Church Blog
“Death by Minutiae”
“The age of connectedness is the age of loneliness. The age of productivity is the age of burnout.” The author James makes this seemingly absurd statement in the 8th chapter of his book. These statements about the internet are seemingly contradictory in their nature. How can we have a time of being the most connected to others, and yet people are feeling the most alone? How can we have a time where we can have so much power and ability to get things done, and yet people are falling and failing even faster and getting less done. How can the internet promise so much, and yet produce such tragic results? …
“The Dark Side of the Web”
I found out recently that I belong to a micro-generation known as Xenials. Which means I had the good fortune of wrestling with my adolescence in a time when pornography was not very accessible. It was out there of course, and I was exposed to some of it in my youth, but it had not saturated my cultural experience the way it has for many born after me. Now, the internet, and for that reason, explicit images and videos, are nearly omnipresent. In this chapter of Samuel James’ book, he turns his attentions to one of the great social & spiritual problems of our time: pornography…
“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? ...
“How Technology Shapes Us”
"I can remember when my household first got a family computer. As I look back now, this addition significantly changed our home life, particularly among sibling relationships. We went from socializing with one another to competing over screen time to “socialize” with our school friends...
“Embodied Wisdom in a Faceless Age”
Have you ever seen the film Catfish? Or maybe the MTV show that came after the movie which followed the same concept? I have to admit this show sucked me in completly. I was enamored by the drama and intrigue of this very modern digital phenomenon. If you have no idea what I am talking about let me explain....
Worship & The Web
Have you ever seen the home videos of teens made around their high schools in the early 90s? All the students are interacting with each other, talking and laughing, and you can see most of their faces because their eyes aren’t staring straight down at their phones. I’m guessing you have seen it because it had a viral moment on the internet. You might have even watched it like I did and thought, “Man, the world was so much better before smartphones!” ...