More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
technology built from the Creator’s intelligence (given to mankind) and creation’s abundance (supplied in the earth).
God is the genesis of all knowledge and technological advance,
First, technology changes how we relate to the earth.
Second, technology changes the way we relate to one another.
Third, technology can become a metaphor that God uses to reveal his work in the world.
Thoughtlessly adopting new technology is worldliness.
perhaps we adapt so readily because, as Jacques Ellul suggested, our technology exerts a sort of terrorism over us.
Our lives are consolidated on our phones: our calendars, our cameras, our pictures, our work, our workouts, our reading, our writing, our credit cards, our maps, our news, our weather, our email, our shopping—all of it can be managed with state-of-the-art apps in powerful little devices we carry everywhere.
the GPS app on my phone, which guided me to a new coffee shop today, possesses thirty thousand times the processing speed of the seventy-pound onboard navigational computer that guided Apollo 11 to the surface of the moon.
When asked whether they were more likely to check email and social media before or after spiritual disciplines on a typical morning, 73 percent said before. This reality is especially concerning if the morning is when we prepare our hearts spiritually for the day.
the average user now spends fifty minutes—every day—in the Facebook product line (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram), a number that continues to surge by strategic design.
behavioral scientists and psychologists offer statistical proof in study after study: the more addicted you become to your phone, the more prone you are to depression and anxiety, and the less able you are to concentrate at work and sleep at night.
Eternity, not psychology, is my deepest concern.
First, we use digital distractions to keep work away.
Second, we use digital distractions to keep people away.
Third, we use digital distractions to keep thoughts of eternity away.
This was the insight of seventeenth-century Christian, mathematician, and proverb-making sage Blaise Pascal. When observing distracted souls of his own day (not unlike those of our time), he noticed that if you “take away their diversion, you will see them dried up with weariness,” because
said Pascal in his day: “I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.”
To numb the sting of this emptiness, we turn to the “new and powerful antidepressants of a non-pharmaceutical variety”—our smartphones.
“The reality is, though, deep down there’s part of me that’s scared that if I’m out of sight, I’ll be out of mind, and I won’t matter anymore. In a sense, this is one dimension of the looming fear of death that most of us in contemporary American society never want to wrestle with or name anymore.”
The philosophical maxim, “I think, therefore I am,”15 has been replaced with a digital motto, “I connect, therefore I am,”
leading to a status desire: “I am ‘liked,’ therefore I am.”
want anything to break the silence that makes me feel the weight of my mortality.
In six places, the New Testament warns us about the effects of unchecked distractions on the soul, and we can boil those distractions down into three potent categories:
1. Unchecked distractions that blind souls from God.
2. Unchecked distractions that close off communion with God.
3. Unchecked distractions that mute the urgency of God.
Paul sees as the “undistracted” life—the gift of singleness.
Scripture calls for seasons when even sex should cease in order for spouses to recalibrate their prayer lives and to reset their greater priority of communion
First Corinthians 7 is the most detailed biblical theology of distraction and the pursuit of undistraction.
The death and resurrection of Christ has marked the beginning of the end, the runoff, the moment when a soccer match clock exceeds ninety minutes and keeps ticking for some amount of unknown stoppage time, soon to finally expire.
All distractions are measured by the reality that “the appointed time has grown very short.”33 We are called to watchfulness
the Bible makes clear that those distractions fall on a spectrum.
I would not be the first to suggest that owning a smartphone is similar to dating a high-maintenance, attention-starved partner.
Pastor Tim Keller was once asked online: Why do you think young Christian adults struggle most deeply with God as a personal reality in their lives? He replied: “Noise and distraction. It is easier to tweet than pray!”
The ease and immediacy of Twitter is no match for the patient labor of prayer, and the neglect of prayer
The tools we use in our lives put others in the way of harm, and one little slip can change lives forever.
Our bodies distinguish us from one another and mark off our existence in the world. In the digital realm, we lose this key reference point.8 We lose sight of one another, and when we do, anger boils more quickly.
Online anger is a consequence of the division in our lives—
But online anger is not merely pervasive; it’s also contagious.
Studies back this up on a more personal level,
If anger is the viral emotion of online disembodiment, then joy is the Christian emotion of embodied fellowship,
“Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink [modern technology for John].
Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete” (2 John 12).
“Our personality will come through to some extent in an email message or a tweet. But we are holistic beings: we have feelings, thoughts, imaginations, and bodies.” When we remove part of our embodied personhood, misunderstandings become easier. When we trade our physical arms that cross, eyes that linger, ears that detect sarcasm, and vocal tones that imply patience for the two-dimensional avatar, we invite misunderstanding and tension. “So I think the ‘fullness of joy’ comes with one personality interacting with other personalities in terms of voice, touch, appearance, and timing.
On top of this, eye contact is one of the most powerful forms of social bonding possible, forging trust between people in a complex phenomenon whereby people can sync their minds and gain mutual understanding, learning, and sharpening in ways impossible through digital devices.
