Church Blog
“Shame on You”
We’re talking about cancel culture. Make no mistake, cancel culture is not a phenomenon of any specific demographic of our society. You can find it among liberals and conservatives, religious people and atheists, young and old, sports fans, music fans, and any other subculture you could possibly think of. Surely, there is a stamp collector somewhere who regrets the off-handed comment he made about the 1918 Inverted Jenny because it cost him all of his friends. The Christian internet sub-culture is exactly the same with people waiting to find any hint of scandal so they can post it online and watch the entire world pile on…
“The Abolition of Thought”
The focus of this chapter can be summarized in one word: Outrage. People can say things online that you would never consider saying to someone in person. James demonstrates this with a personal anecdote about getting into a Twitter fued with someone, to the point that they blocked his account, but then when he saw this man in person, he acted like it had never happened. And this is not a unique experience, as many others have observed or experienced themselves (in fact, I have on many occasions)…
“My Story, My Truth”
“Don’t sit so close to the TV! You’ll hurt your eyes!” Uttered nearly a million times from my mom from 1973 until about 1994 when I finally left home.
I’m not sure how many feet away from the screen my mom considered “safe” for our vision, but certainly, in the 1980s, I used to sit farther away from my family TV than the few inches I hold my iPhone away from my face in this present age. And I guarantee you I’m looking at my iPhone way more than I ever looked at my TV growing up.
“Drowning in the Shallows”
I remember opening and closing the Facebook app for the third time in a row as I sat on my couch a month or so ago. I didn’t consciously open the app. My thumb, seemingly with a mind of its own, set on the finger print ID to open my phone and then clicked the exact location of the app. The whole process being about a second. It was a habit, and a habit that I was trying to break. A few students and people in the church did a challenge to set new rhythms in our lives. And not using social media or screens for more than 90 minutes a week, was one of the challenges. Maybe you have tried to delete an app for a while, or caught yourself using an app way too much. We all know that these apps are not the best for us to some extent. But, why is that? ...