Interview Transcript
Mike Andrews, hey and thanks for the invitation to look on The Narrative Podcast, from the Heart for Christian Advantage, by recording. My identify is Tony Reinke, a nonprofit journalist and trainer primarily based in Phoenix. I’ve sought to serve the church by writing on tech and media for a decade now. I function a senior trainer at desiringGod.org, and have the glory to be the producer and host of John Piper’s podcast, Ask Pastor John.
You despatched three actually good questions. I’ll work by way of them one after the other.
Digital Journeys
Query 1: What are some biblical ideas — boundaries, disciplines, and many others. — that may be utilized to smartphone use that Christian dad and mom ought to mannequin and talk about with their youngsters earlier than giving them their very own system?
Precisely proper. Modeling is essential. This isn’t a young person drawback. Grandma’s on Fb an excessive amount of. Mother’s on Instagram an excessive amount of. So again in 2015, I put aside a full 12 months to get my very own coronary heart proper with my smartphone habits. I used to be spending an excessive amount of time in social media. I used to be being silly with my time. Silly with my coronary heart and my consideration. I subtly started to suppose social media networks would fulfill me.
After all, they by no means may. As a substitute, they distracted me from what was most essential. I used social media on a regular basis for ministry. It was my job. However I additionally used these platforms idolatrously — as idols of safety and self-affirmation. Possibly you’ve been there.
So I took a number of digital detoxes in 2015, time offline and away from social media. Deleted apps, turned my cellphone off — these types of issues. And I used the season to admit to the Lord what he was displaying me about what was within me. I invested extra time into prayer and Bible studying and meditation on God’s reality. Extra time studying nice books. Extra time with the household — intentional time with them, on journeys that I had deliberate out. Issues like that. I reprioritized the native church. I spent extra time dreaming about ministry prospects sooner or later.
It was a painful season of self-scrutiny, however mandatory. And it was fruitful, one fruit of it being my 2017 guide, 12 Methods Your Telephone Is Altering You. That guide every of my teenagers needed to learn earlier than getting an iPhone.
Consideration Overload
That strategy of trustworthy discovery with myself about social media led me to additional think about life inside the eye financial system, contained in the Hollywood media age. How can we thrive as Christians on this age of those large, compelling digital spectacles which might be throughout us, each picture and video clamoring for our eyes? How will we dwell by religion in such an eye-dominant tradition? And the place will we flip in order that our lives are usually not inundated with viral, digital, ephemeral pointless issues that don’t matter?
And that query led me to a second guide, a meditation I printed in 2019, known as Competing Spectacles: Treasuring Christ within the Media Age. And these two books, the guide on smartphones and the guide on spectacles, work in tandem as warnings to point out biases at work on the planet, and the way our media pushes us towards digital spectacles and hollows out our lives from what’s eternally essential.
There’s a social dilemma at play. Our consideration is monetized, and we want limits and restrictions and legislations, sure. However there’s additionally a non secular dilemma at play. And it’s this: our smartphones merely give us what we most need. That is what our children have to know — what all of us have to know: I’m not a sufferer of my cellphone.
My cellphone, my social media platforms, are merely delivering to me what I most need. We’ve got affections and wishes, and people are misdirected, after which these misdirected wishes get solidified into social media algorithms that feed these wishes increasingly more. Algorithms don’t inform you what to need. Algorithms feed you what you most need. The tailor-made algorithm is principally a digital decipher of what we most need.
Pixilated Needs
One other option to say it’s the smartphone display screen is a black mirror to mirror again to our eyes what your coronary heart most wishes in pixilated type. If our true coronary heart is narcissistic, that’s what you’ll discover on-line — you’ll seek for issues that bolster your self-image. If in your coronary heart you harbor disdain for sure individuals, what you see on social media will stoke that disdain even additional. In case your coronary heart is pushed by unquenchable need for sexual lust, porn would be the factor you see in your display screen. The cellphone discloses what your coronary heart most desires.
You may inform your self that you just’re a pleasant individual, morally good, don’t harm others. However there’s a Kafka-like nightmare awakening forward of us all after we look into our cellphone display screen, and we stare immediately into our personal coronary heart’s need. It’s proper there on our display screen. And if the Spirit is at work in your life, sooner or later, deep down, this exposé will drive you to your knees. And also you’re not going to listen to this within the cultural criticism. We’re not merely victims of Silicon Valley tricksters; we’re sinners led by wishes and impulses inside us that should be crucified.
So we proceed to proclaim that rhetorical interrogation of Isaiah 55:2 and apply it to our hearts and our screens: “Why do you spend your consideration on that which isn’t bread, and stare upon a display screen for one thing that may by no means fulfill you?” That’s the non secular dilemma all of us face — mother, dad, teen. We will mannequin this in our properties.
Knowledge Meets Gratitude
What I noticed after these painful pruning seasons was that my complete tackle know-how modified. It matured. It deepened. For a very long time I had been an early adopter of devices, quite a lot of it naively so. On the finish of this course of, I discovered myself much less naive about tech, extra conscious of its biases. But in addition — on the similar time — I grew to become much more conscious of God’s generosity within the applied sciences that adorn my each day life.
That resulted in my meditations on the generosity of God in all the science and medication and computer systems and smartphones and vehicles and houses that we take pleasure in, applied sciences that adorn my life every single day. I’m cautious of the instruments we’ve, and I’m additionally completely amazed that I get to dwell on this age, and never 100 years in the past or 200 years in the past.
My gratitude for all my tech culminated in a 3rd guide: God, Expertise, and the Christian Life. It’s the capstone now of a decade-long course of from seeing my sin uncovered by smartphone misuse, to now seeing God’s glory and his generosity in my smartphone.
Tech Risks and Alternatives
Query 2: Smartphones have been round for nearly 20 years. What are some risks, particularly non secular, relating to cellphone and know-how use that Christians nonetheless are both not conscious of, or maybe not combating in opposition to as actively as we should always?
In 12 Methods Your Telephone Is Altering You, I believe all twelve methods are nonetheless underappreciated. A lot is on the road. I believe we’re nonetheless studying easy methods to stability our digital instruments and combine them into our flourishing and never our self-destruction. That’s life as technology-makers and -users. We make instruments, we undertake instruments, after which we spend years and a long time attempting to adapt these instruments to our flourishing. That’s the method we’re in now.
4 Levels to Flourishing
Right here’s what I found over that decade of writing about tech and media. The tech dialog must progress up in 4 phases, and people phases get more durable (and rarer) as you climb the ladder. Right here’s how I put it.
Stage 1
We determine tech issues externally. This can be a view of tech during which we conclude, “The app made me do it.” That is The Social Dilemma documentary on Netflix. “The algorithm made me do it. Huge tech is ruining our lives.” We externalize sin, leaving it to rules and laws.
That’s not improper completely, as a result of huge tech does code biases into their algorithms and apps and devices. They do. No query. However our concern is incomplete if that’s the extent of it. And I believe it’s the extent that the majority Christians ever attain. And so in case you suppose holiness is about not having a smartphone, you’re in for a shocker. So we have to go additional.
Stage 2
We determine tech issues internally. Conscious of biases in tech (actual biases in how our apps and platforms are made, completely — ones we should pay attention to), I have to subsequent develop into conscious of the sinful inclinations residing within me. As a result of tech biases (on the surface of me) are pushing and pulling on native, sinful inclinations inside my very own coronary heart that should be handled.
Once more, that’s why I wrote 12 Methods Your Telephone Is Altering You and Competing Spectacles. Social media, smartphones, the eye financial system — at their worst, all of them enchantment to one thing lurid within me. So what’s that? That sin in me has obtained to be addressed. That’s stage 2 — figuring out tech issues internally, not merely externally.
Stage 3
We voice gratitude to God for our tech. Biases acknowledged (in stage 1), sin patterns recognized and confessed and handled (in stage 2), now I’ve eyes starting to open to see the generosity and brilliance of the Creator within the tens of hundreds of improvements I exploit each single day. I see God’s generosity in all of it. I see his generosity in all of the issues I’m utilizing proper now for me to file my voice for you in my studio and so that you can hear me later. All of it, a divine present.
“Christ crucified is the hinge of historical past, the place all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine Spectacle.”
I aspire to assist my youngsters to see this, by the facility of the Spirit. Silicon Valley isn’t just people doing human issues. These instruments are presents from God to be stewarded for his glory. In case you miss this stage, you don’t have any basis for stewardship. The entire tech dialog operates within the realm of godlessness. He’s a nonfactor.
That is enormous, and required a complete guide of its personal, one I wrote titled God, Expertise, and the Christian Life. As God ready his individuals to enter the promised land with its milk and honey flowing, he was additionally getting ready them to enter a land of iron and copper.
And God warns them: While you make a technological society that’s rich and cozy and in case you fail to glorify God for all his generosity in every part you make, you might be an idolater. For no matter purpose, God’s persons are shortsighted and blind to his generosity after they maintain shiny steel issues that they made. That’s the story of Deuteronomy 8:9–20.
So after we pull lithium from the bottom, and aluminum, iron, silicon, cobalt, nickel — and we refine these parts into a brand new iPhone, that iPhone is a present from the Creator, one he coded into his creation, for which we will now reward him. Most Christians are usually not right here. When most Christians consider the iPhone, God is irrelevant. And our children choose up on that actual fast. However why is stage three essential? That’s as a result of, lastly . . .
Stage 4
We’re known as to dwell out our tech-stewardship. Conscious of the biases in tech (step 1), conscious of the sin inclinations within me (step 2), and now beholding God’s generosity in his materials presents in his creation (step 3), know-how in my life can now conform to my calling and inform how I exploit tech and the way I guardian tech-stewardship within the dwelling.
That is the toughest a part of the tech dialog. We’re known as to like God with all that we’re and to like our neighbors as ourselves. Our tech presents can assist us to try this. I’ve devoted my life to on-line ministry because of this. I need to make use of my tech presents to like others. I consider electrical energy and knowledge coding and the digital age and pc chips and smartphones and laptops and the web had been all God’s thought, inherent throughout the creation that he gave us to domesticate and develop.
Hung Up on ‘No’
However once more, we are likely to get caught at stage 1. And it’s the non secular hazard virtually no Christian appreciates — “the algorithm made me do it.” And so our parenting, for instance, sounds rather a lot like, “No, you’ll be able to’t have that gadget!” “No, you can’t use that app!” “No, you must by no means do that factor, have a look at that factor, on-line!” No, no, no. It by no means will get into the sure and amens of stewardship, of a imaginative and prescient of life for easy methods to glorify God and to serve others. This fourth stage has enormous implications for pastors and fogeys, and for anybody attempting to determine tech-ethics.
However, once more, it’s simply actually onerous to get there, as a result of our tech-ethics are actually lagging behind. We decide on being tech-dismissive and simply stay there. It’s simply simpler to settle into stage-1 or perhaps into stage-2 ethics and by no means transfer into stage-3 gratitude or stage-4 stewardship. Actually, I’d be keen to say that the majority Christians stagnate at stage 1 (“the app made me do it”) and by no means even get into stage 2 (doing the onerous work of heart-work).
So in the case of phases 3 and 4, I’m hoping Christians will be taught this through the years and a long time forward. It’s not one thing you’ll be able to add quick. It takes years to be taught and applicable this stuff into our lives. However with out that foundation for stewardship, we’re misplaced and haven’t any manner ahead however to dismiss the tech-age as Babel-like and godless. We will solely diss on tech, as we maintain our iPhone in hand. Our children choose up on that dishonesty fairly shortly.
Our Telephones, Our Hearts, Our Gospel
Query 3: What are some diagnostic questions or practices Christian dad and mom or teenagers ought to often ask with a view to preserve smartphone utilization inside wholesome and applicable margins? And in case you don’t thoughts me dishonest a bit and asking the opposite aspect of this query, too — how can we apply the gospel to our personal lives, or preach it to our children, when our smartphone utilization drifts outdoors of these wholesome and applicable margins?
There’s rather a lot we will do so far as practices. An iPhone contract is helpful to set out expectations for a teen. All units charged at night time in Mother and Dad’s room, or some impartial place, by no means left in a teen’s room. Sundays offline. Issues like these are useful, however none of them distinctly Christian. We get Christian after we ask the proper diagnostic questions. That’s precisely the proper strategy. Listed below are eight you need to use with your self, after which your teenagers:
- How a lot of my media is for escape? And what am I escaping?
- Does my display screen time go away me extra recharged or extra depleted?
- Is my media weight loss plan enriching my time with Christ or eroding it?
- How constant is my private devotional life?
- What does my prayer life appear like?
- Is my communion with God drab and boring? Or is it alive?
- How do Christ-centered sermons and songs have an effect on me? And what does this say about how I shield my coronary heart for Sunday worship?
- Are my digital wishes serving my God-given duties, or are they distracting me from them?
Insatiable Eyes
These eight questions minimize to the center of the matter in “the age of the spectacle,” because it has been known as. The Bible says, “Sheol and Abaddon are by no means glad, and by no means glad are the eyes of man” (Proverbs 27:20). The graveyard isn’t filled with coffins as a result of Sheol is an open mouth, all the time consuming — day and night time. So too are our eyes. Vivid. Like a cemetery, our eyes are insatiable — all the time roving, by no means glad by something on this world. Fallen eyes endlessly eat dying.
So I really like the resolve in Psalm 101:3: “I can’t set earlier than my eyes something that’s nugatory.” On no matter is not going to revenue my soul, I can’t focus my eyes. That’s unimaginable. Later the psalmist echoes this similar problem, however within the type of a determined prayer, in Psalm 119:37. There he prays, “[God,] flip my eyes from nugatory issues; and provides me life in your methods.” And that’s how resolves work. It doesn’t take lengthy earlier than we’re desperately crying out to God to make the resolve occur!
Which suggests our nice enemy shouldn’t be the exterior seducers nor the spectacle-makers. Our nice enemy is our personal insatiable eye-appetite that’s dying. Once more, that’s completely horrifying. And so in Numbers 15:39, God tells Moses to say to the individuals of Israel to comply with the desire of God in his phrase and to not “comply with after your personal coronary heart and your personal eyes.” In case you fill your eyes with the spectacles of this world, you’ll develop deaf to the voice of God (Numbers 15:39).
And so when the psalmist cries out to God in Psalm 119:37, “Flip my eyes from nugatory issues; and provides me life in your methods,” he’s saying the fullness of life shouldn’t be fullness of eyes. And that’s the competitors we really feel, as a result of we will fill our eyes with countless spectacles in each path, and ultimately it’s a feeding on dying, a feeding on what can’t provide you with life.
One Nice, All-Satisfying Spectacle
So how does the gospel are available right here? That is completely enormous. I’m so glad you requested. As a result of into the spectacle-loving world, with all of its spectacle-makers and spectacle-making industries, got here the grandest Spectacle ever devised within the thoughts of God and caused in world historical past — the cross of Christ.
Christ crucified is the hinge of historical past, the purpose of contact between BC and AD, the place all time collides, the place all human spectacles meet one unsurpassed, cosmic, divine Spectacle. From this second on, God intends for all human gaze to middle on this climactic second. Within the cross God says to us, “That is my beloved Son, crucified for you, a Spectacle to seize your coronary heart eternally!”
In his account of the cross, Luke tells us in Luke 23:48 that the crucifixion was a bodily spectacle for crowds to see. However the cross shouldn’t be merely a bodily spectacle for the attention. Its larger glory is in serving as a spectacle for the ear of religion. So in Colossians 2:15, Paul tells us that what you might not see along with your eyes was the non secular spectacle of victory it represents — victory over all sin and evil, over that evil within us, even.
The cross is large, so enormous, that in Galatians 3:1 Paul says the preaching of the cross is the re-celebration of the spectacle of the cross, as if it had been portrayed on a outstanding metropolis billboard. That’s what “preaching Christ” means. In pulpits internationally, each week, God says to us time and again, “That is my beloved Son, crucified for you, a Spectacle to seize your hearts eternally!” Preaching re-proclaims that again and again.
Religion-Pushed Tech-Customers
So by divine design, Christians are pro-spectacle, and we give our total lives to this nice Spectacle, now traditionally previous and presently invisible. The driving spectacle on the middle of the Christian life is an invisible spectacle. Solely by religion can we see it. I’ve now been crucified to the world, and the world has been crucified to me, because the apostle Paul says (Galatians 6:14). Our response to the last word spectacle of the cross of Christ defines us.
Christ died for my sins of escapism, for my disdain for individuals, for my lust, for my vainness, for filling my eyes with nugatory issues. Christ died for the lurid wishes and sins of my coronary heart manifested on my display screen. He got here and died as a spectacle to the universe with a view to forgive my guilt after which to free me from the facility of my sins.
That doesn’t imply we dad and mom are excellent customers of the iPhone and tech. We aren’t. And after we fail right here, when digital media takes an excessive amount of of our consideration, after we are distracted by worthlessness, our households will realize it. And we will brazenly confess our want for Christ to forgive me — Dad — as I display in confession the fantastic thing about the cross earlier than my partner and youths as soon as once more.
Now, it took me a couple of decade to place all 4 phases collectively. It’s advanced. However I hope it helps different Christians and pastors and fogeys and youths to see a manner ahead on this age of know-how. I’m grateful for this chance to share what I’ve discovered, Mike. Thanks for asking.
