Live Wisely in a Digital Age

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Collin Hansen
When I teach on cultural apologetics, I open each class session with a segment I call making the modern mind. We discuss a technological artifact from throughout history and how it changed culture including religious life. Artifacts include Movable Type, the cotton, gin and electricity. One of our most important sessions covers the smartphone. You probably had one if you’re listening and watching here for the last 10, maybe even 15 years. You know, it’s useful in a wide variety of ways like the Swiss Army knife of the Internet age, almost certainly listening to me now on a smartphone, and beyond making your life somewhat easier and somewhat more distracted. Have you considered though the story that your smartphone tells, has ubiquitous access to the internet brought about by the smartphone, made wisdom easier for us to attain or made wisdom more attractive for us to pursue?

To be more specific, we become users known by words, pictures and shares, instead of flesh and blood, voices and facial expressions. Samuel explains that this story is not accidental. It was explicit from the architects of our age. According to Samuel, they told quote, a story of humanity we’re in salvation consists of overcoming givenness itself, curating a custom existence and achieving freedom from boredom, limitation, ignorance, and even death and quote, well, we need biblical wisdom then to understand and resist these cultural narratives to thrive in our time, when he God’s help that we might love Him and love our neighbors as ourselves. So Samuel joins me on gospel man to understand more of the digital story and offer advice to parents, pastors, and even the editor in chief of the gospel coalition. So Samuel, thanks for joining me.

Samuel James
Thanks, Collin. It’s great to be here.

Collin Hansen
First question, I have to read this quote and ask if you really mean it. We’re gonna do a little, little little truth test here you write, quote, every person living in a modern digitally connected culture is constantly inhabiting a moral and intellectual habitat that distorts the biblical story of reality, and quote, now, Samuel, you’ve probably heard, just as I’ve heard from many different people, technology is supposed to be neutral. So is this really any different from the TV era? Radio era? Newspaper era? Explain?

Samuel James
Yeah, it’s a good question. And I think the best answer to the neutrality question I actually heard from Tony ranky. And I think he was quoting someone else. I’m sorry, I can’t remember who he was quoting. But he said something to the effect of technology is neither good nor bad, nor neutral. And that’s a very provocative idea, because it suggests that technology operates on human society at a much deeper level than simply the level of volition the level of conscious choice.

So when we ask, like, what kind of world does technology create? Well, this is this was the question that really animated Marshall McLuhan, back in the early 20th century, and McLuhan’s was, who’s famous for the sentence, the medium is the message, McLuhan’s entire idea was that regardless of what users of technology intend to do with it, the technology itself has kind of this identity that creates a world and its image. And this is, this is true of all technology. It’s not simply digital. It’s not simply, you know, 21st century technology. If you take the jet airplane, so the jet airplane, you which you might use to go on vacation with your family, or go share the gospel overseas or in any number of virtuous uses. That jet airplane creates a world that now has the plausibility of its own potential written into it. So this is why you get like massive airports and this is why, you know, businesses can hire people to to work in one city, while there may live in a different one. So it creates this kind of social domino effect where Are the availability of this technology leads to a world that actually looks like this technology was always here? I think McLuhan the example for McLuhan that stayed with me was the example of the railroad. So the, when the railroad is created, and towns and even states and territories are connected, you have railroad cities that grow up around those rails, the the major real estate options, and then you have particular industries that take off in response to rail. So like the steel industry, and things like that. And all of this creates this, a different kind of world than if you never had this technology. So when we apply that kind of thinking to the digital age to the Internet age, what becomes very important is identifying what the digital age is. So it’s this, it’s this very autonomous feeling. Technology that basically presents to us the power to be to consume, and to kind of place our attention anywhere we wish, and independent of the kind of person that we are, where we’re located, where we’re situated. So the ability to kind of direct my attention and direct my energy in any any direction at all, regardless of where I am, regardless of who I am, has in itself, a a worldview, that is itself a worldview. And that worldview creates different things in response to it. And so we are different kinds of people, we think about our own bodies and our own selves and our own powers differently. Because we have the ability to look at anything, to consume anything to purchase anything to put ourselves in any particular context, regardless of of where we were born of where we live, who our parents are. And so that radical divorce from given us from the things that simply are the the identity that we must receive, that radical divorce from given us makes us certain kinds of people. And the what we choose to do with that will not always be bad things. Obviously, we can do great things through these technologies. The question is, does the technology have a mind of its own? And I think the answer is yes.

Collin Hansen
I think this next question, then is probably pretty closely related with the transgender revolution we’re living through be possible without the Internet. Well,

Samuel James
whether it’s possible or not, that’s a really intriguing question. I don’t think we ever want to underestimate the depravity of the human heart. So never, never tell the human heart what it could not come up with, if it didn’t have X technology. But I think at a one level, the answer could be No, there is no transgender revolution without the internet and listeners of gospel bounce. Several of them might be also familiar with the witch trials of JK Rowling, which was a long form podcast by the free press. And there’s an episode of that podcast, which is not, which is not produced by Christians. It’s not written by people who are necessarily thinking about things from a biblical worldview. But there is an episode of that podcast where they come very close to saying that Tumblr was instrumental in the creation of the transgender revolution, because Tumblr had this particular ecosystem, that combined kind of erotic fanfiction with this fan culture of people identifying as their favorite characters and kind of almost wanting to do this roleplay as things that they saw in entertainment, and for non-believing podcast to actually come as close as they do, to saying that transgender, the transgender revolution, is downstream of the way the internet has kind of just shaped our souls and our minds is remarkable. And I think I think it absolutely is the case. I think it’s one thing to say, and this has been a staple of the sexual revolution forever. It’s one thing to say that as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody, as long as it’s in the privacy of your own bedroom, you can do whatever you want. And so that that has been with us for a very long time. What is radically new, is the idea that if I say I’m one thing, then you must agree with me, you must agree with whatever I identify as, and I do think that is indicative of a world in which we have become accustomed to inhabiting our purse, almost like digital persona. So the digital persona is whatever I create I don’t exist online independent of the content I produce. i There is no central Jas on the internet independent of the pictures that I upload, the tweets that I send, the things that I write there is no central Jas on the internet. Now in real life, it’s different. I I inhabit a body and you can come if you haven’t heard from me for a year, you can come see me at my house. I am a person independent of my output. That’s not the way It is online. And so the way output gets conflated with identity means that if I choose to produce this kind of content, if I choose to put this out there, then you must accept that as my given identity. And I absolutely think that that is very dependent upon the technological age in which we live.

Collin Hansen
Let’s look at another underlying concept. That’s the difference between content and form. Could you explain the difference between content and form? And then also explain why the Evan Jellicle struggle so much to make this wealth really understand this distinction?

Samuel James
Yeah, absolutely. So content is probably what we’re thinking of as evangelicals when we think of purity and the internet. So if you think of being a Christian on the internet, immediately, your mind probably goes to avoiding certain sites. So not looking at what you shouldn’t be looking at not saying things you shouldn’t be saying, you’re thinking in terms of the particular images, the particular media that is presented to you on the internet. So that’s content form is how those images are brought to you in the first place. So whether or not it’s it’s something that is explicit that you that is sinful, or whether it’s something that is not necessarily sinful, like a podcast, or a TED talk, the form is the same in both cases. And so the question is, is there a relationship between content and form, in other words, does form at the just the technical identity of something independent of what it produces? Does that have some influence over the kind of thing it will inevitably produce? And I think it does. And Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman, and other technology critics believe that it did, that form dictates content, eventually, that eventually what you see out of the machine, is what the machine was built to give you. And so I think Evan Jellicle, struggle with this. A, because everybody struggles with it, you know, so Evan juggles are no different from, you know, most people in that regard, I don’t think most Americans are thinking this deeply at a level between form and content. But I think Evan Jellicle, is have been unable to kind of lead from a head on this issue, primarily, because we don’t really have a theology of things. We don’t have a theology of material things are, we’re constantly kind of this is a bad word. But you know what I mean, we’re constantly spiritualizing, we’re constantly kind of looking for the immaterial for the, for the platonic, so to speak. And I think what that has left us with Colin, and you’ve written on this, you know, we’ve kind of lost the theology of the local church as evangelicalism over the last few years. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve lost the theology of local churches, because people are so used to saying, well, the church is in a building, so I am the church. So wherever I am, I’m having church. And biblically, you can’t say that, like, that’s just not the image of the local church. And I think one of the reasons why is because the Bible is theology of the local church is more earthy, it’s more physical, it’s more tangible. It’s, it’s people gathered together for a particular purpose. And so I think evangelicalism have struggled to articulate a theology of ordinary things. And one of the things that I talked about in the book, it’s interesting, how many, how much of the Old Testament is the Lord giving his people, physical objects, and physical rituals and physical places that are all part of their worship? It’s not as if he simply gives them the Torah and says, Okay, now it’s your job Monday through Sunday, to just remember this and try as best you can. He gives them festivals, he gives them a Sabbath, He gives them clothing, he gives them a temple, right? There’s this great attention to the way that physical reality interacts with our souls. And I think evangelicals really need to be recovering that because in the digital age, where we’re increasingly abstracted from physical reality, there’s just a lot of need to recover a sense of what is real.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, you’ve got a lot of stirred up a lot of thoughts in that response. One of them as I was just trying to think of why, what is it about Evan Jellicle spirituality that struggles with the tangible and struggles with the church struggles with the ecclesial. And I was just thinking about how, especially if you’re a North American, evangelical, but including some Anglo Americans that three formative experiences that have defined our movement, we’re all anti church. First, the Reformation now is a recovery of the gospel but against the hierarchical church in the West. Then again, the evangelical awakening, especially in its English or British manifestations, go to the fields. And there was a strong note on both sides. I mean, Edwards was a church figure, but there was a lot of opposition from churches and a lot of criticism of church leaders. So Whitfield locked out of pulpits, he goes to the fields, we can experience God even better, perhaps in the field. And then And again, the fundamentalist response, which then helps to produce the evangelical awakenings after World War Two. It’s also because they’ve lost the churches. They’ve lost it nominations, especially the northern Baptist Presbyterians. That’s a response to that. So of course me I can I can see then why Evan Jellicle is why we have a hard times because our formative stories all have to do with sort of the experience of the spiritual when you are expunged from the tangible and the hierarchical. hadn’t quite thought about it that way. All right, completely pivoting from that. I know this is an impossible question, but I still ask it in my classes. And it’s instructive, if not no other reason than as a thought process. Let’s take our kids, our grandkids are great grandkids and 100 years, they’re gonna look back in our era. This is a defining era because of the rise of the Internet. Also, the personal computer, also the smartphone. Now also, we’re seeing artificial intelligence, which one of those do you think would be remembered? They might all be remembered, in some sense. But which one of those would stand out? I don’t know. You can easily say probably we don’t even know because something else is going to come? Well, I mean, it’s possible. But pick one of those and explain, explain why.

Samuel James
We’ll call it it doesn’t matter. Because this is a simulation and 100 years like, the aliens will just pull the plug in and start a new sci fi. In other

Collin Hansen
words, the matrix is what you’re telling me to remember. Do?

Samuel James
Know. So if I had to guess now, I would probably say the smartphone. And here’s why. I think the smartphone is at the center of a infrastructure revolution in society, that the other things that you mentioned, are not quite eliciting so and it COVID Perhaps accelerated this, but I know the NFL, there’s just one somewhat trivial example. But the NFL is trying very hard to phase out physical ticketing. And I think a lot of stadiums already have. So and you’re talking about, like, in terms of physical event tickets, this is something that literally goes back hundreds of years, like people have had paper tickets, forever. And so and then you’re also thinking in terms of finance. And, you know, I don’t want to get too speculative because, you know, bitcoins rise and fall. And then you know, plateau is an example of how it’s a fool’s errand to prophesy these things. But I do think like the the way that finances is changing in response to people just being on their phones, and doing finance from their phones, and things like that, I think the smartphone, it represents the hardware revolution. And right now, and I think hardware revolutions tend to be more permanent than software revolutions. It’s one thing to kind of have a different website or a different app or you know, a different way of doing things. But the I mean, legally, the smartphone, it call it No, you know, this to the fact that I can do my boarding pass my ticketing, or everything from my smartphone, I don’t even have to have a physical boarding pass anymore. And now a lot of airports are getting to the point where you can do facial recognition and, you know, with in connection with your phone to board a plane, the hardware revolution seems at this point in time, to be more likely to be something that we’re still kind of, we’re still living with 100 years from now, even when maybe other technologies have have fallen by the wayside or been so retooled that they’re not recognizable, but I do think the smartphone revolution is probably here to stay at least for a very long time. Yeah.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I think it whether the hardware changes from a smartphone or to something else, the fact of internet connectivity, being able to go with you anywhere, right, that was the key evolution there. And the way I’ve I’ve put it is that once the internet could go into the bathroom with you, that’s when that’s when everything changed. That’s when you truly can’t go anywhere any longer to not be connected to something that we might imagine that the internet is similar to the printing press, which that had we just mentioned the Reformation earlier revolutionary implications from everything from politics, economics, religion, family formation, I mean, just one of the most revolutionary inventions of all time. It had a democratizing of act as well sort of populist effect empowering, creating broad spread, brought widespread literacy, broad based literacy, which did not exist before. And then it’s really hard to imagine our economic the market system, hard to imagine democratic politics, all of those things just not possible without that printing press, at least as far as we would understand it. Now, you also identify the democratizing effect of the internet, which is very dramatic in its own way. Now, I’m gonna throw a curveball at you here. I’ve heard it said that the internet is not so much akin to the printing press, as it is to the invention of language itself. I don’t remember where I heard it. But it’s been a thought provoking statement to me. What do you make of that? Think there’s any truth to that?

Samuel James
I have to sit on that one for, too, it’s

Collin Hansen
a big one. That’s a big one.

Samuel James
That’s that’s a big one. So I don’t necessarily want to be super dogmatic. I, I think that that probably does express something even even if it’s so let’s take it seriously. But not literally. I think that does express something that is true, which is that the internet is not simply, or we should say the internet is more than simply a new way of quote unquote, doing language, the internet is a new language. So you know, as opposed to the printing press, where you have this new way of printing language? Well, you know, as Nicholas Carr shows, in his book, The Shallows, the printing press, doesn’t simply kind of recapitulate language just on a new format, it creates a different kind of learner. So if you can give a person their own Codex, then that person can actually have a one on one encounter with information that is, unlike the tradition of oral learning, it’s very much unlike that, so. And I would encourage listeners to go read what Nicholas Carr says about the revolution that that was. And so the internet really has that kind of same effect, where it creates the the hyper connected learner. So you’re, you’re learning how to read the way a computer reads, so you’re just kind of skimming things, and then hypertext creates this kind of multi dimensional rabbit hole, that can connect you with ideas, but that are not necessarily connected logically, but they’re connected aesthetically. And so it’s almost like, it’s almost like a magazine that comes to life where like this one article will be connected to this ad, which suggests that it’s connected to this cause and everything like that. And, and that’s, that’s kind of an abstract way of understanding it. But I do think the internet is its own type of language, it’s its own way of expressing ideas. And that’s why, you know, if you took a person who spent their entire life in traditional educational institutions, and you know, you taught them habits of thinking that were common there, and you gave that person at the end of, you know, 21 years of formal education, if you gave that person a Twitter account, and said, Okay, now your goal is to, you know, put that put all those habits of thinking to action in the world of Twitter, that person is going to despair, because what they’re going to figure out is that the habits of thinking the habits of learning, the way they formulate ideas, the way they communicate, the way they learned how to do that, in traditional classroom structures has almost no purchase on Twitter. And so they’re not going to be, they’re almost not gonna be able to communicate. And we’ve all seen it. I know, you’ve seen it, too. We’ve all seen examples of this in real life of people that struggle to articulate themselves in a Digital Commons. And it’s not because they’re unintelligent, in fact, it’s often case the opposite. They’re probably more intelligent than most of their commentators, but it’s there. They just don’t think like the internet. And so I do think there’s, there’s some truth in the idea that this is a new language. It’s not simply recapitulating what we already know in a different format. It’s a new way of thinking and that’s kind of what the book is about.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. No, absolutely. Again, talking to Samuel James about digital liturgies rediscovering Christian wisdom, in an online age from crossway. Now here’s another thought ahead, Samuel, in the internet age, unprecedented wealth accrues to young entrepreneurs jobs go to graduates with the most recent education, would you describe are the spiritual implications of this inversion of power from the older to the younger?

Samuel James
Well, I think of that episode in the Old Testament, where the the son of Solomon, I think, was gave was had an opportunity to be king over a year in the United Kingdom. And when he asked the older guys, what should I say? And they said, Hey, speak kindly to this people and they will be your servants forever. And then he goes to ask his, his his text thread his buddies, what he should say. And they said, hey, they said, my little finger is thicker than my father’s thigh, like, you know, crack these crack the whips on these jokes. And so he followed what his younger friends told him to do. And the kingdom of Israel has not been the United States. So I think that’s that’s just a biblical anecdote that illustrates the power and the consequences of divorcing knowledge received from generations. So when when one should and it doesn’t matter if it’s if it’s happening upward or downward, because it happens both ways we’re not, we’re not just saying it’s always the younger versus the older. But when you separate the generations, and they no longer transmit to one another, really bad things happen. And I would suggest to anyone interested in this topic to go reaching 20s book, generations, which captures, I think, in a dispassionate, very fair way, how generations change from one group to the next based on experiences and unique cultural events that takeover. So I think one of the, one of the spiritual effects of, of kind of the inversion of expertise and the inversion of cultural power is that you’re, you’re going to see a lot of wisdom just lost, you’re going to see a lot of wife experience just lost. And I, I think this is probably has something to do with the conversations about delayed and foregone marriage, and not having children and people not able to settle down or not able to understand the opposite sex. I think you’re seeing this this handicap of life, primarily because we, as a society, we’ve been trending toward this way of existence where people are immediately sorted into their peer group, and they almost never get out. And they almost never experience meaningful relationship with someone who is a generation older than them. And unfortunately, there’s a lot of churches where that’s that’s the case, as well, everyone is sorted so neatly into their age group. And there’s not that cross generational discipleship. And what what do you lose when you lose that? Well, you one of the evidences, I think, is that you lose young people who know how to form attachments, they know how they might be very good at school, they might be very good at making money, they might be very good at building a platform for themselves and kind of projecting themselves. That’s what young people do, right? Young people put their foot forward. They’re, they’re good at kind of being charismatic, and attracting attention to themselves. It’s as we age, that we learn the skills of relationship, that we learn how to build things that last, that we learn how to cultivate relationships that end up resonating throughout generations, it’s, we are literally laying down the pathway for future generations that can only happen as we age. And I think that inversion of authority that you’re talking about is going to result in a lot of you know what Zuckerberg called Move fast and break things, you’re going to see a lot of that you’re going to see a lot of dynamism. But you’re not going to see a lot that passes the test of time.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, that’s a really good way to put it. I mean, you’re talking in this book about the way that new technologies create new cultural narratives. It’s just interesting that you can’t imagine an older person making an invention that would be significant today. I mean, that’s just that we you can’t that’s not does not fit our cultural narrative in there. And yet that says, Okay, what does that tell us? I mean, that communicates a story that old people are fundamentally a problem, because they don’t really contribute to the future. And maybe that’s why you see a lot of movements toward euthanasia. In places like Canada, especially in parts of Western Europe, I don’t know. But the message, just a good example of how technology will will have those effects and how different other cultures are. This is just basic cultural anthropology, that the West would be an anomaly. Especially compared to native cultures, and places like North America or East Asian cultures, or all sorts of other places where this inversion where your elders are honored. And sort of those things are, but we we just did doesn’t really make a lot of sense to us for a lot of reasons. But especially now I think, because of the way this sort of technolog technology works with with the internet in particular. You also write in the book, Samuel that the hashtag killed moral relativism. So briefly, can you give us a bit of a theology of repentance for the Internet age, like what should we do or not? There? I mean, I was a guest that I’ve had recently on gospel bound Yasha monk talk about these internet swarms, and that we see all the different times, certainly you see it in my position, but we all see it happen to someone and we all kind of know it’s gonna happen to us. Eventually it just kind of the way the internet works. It’s always looking for its daily or weekly target in those ways. He says you really only apologize if you’ve done something wrong. And it’s interesting how often, there seems to be no consideration for whether somebody has done anything truly wrong, but merely how other people feel about the situation and then it takes on an entire life of its own. Whether repentant seems to be utterly disconnected from any truth or validity, but merely as a way of sort of satiating the satiating the mob. It’s again, what what is a theology of repentance looked like in the internet age?

Samuel James
Yeah, it’s a great question. I think in our own culture, there’s almost an inversion of the relationship between guilt and public repentance. So the more actually guilty a person is, the less likely there they are to give an authentic apology. And I think of I don’t mean to pick on the NFL, I’m an NFL fan. But I mean, we have a lot of you have a lot of athletes who actually get caught in domestic abuse situations or they get caught, you know, drunk driving and hitting somebody. And the apology that comes out is I’m sorry for the people, I’ve disappointed, you know that that kind of just the issue is not me, the issue is all these other people who are disappointed in me. And then when you have a comedian, who, you know, they’re jokes from 10 years ago, or dug up on Twitter, they come out with this very earnest, I’m not the person I was like, I can’t believe this was me, I’ve undergone so much growth, I totally repudiate this or the other version of me. And so it’s almost like you’ve got this a total inversion where the guilty or a person is the more inauthentic they’re apologists

Collin Hansen
happens in Politics and International Affairs, like, the bigger the sin, the less you have to apologize for it. It’s almost like the smaller the more fixated, everybody becomes on it. And then when you show that you begin to actually apologize, then it seems like that becomes an opportunity for people to actually demand more and more and more than you realize you can’t really ever get on the other side of it. There’s no, there’s no propitiation, ultimately, and certainly no expiation, either side of that.

Samuel James
I kind of wonder if the reason for that is with a with a, you know, let’s let’s let’s think in terms of sins and faux pas, when someone when someone commits a faux PA, the apology is authentic, because they think that actually they can get past it. Because I think if they’re just apologetic enough, they can make it go away. And when you’re dealing with a sin, like something that is very extreme, because we don’t have the gospel, because we don’t, if you’re an unbeliever, you don’t have the gospel, you don’t have a theology of atonement and forgiveness. There’s almost this despair, the cynical despair that pops up that like, well, I can’t even do anything about this, I can’t get past this, this has not defined my life. So I might as well not grovel about it. Because that just makes it worse. There’s there’s no way to kind of take this stain off of my life. And so and so it’s interesting how Christian theology is the exact opposite. Christian theology says that in sin, we are all guilty, but there is a real mechanism for atonement. And I think this is why social media has become defined by activism. Because activism, really secular activism, much of it is this kind of way to kind of escape go and to read the community of this of this evil, but you don’t have a object of reconciliation, you don’t have an atonement. So and I know you have been, have been very influenced, as I have by Wilfred McLean’s magisterial essay on the strange disappearance of guilt, which I recommend to everyone in quote in the book. And I think that is to this day, one of the best articulations of where society that has denied real guilt, and real perpetuation ends up just throwing all of its moral energy at purging these faux pas from It’s Miss because it doesn’t know how to process guilt. And so I think Christians in the digital age, I think, have an opportunity to be known. Oh, you’re your Christian. You guys are the ones who actually believe in forgiveness. You guys are the ones who actually take in people who have sinned, and you say that God loves you and has made a way for you to be forgiven. You people are the ones who don’t throw people away. Why is that? What do you mean by that? And I think Christians are going to be some of the only people who who do that who teach that way. Because without without a theology of atonement without a theology of reconciliation that is divine, you’re just going to see more more and more moral energy expended upon trying to punish enemies and reward friends and that kind of thing. And I think that’s why we’re seeing this little movement of non Christian liberals who are kind of breaking from progressivism precisely for this reason, because they say, Well, this liberalism has become punitive, I don’t want any part of it. And often, people like Andrew Sullivan, or other people like that ended up talking almost unintentionally, biblically about the relationship between forgiveness and sin. But they just don’t, they don’t have the belief or they don’t have the faith actually in the Messiah to do that. So I think Christians have an enormous opportunity to witness just through the way we actually believe that forgiveness is real impossible.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I think in a post Christian, and in an internet age, the ways we tend to stand out, are not by trying to keep up with all the different changes, but by doubling down on basic practices and basic wisdom that get lost. You’ve mentioned earlier, going to church having actual in person friends, I think we could take it a few step further, actually, still getting married and having kids that’s practically, I mean, in many major cities that’s already wildly countercultural for Christians, or, or Mormons, or Orthodox Jews, things like that. But that’s becoming more of the norm. So just getting married, just having kids, not getting rid of your elderly. actually caring for your elderly. That’s another thing. That’s going to be something that that comes to characterize Christians and sets them apart, and then having a process by which people can find refuge from internet shame. But also find refuge from where real repentance, I repent of that sin. I’ve turned from that I’ve accepted the forgiveness as made possible through the blood of Jesus Christ. And now I can walk forward, where people can be, can be restored in a place where your record, not just criminally but even just on the internet follows you everywhere. And it cannot really be expunged. The internet just doesn’t just doesn’t forget. There. Those are just some basic things that I see. Let me ask you this as a quick question, what are some? You know, Sam, you’re you’re you’re so digitally connected as I am, as much as we’re talking about this stuff? I think in part, it’s because we’re so fully immersed in it, that we perceive so many more of the dangers, because it’s, it’s an occupational hazard, in many ways for our work. What are some of the most important habits you employ to stay connected to embodied and also spiritual reality? Because both of them get easily distorted by

Samuel James
the internet? Yeah, yeah, it’s a it’s a really good question. I apologize for saying that. My wife told me a few months ago, you don’t when you’re on a podcast, you say? That’s a great

Collin Hansen
question. very flattering. very flattering.

Samuel James
But you know, Colin, Anson, just asked really great question after great question. So

Collin Hansen
this, you really made it it’s flattery with all the other hosts. But it’s

Samuel James
right. When you’re right. It’s real. I would not flatter you, Mr. Colin. So, no, I think I think it’s so important for people to think about this, and I, digital liturgies. My book, the number one criticism that I’ve gotten from the book or about the book is that it’s not practical enough. And then it doesn’t really offer enough practical suggestions. On one level, I can see the point, I wish I would have written much more about practices. But on this on another level, I think partly that was intentional. And the reason is that when you dive deep into biblical wisdom, you see, you start to see the reality that according to the Bible, wisdom is about becoming a certain kind of person, not necessarily knowing what sort of rules to follow. So there’s, there’s always this inward direction with wisdom, wisdom is always kind of pushing toward the heart. And it’s always trying to create certain kinds of people. And I think one of the reasons for that is, there’s, there’s, there’s far too many scenarios that you may run into in real life, then there are Bible verses for that you can clearly say like, this is clearly wrong, I should not do this, or this is clearly right, I should do this. Those situations exist, and probably there’s more of them than modern people like you and I would even want to admit, but there are way too many scenarios in life where really the question is going to be what kind of person am I what kind of person am I wanting to become where Army instincts were my loves. Well, what am I treasuring most? What do I most want to be 1020 30 years from now. And so I think when we think about habits, that’s where I start. And so part of partly that has meant one of my foundational habits is to bring other people into my tech use. So for me, it’s been my wife. So I have social media memberships, where she has the password, and I don’t. And what that means is, I have to say, Hey, could you log me in now that I say that to people, and I see the look on their eyes, and they go, Hey, I’m I’m calling, you know, I’m calling whatever authority to call to report your, you know, dysfunctional marriage. And I know that sounds Byzantine, but for somebody like me to bring another person into my relationship with tech automatically creates this almost this barrier of wisdom. And I’m not saying it’s infallible, I’m not saying it can’t be overcome. But it’s a barrier of wisdom, where if I have to admit to her that I’ve been hooked on Twitter or whatever, for the last 72 hours debating with people who are wrong online, if I have to admit, implicitly admit to her, it forces me to implicitly admit it to myself. And I’m like, You know what, I probably should disengage from this. And Colin, I think one of the things that vast majority of people who have these technologies, they don’t have anyone like that in their life, they don’t have anyone like that, that they want to invite I, I’ve counseled a lot of guys through pornography addictions and things like that, the vast majority of them can’t even countenance the idea of somebody having their screentime code for their, for their iPhone, much less of just general social media password, that that the idea of privacy, the idea that I should be able to have a one on one relationship with this technology that nobody else should be pulled into. And nobody else should be able to tell me how to use it is so woven deeply into our conscience as Americans. And I think you I think in terms of practices, you can start there, we’re going to start by bringing other people into our tech use. And it might look like sharing passwords, it might look like, hey, inviting someone at church to say, Hey, if you ever see me post anything that you’re like, I don’t know about Feel free, feel free to message me and say, Hey, I don’t know about this, you know, take that proactive step, and then create some rhythms of Sabbath. You know, I love Andy crouches. I think it’s an hour a day, one day a week and one week a year, I think of being totally unplugged. And I realized this is going to look different for different people in different seasons of life. And the Lord knows that. But I love the idea of taking just one hour a day, preferably not between 3am and 4am, when you’re staying asleep, so you can satisfy that requirement. But But taking a conscious hour out of your day to say, Hey, I’m not going to be bothered by by what’s out there. I’m going to attend to what’s in here, I’m going to attend to my responsibilities, I’m going to attend to these friends, I’m going to attend these relationships, I’m just going to sit down with the word. And I’m not going to take a picture of my Bible and post it to Instagram. Just getting away from that noise reminds you that there it’s like coming up for air when you’ve been underwater. It reminds you oh wait, this is what it’s like to actually live life out from under the digital gates. So those are two very basic habits that I think anyone is capable of pursuing.

Collin Hansen
Well, that’s really helpful. Let’s keep in that vein here. As we wrap up. Let’s do the last three quickly here talking with Samuel James, author of digital liturgies rediscovering Christian wisdom in an online age. All right, again, quick answers here. Number one, what is the most important advice you’d give to parents?

Samuel James
Reject privacy.

Collin Hansen
Okay, and reject privacy related to what you just said right there. The assumption of the Internet age is privacy. That’s the cultural narrative. So if you reject that premise, it changes everything. Okay, very good. Good. Second, what’s the most important advice you’d give to pastors?

Samuel James
Watch your own soul.

Collin Hansen
Okay, expand on that one a little bit.

Samuel James
Yeah, I’ll expand on that one. So I think I think one of the temptations calling for pastors right now is going to be to use social media and the Internet to alleviate the symptoms of pastoring. And what I mean by that is pastoring is hard. For a lot of pastors pastoring is lonely. And for a lot of pastors pastoring is obscure that no one sees their sacrifice. No one is text. No one is emailing and texting them saying Well done. Great sermon, thank you for being at my mother’s bedside last night. Their labor is obscure. And I think the temptation for pastors is often to go to go to social media, and to be the public theologian that you don’t feel like you can be with just your embodied ministry.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, that’s good. One of the things I always appreciate about your perspective, Samuel is having grown up in a pastor’s home. And you often bring that to bear that’s really helpful to me, especially as I’m trying to parent my kids and talking to pastors. But having never been on the other side of that it’s helpful. All right, last question. I’m gonna make you TGC is editor in chief for a day. Don’t let it get to your head, the pay is not great. And the responsibility is not what you think. But here’s the question you need to answer. Interesting, one of the things you talk about the cultural narrative, is how it prioritizes stories over arguments. The Internet conveys stories, more than more so than arguments. So here’s your decision. Would you invest in building a great tic tock account? No. Okay. Tell me why.

Samuel James
I think the medium is the message. And I think, tick tock, first of all, other than being this glaring national security threat that our, our, our elites apparently don’t have that much motivation to address

Collin Hansen
or are paid off by a certain or

Samuel James
paid off. Yeah, well, we’ll just say whatever reason that is, I don’t want to get any, any messages from my elected representatives on this. I think I think the medium is the message, I think, I think tick tock is, of course capable of broadcasting gospel truth. But I think that medium will always tend toward a way of thinking and a way of processing information that is hostile to biblical wisdom.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, I had I was meeting with some Christian college students a couple years ago, and they were saying, effectively, if it’s not on tick tock, we don’t see it. Our generation just doesn’t really care about anything else. It’s all tick tock. And I thought, huh, and then I just said, well, and they were talking about how distressing that is about how many arguments or how many stories or how many, one minute tearing down the Bible. Christians are wrong about everything. Christians are immoral. The Bible is stupid. Anybody who believes it is stupid that they see all of the time how popular those accounts are. And I thought, well, don’t you think a ministry like the gospel coalition should be there to try to help respond or how to, you know, to tell different stories, and they were like, they were repelled by the idea. They just said, that sounds horrible. No, you shouldn’t do that. And I said, Wait a minute. But if I’m trying to reach your generation, how can I not do tick tock and it just, you could just see them try to process and say, Wait a minute, the only thing we care about is tick tock at the medium doesn’t allow Christianity doesn’t it doesn’t work. And I thought, Oh, boy. There’s a lot to ponder there. And ultimately, Samuel, it’s why I think your book is really helpful because that’s the kind of book that helps people to connect these dots that are floating out there and you’re thinking how can these things coexist and they’re very concerning. But then you go back to okay, what are the principles of disengagement that we need to, to implement to be able to preserve genuine wisdom? So, check out Samuels book digital liturgies rediscovering Christian wisdom. In an online age you can also I’m sure you’ve read his work at crossway whether you know it or not. Books like Andrew Wilson’s remaking the world, Samuel played a crucial role in and also check out his newsletter digital liturgies Samuel, thanks again for joining me on gospel bound. Thanks, Colin.