourselves off from every potentially corrupting outside influence in the universe, but we can’t cut ourselves off from the corruption inside us. We can cut off one head, and seven others, even uglier, will appear. We can barricade our homes, churches, and schools against the “world,” and the “world” will still bubble up out of our hearts.

One year ago I left the internet. I thought it was making me unproductive. I thought it lacked meaning. I thought it was “corrupting my soul.”

It’s a been a year now since I “surfed the web” or “checked my email” or “liked” anything with a figurative rather than literal thumbs up. I’ve managed to stay disconnected, just like I planned. I’m internet free.

And now I’m supposed to tell you how it solved all my problems. I’m supposed to be enlightened. I’m supposed to be more “real,” now. More perfect.

But instead it’s 8PM and I just woke up. I slept all day, woke with eight voicemails on my phone from friends and coworkers. I went to my coffee shop to consume dinner, the Knicks game, my two newspapers, and a copy of The New Yorker. And now I’m watching Toy Story while I glance occasionally at the blinking cursor in this text document, willing it to write itself, willing it to generate the epiphanies my life has failed to produce.

I didn’t want to meet this Paul at the tail end of my yearlong journey.

So writes Paul Miller in his fascinating concluding article [Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.] about this digital experiment which has ended up as a modern parable on Matthew 15:17-20.

“Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.”

We can cut ourselves off from every potentially corrupting outside influence in the universe, but we can’t cut ourselves off from the corruption inside us. We can cut off one head, and seven others, even uglier, will appear. We can barricade our homes, churches, and schools against the “world,” and the “world” will still bubble up out of our hearts.

Unless we can find a way of creating a new heart.

Amazingly and gloriously and wonderfully, that’s exactly what God promised in both the Old and New Testament:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them (Ezek. 36:26-27).

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Cor. 5:17).

David Murray is Professor of Old Testament & Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. This article first appeared on his blog and is used with permission.