Has it really been almost a year since Rob Bell’s Love Wins trailer?

When the social media backlash began, I noticed that the responses to Bell were nearly identical to what John Piper received the year before when he made his tornado comments. Now, a year later, the tables have turned again and Piper’s comments that Christianity has a “masculine feel” have prompted his detractors to follow the same script right down to the call to stop giving Piper attention.

So before the next controversy hits, I’ve attempted to catalog a step-by-step (and tongue-in-cheek) account of what happens when a popular Christian leader says or does something deemed important by his or her frenemies.

1. The Instigation

It turns out that this is the only real variable in the process. The question is: who will it be? Who will say, write, or blog something that catches the attention of the Internet masses? It might be a traditionalist like Piper who restates a familiar doctrine a new way that non-followers find particularly offensive. Or it could be a progressive type like Bell who “asks questions” in a way that catches the ire of the old guard.

2. The Reporting

The second step is the key to the whole process. An important blogger or speaker must detect the problem and alert the masses to the fact that “Someone on the Internet is wrong!”

3. Social Media Echo Chamber

Now, the chain reaction begins. RSS feeds light up. Tweets are rewteeted. Like buttons are pressed (although what we really want is a “dislike” button, amiright?). The word is really getting out now, and people are “becoming aware” of the issues and sides.

4. Contextual Reminders and Supportive Defense

Almost immediately, those who support the instigator begin to clarify, restate, give context to, and defend the statement(s) under attack. Did you listen to the entire video, they ask? Did you read the entire book? Do you understand the social-rhetorical context and redemptive-historical milieu in which the background of the event and statements may have occurred? Obviously, if you did and you were reasonable, you’d get it.

5. Social Media Echo Echo Chamber

As soon as the defenses are up, the supporters of the instigator being tweeting and liking in kind. And, just to be sure, they go to the ends of the Internet (i.e. Google+ and MySpace) to ensure everyone knows their guy was right all along.

6. Minor Leaguers Step up to the Plate

This is where Christian blog stars are born. Minor league Christian bloggers (like myself), armed with a dream and a few dozen hits a day, begin to offer “second looks” at the issue, “rethinking the controversy” for us, and occasionally attempt to “find common ground.”

7. Comment Wars!

In the first few steps, most of what happens stays within the supporting or detracting networks. The instigator’s team defends themselves, and the other side congratulates itself for opposing something so clearly wrong. But it doesn’t take long before commenters begin fights on other side’s blogs, showing why nested comments were invented.

45 Minutes Later…

All the people who have been working or spending time with loved ones during the previous 45 minutes begin to sense they are missing out on something huge. They begin to check in and see just how wrong (or right) their guy (or gal) was about the thing.

8. Accusations of Mean Spirited Debate

Once the sides are fully entrenched in their views, the supporters of the instigator stop defending the initial issue and begin accusing their frenemies of not conducting their attacks with love, not talking in person with the instigator, and generally being un-Jesus-ish. Also, BibleGateway and YouVersion see a spike in searches for Matt 18:15-20.

9. Affirmations of Standing Up for Truth

After the reporting side has been accused of mean-spirited, they bring out the tried and true “standing up for truth” defense. After all, Jesus called the Pharisees names, and Paul did his fair share of heresy hunting. We are not unloving, they say, because it is the height of love to point someone to truth.

10. Social Media Gets Blamed

Exasperated, the accusing side realizes they are convincing very few people and may in fact be bringing more attention to the other side’s wrong view than they intended. People like me write op-eds about social media and Christianity (like this very blog post), and then everything gets really meta and confusing.

So we wait for the next big thing.

Last spring, I was finding that I just didn’t have enough time to read several books that I really wanted to read. Then a friend reminding me about something called “audiobooks.” Because I have a long commute, I had always wanted to try audiobooks, but I had dismissed them because I didn’t want to keep track of CDs, tapes, or synced files.

But since I last looked into audiobooks, two things lowered the barrier of entry for me. First, smartphone apps like audible.com take out all the work of managing physical media or syncing files. Second, my wife got me an aftermarket Bluetooth car kit last year which makes using audio books in the car much safer and more pleasant.

The “Reading” List

As a result, I “read” a number of books that I might have otherwise missed and experimented along the way with which books I would get the most out of. (It seems that the joke about whether or not you really “read” an audiobook never gets old.)

1. Love Wins by Rob Bell – This was the book that kicked things off for me because I knew I needed to read it quickly to stay in the know. It was a great start because it was only a few hours long, and Bell himself reads it so I could hear exactly want he wanted to communicate. A few laps around my neighborhood, and I was up to date on the controversy of 2011.
2. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by Eric Metaxas – I missed this book in 2010 when it came out, and I really wanted to catch up. I was worried that I might lose interest since it was over 20 hours long and is theologically rich. But it turned out to be a wonderful listening experience, both because the story of Bonhoeffer’s life is so riveting and powerful and because Metaxas and the reader did such outstanding work.
3. 1776 by David McCullough – Next, I thought I’d try hitting up an older book that I had always wanted to read, but never took the initiative to actually do something about. Like Bonhoeffer’s biography, this one is a little bit dense when it comes to historical detail, but the strength of the story and the author’s telling of it made it a great audiobook (bonus: it’s read by McCullough himself and his voice is fantastic).
4. 52 Things Kids Need from a Dad: What Fathers Can Do to Make a Lifelong Difference by Jay Payleitner – At this point, everything I listened to was for my own theological enrichment, so I decided to see if I could get into something that might help me be a better dad. Payleitner’s book is 52 fun stories about things he learned as a dad, and mostly boils down to the simple but important advice: “Show up, and take initiative.” This was the first book where I really should have had some way to jot down a few notes about things I wanted to be sure to take away.
5. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Persig – This time I went out on a limb. I’d always wanted to read Zen, but I knew there was no way I would get to it except in the car. It’s an absolutely fascinating book both in form and content (which is part of Persig’s whole point), and it was interesting to consume it another form. However, I did listen to the abridged version, and I’m not sure I would had made it through the entire book.
6. The Pastor: A Memoir by Eugene Peterson – I had met Peterson just a few months before, sharing a breakfast with him one morning and taking communion from him the next evening. But before listening to this book, I really didn’t know much about him other than that he wrote The Message. The Pastor was a perfect introduction to his thought and life which are intertwined. In fact, there’s probably no way to understand his conception of church and community without the real portrait of how he actually lived in it.
7. The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Alan Jacobs – I was about to get Jacob’s newer book on reading, but at the last second I decided it would be fun to hear Lewis’ story since I’m starting to read his works to my kids. It was a great choice.
8. ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World’s First Computer by Scott McCartney – A friend recommended this and again, I found that a good story can make history come alive on audio no matter how boring the material might seem.
9. Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters: 10 Secrets Every Father Should Know by Meg Meeker – This is a wonderful book, but it’s a departure from the others in one important aspect. While Meeker does tell some stories, much of the book is data driven which I found harder to consume in audio. Some of the data is rather bleak so I didn’t always find myself looking forward to listening, but still it’s important stuff, and I’m glad I was able to consume the material one way or another.
10. The Hunger Games by Susan Collins – With this one, I’m right back where I started. That is, I’m back to listening to a book that is culturally relevant like Love Wins. I have to admit, I had a blast listening to this story, and the first person narrative really works as an audiobook. If I were still a youth pastor, I’d have to do something on this and compare it to Esther.

What I Learned

Each of the books has their own strengths, but below are some reflections I’ve had on the medium of audiobooks.

1. Lowering Barriers of Entry
   When you want to make a change in habits, one of the most important things you can do to ensure it will last is to reduce remove as many barriers as possible. In this case, an iPhone and a car with BlueTooth made audiobooks impossibly easy for me to try.But the same idea also applied to me starting back up with my running. When I setup the coffee maker the night before, put out running clothes (including gloves and a hat when needed), and turn on my alarm, I don’t have any excuses for not going in the morning.
2. Redeeming the Time
   I drive about 3o minutes each way to and from work. I can use that time to pray, think, eat, or talk on the phone, but there’s not much I can do to make it shorter. So audiobooks offer me a chance to use that time wisely.However, I also know that it can be counterproductive to fight technology with technology. The tension of a commute can be exacerbated by more sounds, so sometimes I still need to just have silence.
3. Widening Exposure 
   I love reading, but it’s sometimes easy to stay within a certain field (like theological studies) and fail to expand beyond it. By opening up a new medium, audiobooks offered me a chance to read about ideas much different from my own (like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) and stay up to date on books in the cultural spotlight (Hunger Games).Going forward, I’d like to use my audiobook time to expose myself to even more ideas and authors that I’d not normally get to read.
4. Stories vs. Ideas
   Oral communication just seems better suited to telling stories than communicating complex ideas.  When I’m running, it takes a lot of mental energy to keep up with an abstract concept whereas staying in a story seems natural. In fact, a good story seems to help me run faster or longer. I’d like to try listening a longer work of non-fiction, but I think I’ll stick with stories, biographies, and heavily narrative content for now.
5. Hearing the Scriptures
   This experience has also make me want to get a good audio version of the Bible. As a point of reference, the Hunger Games is about 11 hours, while audio Bibles are 65-75 hours!My own church makes it a point to read the passage from the sermon aloud as we stand, and that choice has made me grow in appreciation for hearing the Word rather than just readingit.If you have any recommendations on a good version, let me know!

If you’re an audiobook lover (or hater), I’d love to hear what you think!

Tech history professor David Stearns pointed out a post on Kempt magazine about a new idea for social gatherings called PhoneStack.

It works like this: as you arrive, each person places their phone facedown in the center of the table. As the meal goes on, you’ll hear various texts and emails arriving… and you’ll do absolutely nothing. You’ll face temptation—maybe even a few involuntary reaches toward the middle of the table—but you’ll be bound by the single, all-important rule of the phone stack.

Whoever picks up their phone is footing the bill.

As Dr. Stearns points out, there are at least two reasons to love this idea. First, “Instead of pretending that mobile phones are not really a distraction, it puts them front and center, acknowledging their potential for disruption.” Everyone who stacks their phone is saying that, for a few short moments, the people around them are the most important things in the world and that they have their full attention.

Second, ideas like this show us something about the way individuals and groups react to new technology. “When social groups adopt a new device, they often create rules or games like these to govern the use of that device when gathered together.”

Of course, this might not work for every gathering (Kempt got a boatload of negative responses and exceptions), but I do love the intentionality of a group of people acknowledging the challenges of smartphones and choosing to do something together to enrich their time.

Best app of 2012?

[HT: David Stearns]

1. The Clock

This morning when you woke up, what was the first thing you did? Brush your teeth? Make coffee? Read the Bible? Kiss your spouse?

I can almost guarantee it wasn’t any of those things. No, the first thing we do when we wake up (and the last thing we do before falling back asleep) is read the glowing numbers on a nearby digital clock. Every decision we make, no matter how insignificant or world changing, is shaped by what those numbers tell us. Do I have time to get a coffee on my way to work? Do we have time for communion during this Sunday’s worship service? How many pages of my devotional do I have time to read? How long before I can give my baby another dose of her medicine?

Lewis Mumford and others have pointed out that is was 12^th century monks who invented accurate clocks with the hope of standardizing times of prayer. Clocks went on to make accurate ship navigation a reality, and they are what makes the entire internet function. But because they are everywhere, they are invisible, and because they are invisible, we rarely reflect on how they structure the way we see the world and what we can do in it.

2. Microphones

Video extension sites and Internet campuses get all the attention these days, but it was the microphone that changed the way we think about Sunday morning and the ministry of the church. Nothing (besides the car) has shaped twentieth century evangelicalism more than the ability to project our voices to ever-larger audiences.

With the ability to reach larger audiences, comes larger congregations, and with larger congregations comes the need to divide them into groups. Those divisions create youth groups, women’s groups, child care, and legacy builders, and so on. And with those groups comes the need for specialized pastors to meet each of their needs.

Large, microphone-powered churches are able to meet needs small ones can’t, but at the same time, by extending the reach of the pulpit, the microphone has also dwarfed the importance of the altar.  With no counterbalancing technology to increase the altar’s profile, communion tends to be an after thought behind the technologically-enhanced activities of singing and preaching.

 3. Verse Numbers

There’s a Bible for every platform – PCs, Macs, Android, iPhone, iPad, even Windows Phone and BlackBerry have cool Bible software with powerful search abilities.

But long before the Bible went digital, it was chopped up into tweet-sized pieces called “verses.” From the time Moses started writing (let’s say 1500 B.C.) to the time those verse numbers were added and standardized (in the 1600s), not a single Christian on earth knew what a “verse” or a “chapter” was.  If one of those ancient believers saw a John 3:16 poster, they’d be as confused as the people Googling Tim Tebow today. They didn’t have favorite verses or life verses – they simply had the non-technologically enhanced Words of God which were usually read to them out loud.

Today verse numbers make all kinds of cool things possible. I’m currently writing some Bible software that relies on chapter:verse numbers heavily, and I’m so glad they exist. But sometimes I prefer to read a Bible that has the chapter/verse layer removed (like what you can buy at http://booksofthebible.info and maybe even the new ESV single column).

 4. Personal Electronic Publishing

Media ecologists like to say that there has been a movement in communication from oral to literate to print to digital. The (vastly simplified) story goes that information access increases in each age, and one of the results of this change in access is the disruption of authority structures. In an oral culture, the leader is naturally the oldest person who has accumulated the most information and wisdom. In a literate culture, the leaders are those with money for books and education. In the shift from written texts to printed texts, single leaders like Popes and kings lost their power to protestants and democracies.

In the shift from print to digital, there has been a kind of inversion. In the early days of the Internet, it’s primary significance was increased access to information. But today I think the “big deal” about the Internet is that it gives everyone the ability to publish. We have blogs, twitter, facebook, and more that we can use to share our unfiltered opinions about everything and everyone. There are wonderful things like my friend Rick Smith who, in the short span of a year, has become a major advocate for Down Syndrome and his son Noah. At the same time, people like Rob Bell and Mike Licona were to varying degrees affected by not just what big name writers said in print, but what we collectively as Christians on the Internet said and did through our personal online publishing outlets.

There was a day when publishing something meant it was important, permanent, and had been through a level of editorial scrutiny. But increasingly, we don’t see a great deal of difference between sharing our opinions on facebook and sharing them with friends at a coffeeshop. These are fluid “places” to us. Yet the shift to publicly sharing those thoughts has profound implications for how we value our opinions and those of others.

5. Mobile Devices

I’ve always wanted to try audiobooks, but it wasn’t until I got the Audible app on my iPhone that I really fell in love with them. I also track my runs with RunKeeper, take great photos of my kids, and do all the other cool stuff we love about our smartphones.

And yet, when I take my kids to a park or the church playground, it seems as though 90% of the parents are on their phones most of the time. I, too, sometimes find the pull irresistible. Even when I check the time (another clock!) on the phone, I feel an urge to see if I have any email. Phones have also become more acceptable in church services. A few years ago I noticed one or two people reading the Bible on their PDAs or smartphones, but now it seems like 1 in 6 have them. With that increased acceptance, though, I’ve noticed more and more people doing things other than reading the Bible on their phones.

Of course, people have always had ways to tune out the sermon, doodling on the prayer request card or fiddling with the empty seat in front of us, yet it seems the powerful draw that comes from the phone is something new that we’ll all have to deal with honestly. It will require discipline, accountability, and openness to gain its benefits without being pulled into it’s value system of always on, always engaged.

Others?

What other technologies do you see shaping and influencing your and your church’s behaviors in the coming year?

While out shopping with my kids last week, the toy phones caught my eye. I let the kids play with a toy guitar while I rearranged them in roughly chronological order. The original candy bar phones are still available (far left), but I couldn’t find a phone with a cord anywhere in the store. At the high tech end, Fisher Price now sells a “Smilin’ Smart Phone” that looks much like an iPhone.

This little evolutionary history lesson seems to show a movement away from the mechanical and physical toward something that mimics it. Early phone had rotary dials and wires, then they moved to buttons, then they lost the wires, and now they’ve replaced the buttons with a screen that mimics the original buttons. The phone mimics human speech and now the phone has a screen that mimics our interaction with the original mimicker – Inception!

Merry Christmas!

Last weekend, my kids and I whipped up some home-made Play-Doh. It’s not too hard – all you need is flour, salt, oil, water, cream of tartar, and whatever colors of food coloring you want, and you become super dad.

The kids had a blast both making it and playing with it, and afterward I marveled at how much fun it is to make something “from scratch” together. But at the same I starting to realize that I was not really making Play-Doh “from scratch” because, other than water, I have no idea where to get those ingredients other than Wal-Mart. I’m pretty adept at mixing the pre-purified ingredients, but it would be an enormous undertaking to actually plant grains, harvest them, and grind them down into flour.

Enter the Cheeseburger

As I was thinking about how nice it is to have all of those ingredients, I came across a blog post by Waldo Jaquith where he describes how much more impossible it would be to make a hamburger “from stratch.” Since he already raises chickens, he thought it would be fun to grow tomatoes and onions, make buns and mustard, and grind his own beef by hand. But the more he thought about it, he realized to be truly legitimate he’d need to raise his own cows. Then he realized that he’d need at least two cows, one for meat and one for milk to make cheese. As he continued to peel back layers, he came to this realization:

Further reflection revealed that it’s quite impractical—nearly impossible—to make a cheeseburger from scratch. Tomatoes are in season in the late summer. Lettuce is in season in spring and fall. Large mammals are slaughtered in early winter. The process of making such a burger would take nearly a year, and would inherently involve omitting some core cheeseburger ingredients. It would be wildly expensive—requiring a trio of cows—and demand many acres of land. There’s just no sense in it.

A cheeseburger cannot exist outside of a highly developed, post-agrarian society. It requires a complex interaction between a handful of vendors—in all likelihood, a couple of dozen—and the ability to ship ingredients vast distances while keeping them fresh. The cheeseburger couldn’t have existed until nearly a century ago as, indeed, it did not.

Think Outside the Bun

When we reflect on what we usually call “technology” (electronic gadgets like iPhones, tablets, etc.), it’s not uncommon to observe that those devices would have been impossible to manufacture a century ago. But it’s interesting to see how many other everyday things – like cheeseburgers and homemade Play-Doh – are almost as improbable as an iPhone.

So before you bite into your next cheeseburger (or take ingredients out of the pantry), take a moment to look at each part and imagine the vast constellation of technological resources that magically, seamlessly, and invisibly come together for our benefit. We live in exciting (and complex) times!

The Uber-Intellectual, Tweed Jacket Wearing Brainiac

Brian Brock‘s Christian Ethics in an Age of Technology is unparalleled in its depth of research (covering Augustine, Heidegger, Grant, Foucoult, and more), analysis of the conceptual roots of modern science and technology, and commitment to theologically “thick” answers. If you’re not really an academic type, this might not be the book for you. But if you’ve got an egghead who eats dissertations for breakfast, this is your book.

The Zen-Like Hipster, Emergent, McLuhanite

Before he was Rob Bell’s successor at Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, Shane Hipps was ad executive for Porsche. But he became disenchanted with the idea of using images to convince people to buy things they didn’t need, and so he became a pastor and studied the ideas and catchphrases of Marshall McLuhan. Eventually he went on to write the McLuhan-inspired Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith which, in addition to having one of the best titles in this round up, introduces several new catchphrases and gives a nice overview of McLuhan’s thought. (note: in Flickering Pixels, Hipps doesn’t address any of the typical hot button “emergent” issues. It’s focused specifically on media.)

The Hilarious, Pop Culture Guy with Hidden Depth

Adam Thomas‘s publisher labels him the “one of the first priests from the millennial generation,” but I would call him one of the funniest and most insightful people I’ve emailed but never met. His book Digital Disciple is the perfect match of insider tech humor and deeply reflective Christian spirituality. His book is just the right length for non-readers and it even includes discussion questions for small groups. I appreciate how he urges us not just to react against technology, but to strive to see God in it.

The Young, Restless, Reformed, Canadian Tech Junkie

Tim Challies is only in his 30s, but he’s undoubtedly the grandaddy of Christian blogging and a faithful representative of Reformed and Puritan thought. He’s also been involved in web design and computer consulting for years, and he brings that unique combination to The Next Story in which he applies Neil Postman’s thought swirled together with some healthy Biblical wisdom to issues like distraction, privacy, and anonymity. Tim and I even worked together a bit on a definition of technology, leading to my tongue-in-cheek endorsement: “As the co-author of 13 words in Tim’s new book, I’m very happy that he, with his skill as a writer, his experience as a web designer, and his deeply informed, discerning faith, wrote the other 60,000.”

The Sensitive Engineering Linguist

The title of Brad Kallenberg’s book is God and Gadgets: Following Jesus in a Technological Age. Yet while the book is definitely about “God” it’s not so much concerned with specific “gadgets” as it is with the powerful patterns of life and language that emerge when we surround ourselves with tools of all kinds. Kallenberg invokes heavy hitters like Heidegger and Wittgenstein, but he isn’t overly academic in his approach, and he draws from his diverse experience as a chemist, a campus minister, an engineer, and a philosophy professor. His unique emphasis on language makes this short book a nice addition to any library on technology and faith.

The Half-Amish, Half-Cyborg Polymath

What Technoloy Wants is one of the strangest and most thought-provocative books I’ve ever read (see my multi-part review). Then again, Kevin Kelly is about as close as they come to a real life “Most Interesting Man Alive” (complete with beard). A co-founder of Wired magazine who converted to Christianity while sleeping on the floor of an Israeli church, he offers a sweeping view of technology history drawing parallels between biological evolution and the progression of technology. For those who like way out there stuff, this is the book to get.

The Jack of All Trades, Theologian, Creative-Type “Honorable Mention”

Finally, I can’t help but mention my own contribution to the discussion. I hoped to have included some of Challies’s Postman-like critiques and Biblical insight, a bit of Hipps’s McLuhan-channelling, some good, light-hearted story-telling like Thomas, a glimmer of Brock’s academic and theological underpinnings, the breadth and depth of Kallenberg’s work, and maybe even some off-the-wall Kellyisms. In From the Garden to the City, I wanted to highlight how technology is a powerful, beautiful, and necessary expression of the Image of God present in all of us, while also grappling with how everything we make, use, and do – including technology – has the potential to shape us personally, spiritually, and relationally.

Feel free to add your favorites in the comments. Merry Christmas!

Hilarious look at what happens when texting takes over.

Lewis C.K. On Twitter

Lewis C.K. loves to go on Conan to bash technology trends. This time he even talks about Jesus! (watch the language!)

Over time, I’ve gotten better about trying to think through whether I really need to tweet something and if I’ll later regret it. If it passes the “regret later” test, then I’m free to tweet.

I’m so going to tweet that…

But I’ve noticed an interesting side-effect of this “think before you tweet” rule. As I go about the day, I find myself thinking of things about which I could tweet. When I see a strange person in line at a store, I think about something clever I could say. When a company offers me poor service, I think about how I could slam them and get something back from it. When I read about major world events, I think up little jokes to make light of them.

In other words, I’ve started to see the world through Twitter.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

When I was a youth pastor, I was always on the lookout for good illustrations. If something funny, sad, or interesting happened I made a note to use it in my next sermon for the kids.

Eventually, I noticed that “Illustrations” had become the lens through which I looked at everything and I decided I needed to turn it off sometimes, so I could just enjoy the moment. Now, I find myself needing to do the same with Twitter at times.

All of this illustrates that the tools we use tend to color the world we see, and sometimes we need to take a step back from the tool to see things as they are. In the mean time, come follow me on twitter: @johndyer

So why isn’t technology neutral? Doesn’t how we end up using technology matter more?

The reason so many people believe “technology is neutral” is that it’s so obviously true. Any tool, from an iPhone to a shovel, can be used for good things (like building orphanages) or bad things (like axe-murdering), but the tool itself is amoral. The problem is that, while this is certainly true, it’s only half the story. And half-truths are tricky because they often blind us from seeing more important things.

The “other half” most of us miss about technology is that tools transform us regardless of whether we use them for good or for evil. Whether I use my shovel to build that orphanage or go on an axe-murdering spree, I’ll end up with blisters on my hands from the shovel. And just as physical tools reshape our bodies, digital tools transform our minds. I can use Twitter to follow Christian pastors like John Piper and Rick Warren or mindless celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Snoop Dogg, but regardless of the goodness or badness of the content they tweet, my mind will be transformed such that it gains the skill of consuming enormous numbers of short sentences, but looses the ability to read a book for more than a 10 or 15 minutes without feeling distracted.

So, yes, how we use technology certainly does matter, but we also need to be aware of how technology is using (or transforming) us.

So if technology is changing us as a culture and a people, is that a good or a bad thing? And what do we do about it?

I don’t really think technology fits cleanly into categories of “good” or “bad.” Instead it’s about “change.” These changes bring enormous benefits many of which can further the kingdom of God, but those benefits come with downsides as well. For some, it’s tempting to ignore the unintended consequences and focus only on the wiz-bang coolness of the latest shiny gadget. For others, it’s easy to say every new technology is designed to destroy your soul, but ignore that God is just as active today as in every age.

Read the whole thing…