I’m starting a longer and more ambitious writing project; perhaps it will even become a book. It’s about digital discipline in the church. I see a massive need for digital discipline and have been spending my time looking for resources and conviction. What I’ve found is surprisingly scant and simple. Yet, our society has been flipped on its head by changes in digital behavior.
Outside the church, this is a subject of significant conversation, but inside we seem to be a little blindsided. Perhaps people find it difficult to understand how biblical principles relate to the digital revolution. Or maybe we’re distracted enough by the changes that we don’t have the bandwidth to see the landscape.
Either way, the existing dialogue is not adequate for the scale of change.
Now, some would argue that nothing significant has changed, just the methods by which we do what we did previously. They claim we are just changing forms of doing the same things as previously, like moving from VHS to DVD to streaming services (it’s all still movies). This is naive because it fails to account for the reality of what’s happening. As I hope to outline, we’re not just accomplishing the same objectives in new ways, but the objectives themselves are shifting. What we desire as a culture is shifting; how we spend our time is shifting; and how we view our world is shifting. If these do not represent an alarming enough change to anyone, I don’t know what would.
You see, how we manage our digital lives changes everything about us. Most fundamentally, it changes how we spend our attention, how we learn, and how we form relationships. This impacts the way we pray and how we read our Bible. It changes how we create family, and how we evangelize. It’s changing how we preach and teach. It changes how we show and receive love, manage finances, and make life decisions. It’s changing the types of addictions that exist, and the way people see their own mental health. It’s no small undertaking to understand and evaluate what’s happening.
Therefore, I’m organizing the dialogue into three significant points (and introductory work) that represent the biblical principles at play. These will help us stay focused and cover a lot of ground:
- Intro: Under the Influence: Let’s discuss specifically how digital tools are shaping our culture and our church: the facts and figures.
- You Become What you Behold: The digital revolution is a revolution of attention, and where you give your attention matters; it may be the most valuable thing you possess. The church must help people navigate the demands on their attention, and learn to focus. Without the proper attention, I’m not sure the rest of the dialogue is even necessary.
- The Weight of Knowledge: The digital revolution gives us unprecedented access to new sources of knowledge, entertainment, and learning, but it comes at a cost. The church must reclaim and teach the value of innocence, and help people pursue actionable knowledge. (I believe our culture is actively eradicating innocence by branding it as naivety and cultivating FOMO; what the bible says about this may be very unpopular.)
- Connected Isn’t Connection: The digital revolution has changed how we build relationships, but despite being connected many people are losing their meaningful connections. The church can shine as a beacon of real connection and love, but only if it sees past some of the digital norms that get in the way and uses technology for its best.
I hope you stick with me on this journey, because I anticipate there’s much to learn in addition to what I’m already convinced of.
