How Do I Resist Smartphone Overuse?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Well, Pastor John and Noel are back in the Twin Cities.

00:00:07.200 | Thank you for your prayers as they traveled

00:00:08.920 | and ministered in Brazil and Argentina.

00:00:11.640 | It sounds like the trip was a big success.

00:00:14.840 | Here are just a few updates from the trip by the numbers.

00:00:19.160 | 25,000, that was the total number of people

00:00:22.600 | who heard Pastor John speak at live events, 25,000 folks.

00:00:28.480 | 1,300 is the number of pastors who convened

00:00:32.120 | at two events with Pastor John, 1,300 pastors, amazing.

00:00:37.120 | And 20,000 free copies of books were given away

00:00:41.880 | on this trip, including titles like "Expository Exaltation,"

00:00:45.520 | "God is the Gospel," and "Dangerous Duty of Delight,"

00:00:49.280 | 20,000 books given away.

00:00:53.160 | And on top of those big numbers came several personal

00:00:55.480 | testimonies of how God has used Pastor John's ministry

00:00:58.720 | over the years to bring in people's lives,

00:01:01.720 | saving faith, to restore broken marriages,

00:01:05.120 | and even to rescue one man from suicide.

00:01:09.840 | It's incredible, both the big stats

00:01:12.480 | and especially those individual stories

00:01:14.760 | that you really only hear in face-to-face meetings

00:01:18.180 | when you're on the road like this.

00:01:20.320 | And on top of it all, God kept the Pipers

00:01:22.340 | and DG's team safe and healthy on the road.

00:01:25.260 | I miss all the flights and the hotels and the travel

00:01:28.080 | in this eight-day whirlwind of a trip

00:01:30.200 | to Brazil and Argentina.

00:01:31.860 | Again, thank you for supporting us and for praying for us

00:01:36.000 | so that we can send them out on the road

00:01:38.700 | to do ministry like this.

00:01:41.280 | And the day the Pipers flew to South America,

00:01:43.740 | I flew to Texas to speak on campus at Texas A&M,

00:01:47.460 | or TAMU as it's affectionately called.

00:01:50.320 | There I spoke to students about social media,

00:01:52.480 | digital temptations, and smartphone habits.

00:01:55.880 | The topics for conversation centered around my two books,

00:01:58.400 | "12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You"

00:02:00.600 | and the new one, "Competing Spectacles."

00:02:03.320 | The campus assembly was put on by Rachio Christi TAMU

00:02:07.720 | and by the Veritas Forum.

00:02:10.000 | It was made possible by a new friend, Micah Green,

00:02:13.400 | who serves as the Associate Professor

00:02:15.200 | of Chemical Engineering at the school,

00:02:17.360 | and by an old friend, Jared Oliphant,

00:02:19.520 | a PhD student in philosophy at TAMU,

00:02:22.160 | who moderated the event.

00:02:24.120 | We had a solid turnout, really good engagement,

00:02:26.960 | and since there's no new Piper audio this week,

00:02:29.200 | you're getting some new Ranky audio,

00:02:31.400 | and I can hear your disappointment already.

00:02:34.200 | Today's episode is that hour-long gathering

00:02:36.360 | with students on fighting back

00:02:37.660 | against compulsive smartphone habits,

00:02:39.220 | and it opened with a robust howdy,

00:02:41.600 | which is how you get a whole room

00:02:42.880 | to quiet down immediately in Texas.

00:02:45.240 | Apparently every howdy calls for an equal response.

00:02:48.680 | And here's the howdy, and here's the discussion.

00:02:51.240 | - Howdy.

00:02:52.080 | - Howdy.

00:02:53.640 | - I wanna start off, I'll introduce Tony,

00:02:55.320 | and then he'll talk about himself for a minute,

00:02:57.600 | but he is, as Zach said,

00:03:00.040 | involved in Desiring God Ministries.

00:03:01.600 | He's the Communications Director for that ministry.

00:03:05.040 | He's also the author of a number of books,

00:03:07.000 | one of which will kind of be the focus

00:03:08.440 | of what we're gonna be doing tonight.

00:03:10.840 | Some of those books include Lit,

00:03:13.540 | which is kind of a theology of reading.

00:03:15.680 | Highly recommend that book, all the books,

00:03:17.280 | but I like that one in particular.

00:03:19.960 | He wrote a book on Newton on the Christian life,

00:03:22.200 | and this is kind of gonna be the one

00:03:25.200 | that we focus on tonight,

00:03:26.440 | 12 Ways Your Phone is Changing You.

00:03:30.080 | And it's kind of self-explanatory.

00:03:32.600 | It's about the ways your phone is changing you,

00:03:35.000 | technology, Christianity, philosophy,

00:03:37.240 | how all those things intersect,

00:03:38.800 | and how to think about that in kind of a smart,

00:03:41.680 | engaging way, so recommend that as well.

00:03:43.880 | He has an upcoming book called Competing Spectacles,

00:03:47.480 | and like Zach said, there's some samples of these

00:03:50.400 | in the back if you wanna take a look,

00:03:51.840 | but this comes out in April, right?

00:03:55.200 | He is also the host of Ask Pastor John,

00:03:58.040 | so if you recognize his voice,

00:04:00.400 | he's on there doing his thing, too,

00:04:02.680 | asking Pastor John questions

00:04:04.780 | through Desiring God Ministries.

00:04:06.440 | So let me frame tonight just very briefly.

00:04:11.280 | Tonight is gonna be a dialogue,

00:04:13.720 | and I want it to be focusing on the big questions.

00:04:17.960 | We're gonna be focusing on technology,

00:04:19.920 | we're gonna be focusing on smartphone usage,

00:04:23.520 | and how that's affecting us,

00:04:25.200 | and we're gonna be focusing on the big questions, all right?

00:04:29.100 | So things like IT-related questions,

00:04:32.640 | like which phone to get, an iPhone versus whatever

00:04:35.520 | the other one is that blows up in your face.

00:04:37.520 | We're not gonna be addressing those kinds of questions.

00:04:40.040 | I went with one that doesn't blow up in my face,

00:04:42.440 | but that's your call.

00:04:43.680 | So we're not gonna be addressing IT-related questions.

00:04:46.080 | It's gonna be how to think about social media,

00:04:48.040 | how to think about smartphones, those kinds of things.

00:04:51.120 | So that's gonna be the kinds of questions

00:04:53.340 | that I'll be asking,

00:04:54.320 | and hopefully you all will be asking as well.

00:04:56.160 | And my role really is just to kinda facilitate the dialogue,

00:04:59.680 | so it's gonna be a dialogue with Tony and myself,

00:05:02.880 | and also with you all as well.

00:05:04.440 | So hopefully that kinda frames the context

00:05:06.440 | of what we're doing tonight.

00:05:07.780 | So first off, if you would just indulge me,

00:05:10.280 | I wanna know, there's a lot of people here,

00:05:12.480 | and I want it to feel a little bit more intimate,

00:05:14.620 | but how many people have taken out their phone

00:05:18.080 | and taken a picture of this room

00:05:20.520 | while they're in the room, something in this room?

00:05:22.980 | That's it?

00:05:23.920 | Wow, okay.

00:05:25.500 | Okay, so only a few people.

00:05:29.120 | You're allowed to, just so you know.

00:05:31.580 | I was expecting much more people.

00:05:33.360 | But I wanted to get kind of a survey

00:05:34.760 | of how many people are snapping shots,

00:05:36.640 | posting it to various social media.

00:05:38.800 | That's good to know.

00:05:39.640 | Hopefully anybody is doing it.

00:05:41.440 | We'll see how this goes.

00:05:42.640 | (audience laughing)

00:05:45.640 | So first question I wanna ask,

00:05:49.160 | again, I wanna get to know Tony a little bit,

00:05:51.080 | so you know who I'm talking to, who we're talking to.

00:05:53.920 | Can you talk a little bit about your role,

00:05:57.200 | how you see yourself on this topic of smartphone usage,

00:06:00.920 | social media, what's your background,

00:06:03.760 | career, those kinds of things?

00:06:04.880 | Let us get to know you a little bit.

00:06:05.920 | - Happy to.

00:06:06.760 | Honored to be here, by the way.

00:06:08.240 | I'm a Nebraska boy, so I do feel like

00:06:10.040 | I'm in enemy territory here a little bit.

00:06:12.280 | But I've been well-received,

00:06:14.720 | and so grateful to be on campus with you guys.

00:06:16.840 | I did take a picture of the room, so I'm guilty.

00:06:20.160 | And that's part of the story, is like,

00:06:21.640 | I'm not here saying, shame on you for abusing a smartphone.

00:06:25.440 | I'm here saying, I've abused my smartphone

00:06:27.720 | for at least 10 years.

00:06:29.240 | I mean, I'm still trying to figure out

00:06:31.320 | how to live online, how to work online,

00:06:34.200 | and how to do it in a way that doesn't

00:06:36.520 | have ill effects on my family and my kids.

00:06:39.240 | So I've got three kids, 17, 13, and 11 year old.

00:06:42.560 | I'm starting to see digital technology

00:06:44.280 | really take over their lives,

00:06:46.120 | and helping them walk through things as well.

00:06:48.520 | And I'm coming alongside of them and saying,

00:06:50.400 | hey, guess what, dad is a smartphone addict too.

00:06:53.040 | I've had a smartphone since 2007, when it came out.

00:06:56.480 | I can't remember a day without a smartphone since.

00:06:59.480 | I don't think there was one.

00:07:00.680 | So I've always had a smartphone right by my side.

00:07:03.160 | Until I started to charge it outside the bedroom,

00:07:06.120 | it was always within arm's reach, 24/7.

00:07:10.040 | So probably some of you can relate to that as well.

00:07:12.880 | And so I'm with you, I'm trying to figure out,

00:07:16.120 | okay, why is it that I grab for this phone so often?

00:07:19.760 | What is it that I really want?

00:07:21.680 | What am I looking for in the phone?

00:07:23.680 | And so that drove me to write the book

00:07:25.520 | "12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You,"

00:07:27.520 | which is really just a self-criticism project.

00:07:30.360 | It was like, what am I doing wrong?

00:07:32.280 | What do I need to change?

00:07:34.200 | And my wife is the editor of the book,

00:07:36.320 | so everything I propose, she now knows

00:07:39.160 | that I wanna propose it, and so I'm now accountable to her.

00:07:42.040 | So it's a very personal story,

00:07:44.040 | it's a very personal journey for me

00:07:46.440 | in trying to figure these things out

00:07:47.800 | and then come alongside my kids

00:07:49.640 | and help them get ready for the generation

00:07:51.600 | that they're in, where they have to know

00:07:54.000 | how to be adept digitally, and yet also self-controlled.

00:07:58.520 | And so I just wanna serve them,

00:08:00.640 | and I wanna be a better husband,

00:08:02.800 | I wanna be a better father, I wanna be a better employee,

00:08:06.680 | and that's gonna take self-discipline.

00:08:08.320 | So I needed to work through these things myself.

00:08:10.880 | - That's helpful.

00:08:11.720 | I wanna start out specifically on phone usage

00:08:14.880 | and those kinds of things.

00:08:16.000 | Can you talk about, what are some of the psychological

00:08:19.200 | effects that you've seen, that you've studied?

00:08:21.600 | Is there data that we can look at

00:08:24.400 | as far as links to things like depression

00:08:27.560 | and those kinds of things?

00:08:29.040 | What are you seeing out there,

00:08:31.280 | either from academia or other things

00:08:34.120 | that you're looking at that links smartphone usage,

00:08:37.240 | social media usage, with how that affects our brain?

00:08:40.120 | - Yeah, so there's a growing mountain of studies

00:08:42.680 | that are now showing the physiological impact

00:08:45.400 | of smartphone usage on our lives.

00:08:48.680 | We're talking about things like inactivity

00:08:50.680 | and obesity are on the rise,

00:08:52.400 | directly connected to smartphones.

00:08:54.920 | Stress and anxiety are on the rise

00:08:57.040 | for most of us who have smartphones.

00:08:59.320 | We're feeling more and more stress,

00:09:00.720 | we're feeling more and more anxious

00:09:02.480 | in this age that we live in.

00:09:04.080 | But if you look at teenagers in high school,

00:09:06.240 | you're starting to see spikes in anxiety and depression

00:09:09.960 | among high school students.

00:09:11.160 | I'm sure some of you have seen that firsthand.

00:09:14.120 | I talk with superintendents of public schools,

00:09:17.360 | public high schools specifically, in the Minneapolis area,

00:09:20.040 | and they're saying they're just inundated

00:09:21.800 | by psychological issues that are,

00:09:24.480 | if not entirely related to smartphones,

00:09:27.640 | at least indirectly related to smartphone use.

00:09:30.600 | And so I'm talking about superintendents

00:09:32.240 | who have been in a public school for 20, 30 years,

00:09:35.120 | and they had this set of things they were trying to do,

00:09:37.680 | and now their life is just entirely devoted to counseling.

00:09:42.040 | And they're overwhelmed.

00:09:44.160 | And so I'm starting to see that.

00:09:45.440 | I just had a conversation with a woman

00:09:47.760 | on the way over to campus, too,

00:09:49.440 | who had seen the same things at the high school level.

00:09:52.000 | So there's just eyewitness testimony that we're seeing,

00:09:54.880 | there are studies that we're seeing, but it's a mountain.

00:09:58.720 | We're talking about sleeplessness,

00:10:00.040 | we're talking about poor posture, sore necks,

00:10:02.920 | eye strain, headaches, hypertension.

00:10:06.160 | We're talking about stress-induced breathing patterns.

00:10:10.440 | Like when you get engaged with someone online

00:10:12.440 | and you gotta think of something witty or snarky,

00:10:15.000 | like there's something happens to your body.

00:10:17.120 | You know that feeling when you stop breathing.

00:10:19.560 | Like there's something happens to you physically,

00:10:21.960 | and once you step back and say, "What's going on there?"

00:10:26.160 | You start to realize, okay, that's a physical effect

00:10:28.880 | of my smartphone use.

00:10:31.040 | And so the stress-induced, shallow breathing patterns,

00:10:34.960 | when we get so engaged online, so locked in virtually,

00:10:38.880 | that our breathing patterns change.

00:10:41.000 | So it goes on and on and on.

00:10:42.840 | The thing that I started to look at is,

00:10:44.720 | okay, we can address all of those physical aspects

00:10:47.520 | of smartphone use, but I wanna go after

00:10:49.720 | the actual impulses behind what's driving us.

00:10:53.500 | The cravings, the hopes, the wants, the hidden,

00:10:58.200 | sometimes lewd desires that we have

00:11:00.720 | for what we can find through our phones.

00:11:04.080 | And to be quite honest, our phone represents

00:11:07.200 | sort of an expose of what we most want, okay?

00:11:11.680 | This is why we put codes on our screens

00:11:14.760 | to lock people out.

00:11:16.040 | Because if you get into someone's smartphone,

00:11:18.560 | if you get into someone's search history,

00:11:20.800 | you get in and see what someone else has been looking at,

00:11:23.400 | you are deep diving into their heart.

00:11:25.520 | We're talking about the most central,

00:11:29.200 | driving heart issues in our lives emerge

00:11:32.520 | on what we see in our smartphone screens.

00:11:35.480 | That's why when it gets really personal,

00:11:37.480 | when we start talking about what we do with our phones,

00:11:39.440 | because some of the things that we do,

00:11:41.200 | we wouldn't want anybody else to know about.

00:11:43.160 | That's what I'm after.

00:11:44.760 | Like, what is it that drives us to those things?

00:11:47.760 | And so, yes, there's a mountain of evidence

00:11:50.440 | on the physical aspect of these dimensions,

00:11:53.560 | but there's also something more secret.

00:11:56.840 | There's something more personal,

00:11:58.640 | more individually tailored to what is it

00:12:00.960 | that I'm looking for in my smartphone screen,

00:12:02.840 | and what does that say about me?

00:12:04.720 | - Yeah, that's good.

00:12:05.840 | Let me talk a little bit specifically

00:12:08.440 | on the role of Christianity in this.

00:12:11.560 | From your perspective, let me try to kind of

00:12:14.120 | paint a certain narrative where there's a college student,

00:12:17.440 | and let's say she goes to church on a regular basis,

00:12:21.520 | and she's just now becoming kind of aware

00:12:24.320 | of smartphone usage and wants to think about it more.

00:12:27.160 | The idea is that if she wants to learn about things

00:12:31.400 | like prayer and Jesus and worship and those kinds of things,

00:12:35.080 | she'll go to church.

00:12:36.280 | If she wants to learn about smartphone usage

00:12:38.960 | or the role of social media, she needs to go elsewhere.

00:12:42.280 | What would you say to that narrative?

00:12:45.120 | Is there something true to it?

00:12:46.800 | How would you adjust that?

00:12:48.280 | Or what would you say to someone who is becoming aware

00:12:51.280 | of their smartphone usage in their relationship

00:12:54.080 | to the church at large?

00:12:55.800 | - Yeah.

00:12:56.640 | - How do you understand that?

00:12:57.480 | - That's a great question.

00:12:58.300 | I think the smartphone conversation is tied into something

00:13:00.320 | that's way bigger than just smartphones.

00:13:02.520 | And that is that as a Christian looking to my kids

00:13:06.960 | and their future, I'm looking at things like nanotechnology

00:13:10.920 | and genetic modification and super babies are coming,

00:13:15.920 | and there's this super intelligence,

00:13:18.000 | and there's artificial intelligence.

00:13:21.200 | There's functional robots that'll be domesticated

00:13:24.720 | and brought into homes.

00:13:25.600 | And then there's companion robots.

00:13:28.280 | Like you start looking at the technology

00:13:30.280 | and what the tsunami of technological changes

00:13:32.800 | that are about to hit us is pretty, it's daunting.

00:13:36.320 | So I step back and I look at like just smartphones

00:13:38.560 | are just the cusp of the wave

00:13:40.800 | of these other technological changes that are coming.

00:13:43.240 | And so I asked myself like, okay,

00:13:45.040 | who are the experts to turn to?

00:13:47.120 | And honestly, I've come to the conclusion

00:13:48.840 | that it's like an all hands on deck kind of thing.

00:13:51.440 | It is parents and pastors.

00:13:53.480 | It is peers.

00:13:54.960 | It is, if you can find experts in the fields

00:13:57.720 | who can speak on these things, find those experts,

00:14:00.000 | journalists, whoever you can find

00:14:02.280 | that's talking about these things,

00:14:03.240 | pull them into the conversation

00:14:04.680 | and have a conversation like this.

00:14:07.360 | Intentionally, this is not a lecture.

00:14:08.920 | This is not the expert telling you what to do.

00:14:11.600 | This is a conversation.

00:14:13.000 | 'Cause I need to hear from you.

00:14:14.680 | You need to hear from me.

00:14:15.600 | I need to hear from Jared.

00:14:17.200 | It's really an all hands on deck scenario

00:14:19.960 | where we've got to figure this out

00:14:21.280 | for the sake of the next generation.

00:14:22.720 | I'm looking at my kids and thinking,

00:14:24.800 | how do I help them in all of these things?

00:14:26.480 | And so honestly, I mean, parents, pastors,

00:14:29.880 | parents and pastors typically are on the front lines

00:14:32.920 | of seeing shifts and changes in behaviors.

00:14:36.640 | And so they're gonna raise some flags

00:14:38.440 | even if they don't know really what to say beyond that.

00:14:42.080 | But honestly, that's where I'm at.

00:14:44.640 | I didn't write a book to be like the conclusive thing

00:14:48.000 | to say on smartphones.

00:14:49.160 | I wanted it to open a conversation

00:14:51.360 | so that groups of people could read the book

00:14:53.280 | and then talk and hold each other accountable

00:14:55.920 | and think through these issues

00:14:56.960 | because I really do think,

00:14:58.200 | if I'm feeling that now with smartphones,

00:15:01.040 | those other technologies as they come

00:15:02.760 | and they're gonna come really quickly now,

00:15:05.000 | it's just, we've got to come together as Christians

00:15:07.760 | to think through these things as a community.

00:15:10.440 | - Yeah, it's systemic, right?

00:15:11.480 | So it touches on the psychological field,

00:15:13.360 | the philosophical field, the theological field.

00:15:15.720 | - It does.

00:15:16.560 | - There's a lot of people that are experts

00:15:18.720 | in these certain facets of smartphone usage

00:15:22.120 | because it's so systemic in our lives and touches each one.

00:15:24.640 | And on that point, I wanna talk about spirituality

00:15:28.840 | and how that connects with this conversation.

00:15:32.160 | Most people think or assume, I guess,

00:15:35.360 | that spirituality is important for Christianity, right?

00:15:38.200 | That's a big element.

00:15:39.080 | You wanna take care of your spiritual nature

00:15:41.880 | and how that affects what you do

00:15:43.640 | with social media and smartphone usage.

00:15:45.920 | But I also wanna talk about physicality

00:15:48.840 | and how important that is.

00:15:51.200 | Is it important at all,

00:15:52.320 | just the role of being present, being physical?

00:15:56.320 | Is there a sense where physicality is important

00:15:59.280 | for the Christian worldview,

00:16:01.120 | the Christian point of view, number one?

00:16:03.800 | And number two, how does our smartphone usage

00:16:07.320 | relate to that importance, if it is important at all?

00:16:10.680 | Being present, being physical.

00:16:12.960 | - Yeah, is the Christian faith embodied?

00:16:14.680 | Is embodiment an important thing for Christians?

00:16:18.400 | I would say absolutely it is.

00:16:20.040 | It is essential to spirituality

00:16:22.880 | to recognize that we have this body that God has given us.

00:16:26.600 | And what makes it, what I think raises the stakes here

00:16:30.160 | is when I look at the life of Christ.

00:16:32.760 | Perhaps Christ could have died for sin

00:16:36.680 | in some virtual way, metaphorically within the Godhead.

00:16:40.440 | He didn't have to leave heaven.

00:16:42.640 | It would just be some sort of figurative kind of thing

00:16:45.440 | that happened within the Godhead

00:16:47.440 | between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

00:16:49.720 | But that's not how God designed it.

00:16:52.800 | God designed it so that His Son would be enfleshed.

00:16:57.560 | He would come to earth in bodily form.

00:17:01.000 | He would be begotten, not made.

00:17:03.920 | And you see this enfleshment of Jesus,

00:17:06.600 | it just plays out in so many different areas.

00:17:08.920 | Of course, you've got the virgin birth,

00:17:10.320 | which is a massive claim that Christians make,

00:17:12.800 | that Jesus was born to a virgin.

00:17:15.480 | Then later, He would be baptized in water.

00:17:19.240 | He would be submerged all the way underwater.

00:17:21.880 | Right, Jared?

00:17:23.120 | - That's right.

00:17:24.160 | - And that's how baptism is done, right?

00:17:29.160 | Baptist, Presbyterian.

00:17:30.880 | Then you've got, in the storyline of Jesus,

00:17:40.120 | then you have Jesus in the desert temptations,

00:17:43.000 | where He goes out, and He's gonna be tempted.

00:17:45.720 | He's gonna be tempted in His hunger.

00:17:48.280 | He has to be tempted in His hunger.

00:17:49.920 | His body is part of that storyline.

00:17:52.480 | He's going to have to feel hurt.

00:17:55.360 | He is going to have to feel temptation,

00:17:57.640 | feel rejection with His body.

00:18:01.200 | He is going to be filled with blood.

00:18:03.480 | The Son of God will be filled with blood

00:18:06.480 | so that that blood could be shed, embodied.

00:18:10.880 | Then He would be pinned to a cross by nails,

00:18:15.000 | and He would shed His own body, His own blood for sinners.

00:18:21.560 | And then His dead body would be taken down, put in a tomb,

00:18:25.080 | and a few days later, it would twitch and animate

00:18:29.240 | and come back to life in a resurrection.

00:18:32.080 | Then His body -- this story's not over yet.

00:18:34.920 | Then His body -- He's gonna walk around,

00:18:36.600 | and He's gonna show people His scars.

00:18:38.200 | He's gonna eat food.

00:18:39.240 | He really has a physical body after the resurrection.

00:18:42.760 | And this physical body, then, is going to be raised up

00:18:46.160 | into the sky in the ascension.

00:18:48.000 | And that physical body of Jesus is going to be enthroned

00:18:51.320 | in heaven as the King.

00:18:53.280 | So you think of Queen Elizabeth's coronation service.

00:18:56.560 | I mean, I can't imagine what it was like in heaven

00:18:59.240 | for Jesus, physical Jesus, ascended, enthroned in heaven.

00:19:04.760 | And now Jesus is in heaven in a physical body right now,

00:19:08.080 | somewhere.

00:19:09.080 | I don't know where He is, but He's somewhere in physical body

00:19:11.840 | with the scars still in His body, so that He can sympathize

00:19:16.720 | with me and the pain that I feel in this life and in this body.

00:19:22.120 | That's how embodied the Christian faith is.

00:19:25.920 | It's incredibly embodied.

00:19:28.000 | And not only that, but when you believe in Jesus Christ,

00:19:31.380 | you become part of His body.

00:19:34.000 | That's the very language, then, of the New Testament.

00:19:36.400 | I mean, it just keeps getting more and more embodied.

00:19:39.160 | Then, of course, when you profess faith in Christ,

00:19:42.360 | after you profess faith in Christ, you're submerged fully under water

00:19:45.280 | in baptism, right, Jared?

00:19:46.280 | And then you come up out of the water, and that's a picture

00:19:50.960 | of the resurrection.

00:19:52.460 | That's a portrayal of the resurrection our bodies will experience

00:19:55.560 | personally at some point in the future.

00:19:58.920 | And in between all of that, then we celebrate the Lord's Supper.

00:20:02.240 | The broken body, the shed blood of Jesus in bread and cup,

00:20:07.280 | we participate in that together.

00:20:09.880 | So not only is Jesus' life and His whole storyline embodied,

00:20:14.080 | but our lives as Christians, those of us who have professed faith

00:20:17.320 | in Jesus Christ, we're now part of Christ's body,

00:20:20.400 | and we're living this out in a face-to-face kind of a way.

00:20:24.080 | Now I know you can go to church in a virtual way, right?

00:20:27.300 | You can go to church, and it's like a Broadway show.

00:20:30.080 | It's like a virtual experience.

00:20:31.440 | You're watching a spectacle.

00:20:32.720 | You're off in the distance.

00:20:33.720 | You're not going to get your hands dirty.

00:20:36.320 | I know you can do that.

00:20:37.520 | You're not supposed to go to church that way, but you can.

00:20:40.520 | But what the Bible calls us to is this face-to-face relationship

00:20:45.120 | with people that you'll never follow in your Twitter feed.

00:20:49.040 | You'll never follow on Instagram.

00:20:51.040 | We're talking about elderly people and poor people

00:20:54.080 | and people who are not in your socioeconomic class

00:20:57.360 | and people who are not like you and people who are not

00:20:59.600 | your same age and people who don't look like you

00:21:01.640 | and think like you.

00:21:03.160 | That's what the church is made up of.

00:21:05.040 | The church is made up of people with physical and mental

00:21:07.880 | disabilities that we need in our lives.

00:21:10.880 | The church body is built with the elderly and with children,

00:21:14.800 | people you're not going to follow on Instagram.

00:21:16.800 | And so the church is this melding pot of this diversity

00:21:20.800 | that really is the key then to spiritual formation.

00:21:24.360 | It's coming together with that diversity that looks

00:21:26.560 | totally different than our social media feeds.

00:21:29.600 | And so is Christianity embodied?

00:21:32.240 | Yeah, it's embodied in every direction.

00:21:34.200 | I mean, you can keep pressing into each of those elements,

00:21:37.160 | and it's embodied all over the place.

00:21:39.760 | Yeah, that's good.

00:21:40.680 | And we're going to have a body eternally, right?

00:21:42.880 | It's not something that we just strip away

00:21:45.280 | when we get to heaven.

00:21:47.080 | That's going to be our goal.

00:21:48.480 | So if you take that as a standard,

00:21:50.400 | then anything that's virtual is going

00:21:52.000 | to fall short of that, right?

00:21:54.200 | That's what smartphone usage and social media usage,

00:21:57.040 | you see an image that's not portraying reality.

00:22:00.440 | And that's going to have an effect on how we see each other

00:22:03.200 | in our relationships, theologically, et cetera.

00:22:06.160 | In Romans 8, you know this, and this is glorious.

00:22:09.280 | The creation is waiting.

00:22:11.280 | The creation is waiting.

00:22:12.240 | So creation is feeling something's wrong.

00:22:15.640 | There's a brokenness because of sin,

00:22:18.360 | and everything is broken.

00:22:19.920 | And then nothing works right, and the creation feels it.

00:22:23.440 | The animal world knows it.

00:22:25.520 | There's something broken.

00:22:27.120 | And in Romans 8 in the New Testament,

00:22:29.680 | Paul says the creation is waiting for the moment

00:22:34.080 | when the church of God is resurrected to new life.

00:22:37.400 | And in that moment, when all God's children

00:22:39.880 | are raised to new life, the creation is then

00:22:42.760 | raised to new life.

00:22:43.720 | It's like a resurrection for the creation.

00:22:46.160 | And so it's like the creation is waiting,

00:22:48.480 | waiting for that moment when the sons of God

00:22:50.680 | will be revealed in the resurrection.

00:22:52.320 | And that's when we then participate in this creation

00:22:55.520 | in a new way, in a way that's totally transformed.

00:22:58.880 | It's been remade, and the brokenness will be gone.

00:23:03.120 | And the classmate that you can't stand, if they're in Christ

00:23:07.160 | and you're in Christ, you will be best friends forever

00:23:09.880 | in ways that you could never imagine being friends right now.

00:23:13.720 | In a physical world, hiking the Himalayan mountains,

00:23:17.600 | some sort of recreated Himalayan mountains,

00:23:19.640 | and it's going to be gorge, but it is physical.

00:23:21.720 | You're exactly right.

00:23:22.400 | After the resurrection, it's not just a spiritual existence.

00:23:25.040 | It is physical.

00:23:26.760 | We know that because Jesus, when he was raised,

00:23:28.800 | had a physical body.

00:23:30.600 | And so we know that the physical resurrection is not just

00:23:33.320 | some spiritual, ephemeral, floating in the clouds

00:23:36.800 | kind of a thing.

00:23:37.880 | It is working and tilling the ground, getting hands dirty,

00:23:41.880 | and enjoying this earth in a way that's mind-boggling.

00:23:45.960 | Presbyterians and Baptists together.

00:23:47.560 | Yeah, amen.

00:23:48.680 | Amen.

00:23:50.680 | I do want to talk about social media, too.

00:23:53.480 | And OK, so the way I want to focus this

00:23:56.720 | is products like Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, all those,

00:24:03.800 | they really are products, and they're

00:24:05.340 | being sold to us with kind of this promise of connection,

00:24:09.400 | connecting to people, connecting to family, friends, strangers

00:24:13.080 | even.

00:24:14.800 | I want to talk about do they deliver

00:24:18.200 | on that promise in some way, and how do they

00:24:20.720 | fail to deliver on that promise?

00:24:22.360 | So what's the connection between social media

00:24:25.560 | and our connectivity to each other?

00:24:27.880 | What's the good, what's the bad that

00:24:29.960 | has come as a result of using those platforms?

00:24:33.360 | That's a great question.

00:24:34.520 | We connect in so many different ways.

00:24:36.720 | So when I live about a six-hour drive away from my parents,

00:24:41.400 | and so especially when the kids were little,

00:24:44.320 | like grandma and grandpa wanted to see the grandkids, right?

00:24:47.080 | And so we would use Skype.

00:24:48.120 | We'd use some sort of a video service like that.

00:24:51.440 | So that's a type of connecting where you already

00:24:53.760 | have a pre-existing relationship.

00:24:56.280 | It's a real relationship.

00:24:58.040 | And technology can help you extend those relationships

00:25:01.260 | even further.

00:25:02.040 | You can cross distances.

00:25:03.640 | So it's not just a virtual kind of connecting,

00:25:06.680 | but it's an extension.

00:25:09.720 | And I think there's really healthy, useful ways

00:25:12.400 | of using technology in those ways.

00:25:14.960 | There's also a polarizing connectivity, too,

00:25:18.520 | and we feel this in the sort of politicized climate

00:25:22.520 | that we live in.

00:25:23.720 | And that is some prominent politician,

00:25:26.560 | who will go unnameless, will put a tweet out there,

00:25:30.640 | and everybody responds to it already.

00:25:32.760 | They're already preloaded to trigger response

00:25:35.320 | to whatever's said, right?

00:25:37.080 | I can't believe you said this.

00:25:38.320 | This is horrible, or I love this.

00:25:39.680 | Retweet it.

00:25:40.560 | And so there's a sort of like, we're triggered.

00:25:44.280 | We're wired to respond to social media in a way that's just,

00:25:49.280 | it's completely polarized.

00:25:51.840 | That's another way that we connect.

00:25:53.720 | It's not necessarily healthy.

00:25:55.400 | And then of course, there's a sort of a reflexive

00:25:57.800 | connection, too, in the sense that when you see something

00:26:01.000 | on Instagram or Snapchat, you're called to make

00:26:05.080 | an immediate decision about what you're looking at.

00:26:08.760 | Do you like it?

00:26:09.600 | Not like it.

00:26:10.480 | Here's an article.

00:26:11.320 | Do you like it?

00:26:12.140 | Not like it.

00:26:12.980 | Here's another image.

00:26:13.800 | Do you like it?

00:26:14.640 | Not like it.

00:26:15.460 | How much do you love it on Facebook?

00:26:16.880 | What kind of emoji are you gonna give it?

00:26:18.600 | There's an escalation of emojis.

00:26:21.840 | And so there's less time for reflection,

00:26:24.760 | and now it's just reflexive.

00:26:26.880 | Make an immediate judgment call on this piece of media.

00:26:29.360 | That is shaping how we view every piece of media

00:26:32.520 | that comes into our phones.

00:26:34.320 | Do we rejoice in it?

00:26:36.080 | Do we reject it?

00:26:37.400 | You're getting conditioned to make that

00:26:39.080 | immediate snap judgment.

00:26:40.920 | And that's pretty significant.

00:26:42.280 | That's really significant.

00:26:43.440 | So that's another way that we connect.

00:26:44.940 | Very often times online, we're seeing each other

00:26:48.120 | in that reflexive moment.

00:26:49.800 | We're watching each of us pass by each other,

00:26:52.320 | and there's sparks flying.

00:26:54.040 | Rejoice, reject.

00:26:55.440 | That's where we're meeting each other,

00:26:56.600 | in this tumultuous area of public discourse,

00:27:00.120 | and it's not really a discourse.

00:27:01.320 | And so that's a lot of where we're at,

00:27:03.440 | is that just reflexive response.

00:27:05.800 | And then there's, obviously,

00:27:06.880 | there's an engaged connectivity, too,

00:27:09.400 | where you can go into, even in Facebook,

00:27:11.680 | but you can go into group discussions,

00:27:15.080 | long, meaningful text relationships.

00:27:17.780 | You can send out significant texts to people that you love,

00:27:21.360 | and people you want to invest in.

00:27:23.040 | There is a way to self-give online, too.

00:27:27.300 | But you have to be intentional about that.

00:27:29.720 | If you're going online to get something quick out of it,

00:27:32.220 | you're not gonna serve people in the way that you could.

00:27:35.080 | And so there is a way of being engaged,

00:27:37.480 | and that's, you can use all sorts of platforms to do that,

00:27:40.400 | but it requires self-giving.

00:27:41.920 | You have to say, "I'm going online

00:27:43.880 | "in order to invest in someone's life."

00:27:46.320 | And that, for a Christian, is where we want to ultimately be.

00:27:49.600 | I'm going online, not so I can accumulate

00:27:51.520 | as many Instagram likes as I can.

00:27:53.800 | I'm going online because I want to invest

00:27:55.920 | in other people's lives.

00:27:57.640 | And that's a strategy decision

00:27:59.320 | you're gonna have to make in your life.

00:28:00.640 | How much of this is really about me

00:28:02.560 | trying to generate self-glory,

00:28:05.360 | and how much of this is me going online

00:28:07.880 | and feeling as though I'm giving of myself

00:28:10.280 | to invest in someone else?

00:28:12.080 | So those are some of the ways that we connect.

00:28:14.880 | There is the black mirror effect.

00:28:16.640 | I mean, have you ever held your phone

00:28:19.000 | and your screen goes black,

00:28:20.240 | and you get a glimpse of yourself?

00:28:21.880 | And you're just like, you're startled.

00:28:23.600 | You're like, look at yourself.

00:28:24.840 | There's that black mirror kind of thing.

00:28:27.040 | And a lot of what we do on social media

00:28:28.960 | is that sort of black mirror.

00:28:30.560 | It's narcissistic.

00:28:31.920 | It's just me trying to feed my own ego.

00:28:34.480 | It's me trying to get approval.

00:28:36.280 | It's me trying to get other people to like me.

00:28:38.520 | It's sick, but it's that black mirror kind of like,

00:28:41.120 | really what I'm trying to see online is myself.

00:28:45.160 | And so that again is why, you know,

00:28:46.560 | the local church is irreplaceable

00:28:48.440 | because you get into these relationships

00:28:50.120 | with people in a local church,

00:28:52.040 | and it's just, it's gonna change you

00:28:54.000 | because it's gonna call you out of yourself.

00:28:55.680 | You can't hide behind some edited picture of yourself.

00:28:58.720 | You can't scrub certain parts of your life away.

00:29:01.240 | As you meet face-to-face with people,

00:29:02.720 | you are who you are face-to-face.

00:29:04.960 | It's very exposing, but it's important.

00:29:09.120 | It's really important for us to experience that.

00:29:12.280 | And so it's this weird thing, social media is so weird.

00:29:15.680 | Like we wanna be known, and we also wanna hide.

00:29:20.360 | We wanna be known and we wanna hide at the same time.

00:29:23.640 | This reminds me of David Foster Wallace's novel,

00:29:26.120 | "Infinite Jest."

00:29:27.360 | I don't recommend reading that book

00:29:30.920 | unless you wanna punish yourself.

00:29:33.840 | It's a hard book to read,

00:29:35.200 | but he's got some really insightful things in that book.

00:29:37.800 | One of the things that he talks about

00:29:38.960 | is the transition in his society that he's created

00:29:42.000 | from the traditional phone that you pick up,

00:29:44.600 | you know, from the wall with the little squiggly,

00:29:46.440 | you know, and transitioning from that to the video phone.

00:29:50.120 | So everybody was going towards these video phones.

00:29:52.800 | And what all the characters in the book were finding out

00:29:55.320 | is that answering a video phone

00:29:57.840 | is not like answering the phone.

00:29:59.640 | You can answer the phone and just be sort of like half there,

00:30:02.560 | you know, half attentive, doing something else,

00:30:05.640 | fiddling over here, and they wouldn't even know.

00:30:07.440 | With the video phone, what the characters realize

00:30:10.040 | is you've gotta like make eye contact with the video.

00:30:12.480 | You've gotta show that you're completely engaged.

00:30:15.720 | And so what David Foster Wallace,

00:30:19.440 | he looked to the future and he said,

00:30:20.880 | I could foresee in an age of video calls like this

00:30:24.600 | that people would buy little filters

00:30:26.600 | that they would put over the video camera

00:30:28.840 | that would make them look all, you know,

00:30:30.640 | trim and healthy and whatever.

00:30:32.400 | And you could just see the mouth moving, you know,

00:30:34.240 | or something like, and so like the person

00:30:35.840 | would get a very glamorous vision of what you look like,

00:30:40.000 | but it was just a filter.

00:30:41.480 | Because what he said was answering the video phone

00:30:44.760 | was like answering the door.

00:30:46.880 | Like you're like fixing your hair

00:30:48.920 | and throwing on more clothes

00:30:50.040 | and putting on lipstick and prosthetics and whatever.

00:30:52.720 | You know, like you have to,

00:30:54.320 | it's not like answering the phone.

00:30:55.680 | It's, and he says it in a way

00:30:58.400 | only David Foster Wallace could say.

00:31:01.120 | So there's all these paradoxes

00:31:03.400 | of what it means to live in this digital age.

00:31:06.640 | We wanna be seen and we wanna hide at the same time.

00:31:09.840 | Even when it comes to,

00:31:10.680 | we've talked a little bit about video and Skype

00:31:13.040 | and one of the realities is

00:31:15.200 | when it comes to eye to eye contact,

00:31:17.440 | you know, looking someone in the eye,

00:31:19.440 | you can't do that on Skype.

00:31:20.960 | You can't do that on FaceTime.

00:31:23.480 | You can look at the presentation of yourself on the screen,

00:31:27.080 | which is typically where our eyes go, right?

00:31:28.640 | Let's be honest.

00:31:29.680 | It's like a mirror.

00:31:30.520 | We're like making sure we look presentable.

00:31:32.760 | That David Foster Wallace saw that coming a long time ago.

00:31:36.160 | Or we look at the person's face on the screen, right?

00:31:38.800 | That we're talking to.

00:31:39.840 | Or we look directly into the camera, right?

00:31:43.000 | But if two people look directly into the camera

00:31:45.560 | at the same time, where are they looking?

00:31:48.560 | Above and over the other person.

00:31:50.640 | So there's no way to make eye contact in Skype.

00:31:54.040 | You know, it's just one of those little subtle things

00:31:56.600 | that we've gotta think about and be like,

00:31:58.440 | okay, there's no replacement.

00:31:59.360 | There's no digital replacement for eye contact.

00:32:01.960 | You can't replicate that in Skype.

00:32:03.640 | So all that to say, I think David Foster Wallace

00:32:07.000 | was a prophet of the emoji.

00:32:08.640 | Specifically the bitmoji of speaking through

00:32:11.960 | a moving avatar.

00:32:13.280 | I think David Foster Wallace saw that in 1986.

00:32:16.360 | - Let's stay on social media and self-worth

00:32:20.040 | and talk about that a little bit.

00:32:21.720 | Social media can be quantified really easily.

00:32:25.680 | You can see how many Instagram followers you have,

00:32:28.560 | how many Twitter followers,

00:32:30.240 | and you can compare that to other people really well.

00:32:34.160 | It's public, it's there for everybody to see.

00:32:36.240 | And the only other comparison that I thought of

00:32:39.400 | was like financial wealth.

00:32:42.080 | You can't see, usually, people's bank accounts,

00:32:45.200 | but you can kinda see indicators of how well off they are.

00:32:49.960 | Or at least you can sometimes.

00:32:51.920 | So I was thinking, what are some of the ways

00:32:54.600 | that we can compare like social media wealth

00:32:58.200 | with financial wealth and how those things relate

00:33:01.040 | to our own sense of self-worth,

00:33:04.200 | our value as it relates to how many likes we get,

00:33:07.400 | how many followers we get.

00:33:08.720 | What are some of the connections there?

00:33:10.960 | What's the right way to think about self-worth

00:33:14.800 | and social media and those kinds of things?

00:33:17.640 | - We're living in what's called now the attention market.

00:33:20.440 | The attention market.

00:33:21.880 | The commodity that you have, yes, you have money,

00:33:24.800 | you have money to spend,

00:33:26.480 | but increasingly, the valuable commodity that you offer

00:33:30.840 | is your attention.

00:33:32.680 | You have attention to give.

00:33:34.240 | Attention is what translates into YouTube views.

00:33:37.960 | Attention is what translates into likes, snap streaks.

00:33:42.280 | Like your attention is what generates

00:33:45.000 | all of those things in social media.

00:33:47.160 | So that is a precious commodity

00:33:49.080 | that huge, massive corporations are after.

00:33:51.760 | They want more of that commodity of your attention.

00:33:54.920 | And when they win more of your attention,

00:33:58.280 | they gain valuations in the billions.

00:34:00.600 | This is why Instagram is worth 20 billion.

00:34:02.760 | This is why Facebook is worth 500 billion.

00:34:05.720 | They have found a way to capture that valuable commodity,

00:34:09.200 | which is your time, my time.

00:34:11.760 | So I think it's helpful that using money

00:34:14.560 | as an introduction to this question,

00:34:17.320 | I think is really insightful

00:34:18.800 | because it really is a commodity.

00:34:20.360 | Attention is a commodity like money is a commodity.

00:34:23.960 | Now, does having more Instagram followers

00:34:28.520 | make you more socially powerful?

00:34:31.080 | It does, in a sense.

00:34:32.960 | It does.

00:34:33.800 | The more attention you can command

00:34:35.680 | means the more powerful you are as a person.

00:34:38.640 | That's just the way it is in this economy.

00:34:40.960 | If you can get 100,000 people

00:34:43.160 | subscribed to your YouTube channel,

00:34:44.800 | you can probably make a full-time living

00:34:46.400 | just off that YouTube channel

00:34:47.600 | because you can convert so much

00:34:50.320 | of that commodity of attention toward yourself,

00:34:53.000 | and that's power that you can use to sell to advertisers.

00:34:56.280 | So we just have to be real about the nature

00:34:58.800 | of what it means to live inside of this attention economy.

00:35:02.480 | And that's a realization

00:35:04.720 | that sort of came out of the 12 Ways book,

00:35:07.000 | and that's what generated the newer book

00:35:09.640 | on competing spectacles is this.

00:35:11.360 | The reality is that commodity market

00:35:14.120 | is having a tremendous impact on you

00:35:17.600 | and where you spend your own time

00:35:19.160 | and how you view yourself.

00:35:20.600 | So in some sense, you can compare yourself

00:35:22.960 | on Instagram, you can say,

00:35:24.040 | oh, I've got more followers than my friend

00:35:26.920 | or my enemy or my frenemy,

00:35:28.640 | whoever it is, you can compare.

00:35:29.720 | Like, this is right for comparison, isn't it?

00:35:33.960 | And it's so vain when you think about it.

00:35:36.520 | Like, us comparing ourselves to other people

00:35:39.200 | and how many followers they have

00:35:40.360 | and how many likes they got on that image,

00:35:42.080 | and I should've gotten more likes on this

00:35:43.800 | and my image was better than,

00:35:45.920 | the comparison game just gets fed by

00:35:49.160 | this tabulation of approval

00:35:52.200 | that we all latch onto as if it means

00:35:54.560 | something significant, and it doesn't.

00:35:57.000 | It really doesn't in a lot of ways,

00:35:59.040 | unless you're being mindful about those relationships.

00:36:02.440 | Now, we love using ratings.

00:36:04.720 | Ratings are important, like five-star ratings

00:36:06.800 | are important, right?

00:36:07.720 | I don't wanna drive with an Uber driver

00:36:09.560 | who's got a one-star rating.

00:36:10.880 | No, that's a death trap, right?

00:36:13.880 | You're not gonna buy a product on Amazon

00:36:17.760 | that has two out of five stars.

00:36:19.160 | No way, that's a clunker.

00:36:20.360 | You wouldn't buy that.

00:36:22.040 | So, even college professors are getting ranked now,

00:36:25.480 | like websites, like you guys know that.

00:36:27.040 | Be kind, be kind to your professors, please.

00:36:30.240 | That cannot be easy.

00:36:32.240 | Now, here's what's crazy.

00:36:33.160 | When I was researching my book,

00:36:34.600 | I realized there was an app in 2014

00:36:36.960 | that was launched called Peeple,

00:36:39.360 | P-E-E-P-L-E, Peeple, like peephole, peephole, okay?

00:36:44.360 | This app was designed to offer users the chance

00:36:49.000 | to offer one to five-star ratings

00:36:51.040 | of the people that they know, okay?

00:36:54.760 | Friends, coworkers, and former romantic partners, okay?

00:36:59.760 | We're not talking about Uber drivers,

00:37:02.960 | we're not talking about Amazon products,

00:37:04.560 | we're not even talking about professors.

00:37:06.280 | We're talking about private individuals

00:37:09.520 | being given a one to five rating in public.

00:37:13.440 | What could go wrong, right?

00:37:15.840 | (audience laughing)

00:37:17.520 | What could go wrong?

00:37:18.880 | Well, here's what the Washington Post called Peeple.

00:37:21.640 | They called it inherently invasive, objectifying,

00:37:25.600 | reductive, and a source of stress and anxiety

00:37:28.800 | for even a slightly self-conscious person.

00:37:31.960 | Even more, Peeple generated a platform

00:37:34.520 | that would encourage invasion of privacy

00:37:36.960 | and even harassment.

00:37:38.520 | At the very least, it produced the feeling

00:37:40.640 | of being watched and judged at all times

00:37:43.320 | by an objectifying gaze to which you did not consent.

00:37:49.120 | Okay?

00:37:50.280 | Now, they revamped the app after 2014,

00:37:52.960 | and that debacle, and Washington Post

00:37:54.800 | grilled them rightfully, and now it's like,

00:37:57.560 | I don't know, you can rate your workplaces and stuff.

00:37:59.400 | It's not what it was designed to be.

00:38:02.120 | But could you imagine that?

00:38:03.640 | Your friend's giving you a public rating,

00:38:05.720 | one to five, on how good of a friend you are.

00:38:07.960 | We render things down into a number of desirability.

00:38:13.440 | Tinder, Tinder, the app Tinder

00:38:15.120 | has been doing this for years.

00:38:16.680 | They have a desirability ranking for every profile.

00:38:20.760 | So based upon whether people swipe left, swipe right,

00:38:23.760 | there's this tabulation, there's an algorithm

00:38:26.240 | that gives you a desirability rating

00:38:28.680 | in your Tinder profile, which is kept private.

00:38:31.760 | Okay?

00:38:32.600 | Now, a few journalists have been given their number,

00:38:35.240 | and they all regret that they got it.

00:38:37.040 | All of them regret it, okay?

00:38:38.800 | 'Cause it was not flattering.

00:38:40.000 | (audience laughs)

00:38:41.320 | So, like, tabulations of approval,

00:38:43.840 | it's just the nature of this world.

00:38:46.640 | What's really scary is China is now playing around with a,

00:38:49.880 | it's called the social credit system.

00:38:51.760 | I don't know if any of you have heard of this.

00:38:53.360 | It's a reputation rating, a reliability rating,

00:38:56.400 | and a credit score wrapped into one.

00:38:59.200 | Okay?

00:39:00.040 | Now, if you watch a certain TV show,

00:39:02.520 | you've seen that episode, and what that leads to, okay?

00:39:06.240 | My Christian conscience, I can't promote the television show,

00:39:08.960 | but, like, there's an episode of television

00:39:12.280 | that, like, explores what this would look like

00:39:15.040 | when your desirability rating, your reliability rating,

00:39:18.480 | and your credit score were all wrapped up into one number,

00:39:21.480 | and it's frightening.

00:39:22.960 | It is frightening.

00:39:23.800 | It creates an oppressive caste system of popularity.

00:39:27.640 | So, whenever you have a numbers game,

00:39:29.800 | you have a game that can be gamed.

00:39:32.400 | Justin Timberlake can go out and buy

00:39:34.320 | a million extra Instagram followers if he wants to.

00:39:37.440 | Several celebrities have been caught, right,

00:39:39.760 | boosting their numbers.

00:39:41.040 | If you have a numbers game, that game can be gamed, okay?

00:39:44.800 | So, don't put a whole lot of stock into it.

00:39:47.000 | - When you see someone who is a self-proclaimed influencer,

00:39:51.800 | that always kind of cracks me up,

00:39:54.040 | because I think, what are you influencing people

00:39:56.720 | to actually do?

00:39:57.920 | Follow other people that you know, dress a certain way?

00:40:01.240 | What's the influence for?

00:40:03.440 | And I think just that vague influencer title

00:40:07.000 | doesn't tell me a whole, I'm a PhD in philosophy,

00:40:09.320 | so I think of big questions, and I think,

00:40:10.880 | you haven't influenced me to think about

00:40:12.400 | one single solitary thing ever.

00:40:14.360 | But, am I thinking about that in the wrong way,

00:40:17.080 | or, when you see someone as a social media influencer,

00:40:21.680 | what does that mean to you?

00:40:22.800 | What do you think that means to most people,

00:40:24.200 | and how should we think about that whole status?

00:40:26.960 | - Yeah, so it means that they're wealthy

00:40:28.680 | in the commodity of attention,

00:40:30.120 | so people have given them lots of coins of attention,

00:40:34.160 | and they've turned that, if they're smart,

00:40:35.680 | they've turned that into advertising revenue and money.

00:40:38.960 | If you can game the system, if you can play video games

00:40:41.600 | all day and livestream it and make a million dollars

00:40:44.640 | in a month, go for it.

00:40:46.480 | I mean, that's, Ninja is brilliant.

00:40:48.440 | (audience laughs)

00:40:50.560 | At some point, you have to just admire what he's done.

00:40:54.040 | But yeah, you have to ask the question, as a Christian,

00:40:58.240 | ultimately, the question comes down to,

00:40:59.840 | how am I influencing others, and why?

00:41:03.240 | Why, why, why?

00:41:05.520 | Is it for me, is it for someone else?

00:41:09.760 | So, this is why, can you hand me the book?

00:41:12.280 | This is why, okay, so, I'm gonna go geeky for a minute.

00:41:15.960 | If you have the sampler for 12 Ways Your Phone

00:41:18.600 | Is Changing You, I think you should have

00:41:20.160 | a table of contents.

00:41:21.360 | So I have 12 ways, which are 12 chapters.

00:41:23.960 | This is all structured chiastically.

00:41:26.120 | Anybody know what a chiastic structure is yet?

00:41:28.560 | Okay, this is what geeky writers do in their basement

00:41:30.800 | when they're writing books, they're like,

00:41:31.640 | ah, let's write a chiastic structure,

00:41:33.440 | and then we'll talk to college students at Texas A&M,

00:41:35.760 | and they'll be impressed one day.

00:41:37.760 | So chapter one, we're addicted to distraction.

00:41:40.080 | That's half of chapter 12.

00:41:42.400 | So we're addicted to distraction,

00:41:43.880 | and we lose our place in time.

00:41:45.280 | Those two chapters are tied together

00:41:47.320 | in a chiastic structure.

00:41:49.160 | So chapter one and 12 develop each other,

00:41:51.160 | although they are distinct, okay?

00:41:53.080 | Then chapter two and 11 develop one another.

00:41:56.560 | We ignore flesh and blood, and we become harsh

00:41:58.480 | to one another, those two tie together,

00:42:00.080 | they develop one another.

00:42:01.960 | Then chapters three and 10, we crave immediate approval,

00:42:04.840 | and we fear missing out.

00:42:06.480 | That develops, those two chapters develop together.

00:42:09.760 | Chapters four and nine, we lose our literacy,

00:42:12.080 | we lose meaning, those two are tied together.

00:42:14.520 | Chapters five and eight, we feed on the produced,

00:42:17.280 | and we get comfortable and seek revices.

00:42:20.200 | Those are tied together, which means,

00:42:21.920 | at the very middle of a chiastic structure,

00:42:24.040 | what do you have, class?

00:42:25.520 | What do you have?

00:42:26.360 | You have the main point, right?

00:42:28.600 | This is what I'm getting at.

00:42:30.120 | So the main point of the chiastic structure in my book

00:42:32.440 | is six and seven, we become like what we like,

00:42:35.280 | which is a chapter about idolatry.

00:42:37.800 | We have false gods that we become like in our thinking.

00:42:41.520 | And then chapter seven is we get lonely

00:42:43.440 | because we're not self-giving.

00:42:45.760 | We're not loving other people,

00:42:47.080 | so we grow lonely in our social media use.

00:42:49.320 | Even if we have thousands of followers,

00:42:50.920 | we get lonely because we're not actually serving anyone,

00:42:53.600 | we're not loving anyone.

00:42:55.200 | So loving God and loving neighbor are chapters six and seven.

00:42:59.160 | Love God, love neighbor.

00:43:00.640 | That's essentially the essence of chapter six and seven,

00:43:03.480 | which is the summation, Jesus says, of basically the Bible.

00:43:07.080 | Love God, love neighbor.

00:43:09.480 | It's what it boils down to.

00:43:10.840 | So chapter six is treasure God above all things,

00:43:14.920 | and then chapter seven is out of that love,

00:43:17.160 | out of that overflow of delight in who God is, you serve.

00:43:21.640 | And that, I think, is so key.

00:43:23.280 | That's why I put it in the middle of the book,

00:43:24.960 | because this is what Christians

00:43:26.600 | have to offer this discussion.

00:43:29.200 | Social media offers a false god.

00:43:32.560 | It offers approval that will not fill the hole in your life

00:43:37.520 | that is designed to be filled by God.

00:43:39.720 | It's not going to.

00:43:41.080 | We call it idolatry,

00:43:42.200 | to try and stuff that huge hole in your life

00:43:45.240 | to find satisfaction in something in this world

00:43:48.680 | that will make me happy.

00:43:49.720 | Maybe I got 75 likes on that Instagram post yesterday.

00:43:53.480 | What if I post a better image?

00:43:54.840 | Maybe I'll get 125 today.

00:43:57.160 | And maybe if I get close to a celebrity at the concert,

00:44:00.920 | maybe I'll get 400.

00:44:02.840 | How can I get more and more likes on Instagram?

00:44:05.880 | That kind of desire is never going to fill your heart.

00:44:09.880 | Ever. Ever.

00:44:11.880 | And so what is it, then, that is there to fill that hole?

00:44:16.280 | And it is, quite simply, the gospel comes in and says,

00:44:19.240 | here is the Son of God, Jesus Christ,

00:44:22.720 | who is so beautiful, so glorious,

00:44:26.680 | that the Father, in that baptism that we were talking about,

00:44:29.560 | when Jesus was baptized,

00:44:30.880 | by going all the way under the water and coming out,

00:44:33.680 | Jesus...

00:44:37.680 | The Father is proclaiming,

00:44:39.680 | this is my beloved Son.

00:44:42.680 | This is my precious Son.

00:44:45.160 | This is the most glorious thing you will ever see.

00:44:49.080 | You will never see anything on Instagram

00:44:51.520 | that comes close to this.

00:44:53.240 | I'm going to rip the heavens apart and speak audibly.

00:44:57.280 | This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

00:45:01.280 | That's God talking.

00:45:03.280 | Right?

00:45:03.680 | So we take our cue from that and say,

00:45:05.520 | Jesus is the most satisfying thing in the universe.

00:45:09.920 | What is that hole for?

00:45:11.480 | That hole there is for us to taste and see how good Jesus is.

00:45:16.160 | And we draw towards Him, and we believe in Him,

00:45:19.120 | and we rejoice in Him.

00:45:20.840 | And then it's out of that overflow of loving Christ

00:45:24.280 | that we then pour our lives out in self-sacrifice.

00:45:27.520 | And that may mean you don't need a smartphone.

00:45:29.720 | That may mean you don't need Instagram.

00:45:31.760 | That may be that you can find ways to serve other people online.

00:45:35.400 | I don't know what it will be,

00:45:36.520 | but there will be an overflow that will fill up

00:45:39.120 | all those ticks of approval that you were chasing before.

00:45:42.080 | There's something greater that will explode

00:45:45.000 | those things out of your life in such a way

00:45:46.680 | that you'll think, "That was so vain, chasing those things."

00:45:50.440 | And you'll be given a new joy.

00:45:52.800 | And out of that joy, you then live in self-sacrifice.

00:45:56.600 | That's the Christian gospel.

00:45:58.280 | And that's why those chapters are the center of the book,

00:46:01.040 | because I think that really is the key.

00:46:02.760 | The key to being wise with a smartphone

00:46:05.960 | comes down to understanding what is your purpose on this earth.

00:46:12.720 | That's how small of a question it is.

00:46:14.880 | It really is.

00:46:15.400 | You have to answer that question to find purpose

00:46:17.840 | when it comes to your media, your friendships, whatever it is.

00:46:21.240 | What's your life for?

00:46:23.080 | That's good.

00:46:23.600 | I think that's a perfect point to transition for your questions.

00:46:28.400 | There is a microphone right there.

00:46:30.120 | If you do have questions, feel free to get up and just get in line there.

00:46:35.320 | Thank you for coming out today.

00:46:36.480 | We really appreciate hearing from you.

00:46:38.040 | My question is, you mentioned earlier about the emergence of the new technologies,

00:46:42.360 | the new economies, and all that stuff.

00:46:44.360 | What do you think has the greatest potential for good

00:46:47.240 | amongst what we're looking forward to?

00:46:48.280 | What do you think has the greatest potential for destruction?

00:46:51.600 | Wow.

00:46:52.920 | That's a big question.

00:46:55.680 | I think genetic modification-- you're talking about those big categories

00:47:00.400 | that I threw out earlier.

00:47:01.400 | Yeah, when I think of-- I think genetic modification is

00:47:04.200 | the one that scares me.

00:47:05.200 | How CRISPR is becoming so mainstream and easier and cheaper to do,

00:47:10.880 | and the boldness of pseudoscientists to create superhumans,

00:47:17.560 | designer babies, that frightens me probably more than anything else.

00:47:21.320 | I think the other things we can handle-- but I don't know what you do

00:47:24.440 | with a genetically modified human being that has a super intelligence.

00:47:27.840 | Like, I don't know.

00:47:31.280 | Like, once the genie is out of that bottle, that's a unique kind of thing.

00:47:36.680 | So that probably, for me, is the thing that is most frightening.

00:47:40.640 | Yeah, the greatest potential for good is the tremendous power

00:47:46.160 | of digital communication to reach around the world.

00:47:52.920 | I sit in my office in Minneapolis, and I have the joy of writing books,

00:47:57.360 | and then those books go out, and then those books get translated

00:48:00.640 | into languages, and then I start getting emails from people

00:48:03.760 | across the world who speak a different language.

00:48:06.320 | I get emails, and I have to copy and paste them

00:48:08.280 | into Google Translate to read them.

00:48:11.040 | That blows my mind.

00:48:12.040 | I mean, that blows my mind, the fact that I can say things

00:48:14.560 | and write things that are not only read across the English-speaking world,

00:48:18.240 | but then get translated.

00:48:19.680 | And I'm not some unique voice.

00:48:22.320 | That's happening all over the place.

00:48:23.400 | So the power of digital communication and digital media is--

00:48:27.840 | I mean, it is such a powerful force for good.

00:48:30.280 | So whether you're a poet, a painter, a spoken word artist, a hip-hop artist,

00:48:35.680 | whatever it is God has called you to do, find ways to use digital means

00:48:40.440 | to get your message out.

00:48:41.440 | And that's part of the story of 12 Ways is realizing there's a lot

00:48:45.080 | of really powerful tools available now.

00:48:48.440 | I mean, you can make a documentary with basically an iMac.

00:48:53.840 | I mean, you can create a music album.

00:48:56.600 | You have some decent kind of a recording studio.

00:48:59.840 | You can make your own album.

00:49:01.120 | Those kind of tools are incredible in what God can do through Christians

00:49:06.960 | in the world.

00:49:07.480 | I'm just seeing-- I'm just in awe of the power of digital technology

00:49:11.200 | because it seems limitless.

00:49:13.640 | Thank you very much.

00:49:14.480 | Thank you.

00:49:15.000 | Tony, thanks so much for coming out tonight.

00:49:16.640 | I really enjoyed getting to hear from you.

00:49:18.160 | I enjoyed reading your book as well.

00:49:19.680 | Thank you.

00:49:20.200 | It's excellent.

00:49:20.880 | Thanks for writing.

00:49:21.720 | I just wanted to ask if you wouldn't mind sharing some

00:49:23.920 | of your personal habits, things that you have found in effort

00:49:26.920 | to lead a more disconnected, but still--

00:49:30.160 | I realize you have a smartphone and an iPad.

00:49:32.040 | So what are some of the habits you've found helpful?

00:49:34.600 | Yeah, a bunch of things I've learned over the years.

00:49:37.640 | Number one is get your hands dirty.

00:49:39.320 | No, like literally get your hands dirty.

00:49:42.120 | One of the things that smartphone addicts are doing now

00:49:44.360 | is taking up pottery.

00:49:46.040 | So you get locked into pottery for a couple of hours working on something.

00:49:49.120 | And what do you do with your hands?

00:49:50.560 | Your hands are a cupboard, right?

00:49:52.400 | You can't do anything with your phone, right?

00:49:54.880 | So that's a helpful way to do it.

00:49:56.960 | Do woodworking.

00:49:57.800 | Find activities that will get your hands dirty.

00:50:01.800 | One of the things I do with my smartphone is I gray the screen out

00:50:04.880 | so there's no color.

00:50:06.160 | Any of you tried that before?

00:50:07.800 | OK, if you have an iPhone--

00:50:09.680 | I don't know how this works on other-- pull out your iPhone real quick.

00:50:13.120 | This is not a trick.

00:50:14.000 | This is not a trick, I promise.

00:50:15.400 | It's not a trick.

00:50:16.160 | I'm not going to lambaste you for doing this, I promise.

00:50:21.560 | So go to Settings.

00:50:22.520 | Go to Settings.

00:50:24.920 | Go to Settings.

00:50:25.760 | Go to General.

00:50:27.920 | Settings, General.

00:50:29.280 | Accessibility.

00:50:30.280 | See Accessibility.

00:50:31.680 | And then click on Display Accommodations.

00:50:34.640 | Color Filters.

00:50:35.520 | You see Color Filters?

00:50:37.360 | Turn that on.

00:50:38.680 | And then click Grayscale.

00:50:41.640 | OK, you see that?

00:50:43.520 | Now your phone is black and white.

00:50:46.640 | Now there's a rumor-- and I can't confirm this-- but there's a rumor

00:50:50.960 | that that will enhance your battery life, too.

00:50:54.320 | But here's what it does, primarily.

00:50:57.520 | When you lose color on your home screen, do you notice what happens

00:51:01.880 | to those number bubbles, those app badges with the numbers on them?

00:51:05.560 | They just get muted.

00:51:07.400 | Instead of being blue and punching at you, like, you got to do this,

00:51:11.080 | you're behind, you're behind, it just mutes.

00:51:13.760 | And so it does that with all the colors.

00:51:15.640 | I find that to be a really helpful little trick, that the smartphone does

00:51:20.120 | not grab my attention.

00:51:21.400 | Now, Instagram pictures are going to be black and white, right?

00:51:23.840 | So you're used to a certain kind of image.

00:51:26.120 | But I find that really helpful.

00:51:27.600 | So I do that.

00:51:29.680 | I use the Screen Time app.

00:51:31.600 | So all my kids and my wife, we all have a Screen Time app,

00:51:34.240 | and we're comparing.

00:51:35.200 | It's a goofy app right now.

00:51:36.880 | It doesn't do all the things you would want it to do,

00:51:39.000 | but it's going to get better, I think.

00:51:40.640 | And so just having accountability with, here's

00:51:42.440 | how much time I spent on social media and letting other people see it,

00:51:45.720 | that's helpful.

00:51:46.720 | Deleting apps, like getting rid of apps regularly is helpful.

00:51:50.920 | Like apps that are not useful to your life, just get rid of them.

00:51:55.400 | If they're distracting, get rid of them.

00:51:57.560 | That's really helpful.

00:51:58.560 | And then I, twice a year for 10 days each, I do a digital fast.

00:52:03.960 | And so now I have an online job, so there's

00:52:06.360 | a certain amount of email that I have to do,

00:52:08.480 | certain amount of things that I just have to do online.

00:52:10.720 | But otherwise, all of my social media, my smartphone,

00:52:13.920 | those things are off for 10 days, twice a year.

00:52:17.960 | Usually they coordinate with a retreat that my wife and I take,

00:52:21.320 | just to read and plan things.

00:52:23.560 | But twice a year, 10 days offline.

00:52:27.680 | Those first two days are really hard.

00:52:29.600 | They're really excruciating.

00:52:30.880 | And then you get to day three, and it's like, OK, I can do this.

00:52:34.160 | And then by day four and five, your life is--

00:52:38.960 | it gives you a new perspective on your life.

00:52:40.920 | And so I talk about some other strategies in the book of how to do that.

00:52:44.760 | But those detox fasts are so critical for me and for my wife.

00:52:50.000 | I just have to do them.

00:52:51.440 | And part of what I have to do is get back to long books

00:52:53.800 | and maintain my linear concentration, because that's

00:52:58.000 | the muscle that gets weaker and weaker with my use of digital media.

00:53:03.000 | So I hope what you hear from me is that I continue

00:53:06.040 | to use those fasting periods of 10 days twice a year,

00:53:08.560 | because I still see it as a problem in my own life that I've got to combat.

00:53:12.320 | And I've got to take time away and say, God,

00:53:14.520 | you are greater than the approval that I'm seeking online.

00:53:17.560 | You are more satisfying than that affirmation that I'm looking for online.

00:53:21.720 | So those are a few things.

00:53:24.360 | Thanks.

00:53:25.200 | Just a quick answer, are there no women who have questions at all?

00:53:29.280 | I find that hard to believe.

00:53:30.960 | I appreciate your questions, just trying to get a little bit of a mix here.

00:53:34.480 | I can try to get in touch with my tone and accent.

00:53:36.560 | [LAUGHTER]

00:53:39.520 | Well, howdy, Tony, and thank you for coming.

00:53:42.480 | Thanks.

00:53:42.980 | I'm Robodistan Christian, and in my three-and-a-half-year career

00:53:48.480 | here at A&M, I've reached maybe a dozen points where I've said, OK,

00:53:52.160 | social media, primarily YouTube, I've said, I'm investing so much into this.

00:53:56.960 | I'm watching it all the time.

00:53:58.160 | I'm wasting my time.

00:53:58.960 | I'm not doing the homework I should be doing, all this kind of stuff.

00:54:01.720 | I'm avoiding my friends.

00:54:02.920 | And I've said, OK, you know, scripture says, if your hand causes you to sin,

00:54:06.840 | cut it off.

00:54:07.360 | And I've tried fasting for about a month away from YouTube, whatever.

00:54:12.800 | There are so many bad things to watch on YouTube, so many avenues.

00:54:18.120 | And I wanted to get rid of them.

00:54:20.080 | I hate them.

00:54:21.320 | And I've tried to cut them out of my life.

00:54:23.800 | But every time I'm faced with the decision to cut YouTube out,

00:54:26.520 | there are ways to block it and all this kind of stuff.

00:54:29.720 | I'm faced with dropping both those and things like, before I found the app,

00:54:35.320 | Ask Pastor John, and several pastors I've listened to through YouTube.

00:54:39.240 | And I've been deterred from dropping it because I think, well,

00:54:42.880 | I need this stuff, this good stuff.

00:54:44.840 | But it does keep the negative avenues open.

00:54:48.600 | My question is, I have read about, do you think it's safe for the church,

00:54:56.080 | individual churches and Christian organizations to dabble in this social

00:55:03.640 | media, YouTube area, in such a way that keeps it relevant and vital to people

00:55:10.880 | like me?

00:55:12.600 | - That's a legitimate question.

00:55:14.280 | That is a legitimate question.

00:55:15.720 | Thank you.

00:55:17.800 | So if we personalize the question for a second, anytime I text someone,

00:55:22.720 | I'm obligating them in a certain way, right?

00:55:26.000 | So the whole system runs on the least controlled user, right?

00:55:31.640 | Really?

00:55:32.440 | The least controlled social media or smartphone user, the most addicted

00:55:37.280 | smartphone user who's texting, who's direct messaging, all these people who

00:55:42.440 | now are obligated to respond, there's a sense in which we're projecting

00:55:47.120 | our misuse of the smartphone onto other people.

00:55:50.600 | Whereas if you restrain yourself, that also has an impact on others, right?

00:55:56.920 | So like, I have this...basically, I have a rule.

00:55:59.880 | I don't text anyone between 9 p.m. and 8 a.m.

00:56:02.760 | It's just, I cut it off at 9 p.m., on at 8 a.m.

00:56:06.840 | And everybody in my world just realizes that's the reality of it.

00:56:11.080 | And what I've noticed is friends and coworkers who traditionally would text

00:56:15.400 | after 9 p.m., they start doing that less and less, right?

00:56:19.760 | Because I'm not going to respond.

00:56:21.280 | And so it could be, even in a group context where those conversations aren't

00:56:24.640 | going to happen because they know Tony's not going to reply.

00:56:27.040 | So my decision to not tweet or use any social media between 9 p.m.

00:56:31.920 | and 8 a.m. has a rippling effect on the people around me, okay?

00:56:37.240 | Now, if I was texting them at 11 p.m., that would also have a negative impact.

00:56:41.440 | I think that's kind of what you're getting at, but more at the larger level of, like,

00:56:48.720 | if we're putting out so much content that's so compelling, that's driving people

00:56:53.360 | to YouTube, do we bear some responsibility for the dumb videos that show up in the

00:56:58.280 | stream on the right bar?

00:56:59.840 | Right?

00:56:59.960 | Because you're watching something that's, like, so edifying.

00:57:03.000 | It's like Tim Keller is, like, explaining the meaning of life in five minutes, right?

00:57:08.560 | And then it's, like, "Seinfeld's Funniest Five Bloopers" is, like, right there.

00:57:14.880 | And, like, now it's competing.

00:57:16.200 | Like, you can't compete with that.

00:57:18.680 | Like, "Seinfeld's Bloopers" is, like, I want to click on that as soon as possible.

00:57:22.160 | It's not fair.

00:57:23.080 | So the question is then, does feeding that main box of edifying content, isn't that just

00:57:28.760 | driving and feeding the whole system?

00:57:31.040 | And that, I mean, that's a significant question that I don't have an answer to.

00:57:35.280 | But you're right.

00:57:36.000 | There is some level of accountability when we're driving, as Christian ministries are

00:57:39.920 | driving people into YouTube for edification, are we responsible for then what they see

00:57:45.760 | following?

00:57:46.240 | I don't have a simple answer for that.

00:57:48.080 | I really don't.

00:57:49.200 | I do foresee in the not-too-distant future that Christian content could very likely be

00:57:55.680 | banned from certain platforms.

00:57:57.800 | We've had a prominent video on YouTube that I thought was very tactfully done that was

00:58:04.760 | banned by YouTube.

00:58:06.520 | We fought to reinstate it, and we got it reinstated.

00:58:09.600 | But I foresee YouTube as a platform making calls about what Christians can and can't

00:58:14.840 | say online.

00:58:16.000 | And so Christians then retreating into third-party hosting services that won't be using a Vimeo

00:58:22.120 | or a YouTube, I foresee that in the future.

00:58:25.320 | You may not have to worry about that.

00:58:27.320 | Might not.

00:58:28.320 | I think Christian ministries that are smart right now are already developing some sort

00:58:33.000 | of self-hosting site for their video and audio content.

00:58:36.200 | Thank you.

00:58:37.200 | Yeah, thank you.

00:58:38.200 | Thank you for coming, by the way.

00:58:39.200 | So in Scripture, in the parallel of the sower, we see how the sower goes around and spreads

00:58:40.200 | the seeds everywhere.

00:58:41.200 | So what do you say is the role of social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and

00:58:42.200 | Twitter and all that in evangelism?

00:58:43.200 | And how do you say we should go about that in a way that seeks the glory of God rather

00:58:44.200 | than our own self-fulfillment?

00:58:45.200 | That's awesome.

00:58:46.200 | I mean, that's the right question to ask.

00:58:47.200 | You've got to ask that question first.

00:58:48.200 | And really, that's the driving part of my whole book and what I'm here to do is to encourage

00:59:09.760 | you to think about that.

00:59:11.640 | What is it that God has called you to do?

00:59:12.960 | If you're an evangelist, you have so many opportunities online to share the gospel.

00:59:18.080 | At least to maybe sow seeds in people's lives.

00:59:20.920 | You can't do all evangelism online.

00:59:22.680 | You're going to have to meet people face to face, but there is some extension of evangelism

00:59:27.440 | that you can do in social media.

00:59:29.000 | And see, this is the beauty of it.

00:59:31.360 | Once you see, like, okay, God has called me to be an evangelist and to love other people

00:59:35.420 | by sharing the gospel with them, and it's going to hurt and it's self-sacrifice.

00:59:39.120 | This is not about my glory.

00:59:40.320 | It's about his glory.

00:59:41.760 | Once you realize that, then God starts opening up doors of like, okay, use Instagram for

00:59:45.560 | this purpose and use Facebook for this purpose and use YouTube for this purpose.

00:59:49.080 | If he calls you into those fields, it's just, you know, the fields are white and the workers

00:59:54.280 | are few.

00:59:55.600 | The number of people who are going to use social media in a self-sacrificing way, in

01:00:00.400 | a way that they come offline and they're like, they feel spent because they gave themselves.

01:00:06.120 | They poured themselves out for others.

01:00:07.880 | They didn't go to social media and get puffed up in this vain way, but they go there and

01:00:14.160 | self-give.

01:00:15.160 | And you're in a great place.

01:00:16.840 | Just keep praying.

01:00:17.840 | God, open up doors, use Facebook and then see who comments and then engage in those

01:00:22.880 | people privately.

01:00:24.160 | Like you can use it in so many different ways, so many different ways, but you're asking

01:00:28.280 | the exact right question and you just keep pressing into that and God will start opening

01:00:32.200 | up doors for you.

01:00:33.760 | Yeah.

01:00:34.760 | Hi, thank you so much for coming all the way down to Texas.

01:00:41.760 | So I recognize in my life some of my peers and siblings that are of direct effect of

01:00:47.360 | social media and their YouTube habit and I can tell it's affecting their self-worth and

01:00:51.360 | it's affecting how they're able to interact face-to-face.

01:00:54.720 | Is there a proper way that I should go about like helping them recognize that or are there

01:00:58.360 | any do's or don'ts that you've experienced in like helping other people recognize that

01:01:02.800 | their addictions are to social media and to YouTube are a detriment to their lives?

01:01:08.680 | It's really something that they have to come to terms with on their own.

01:01:11.320 | How old are the individuals?

01:01:12.320 | My sister is 16.

01:01:13.320 | Oh, 16.

01:01:14.320 | Okay, so she's older.

01:01:15.320 | Boy, I mean, honest conversations are really important.

01:01:19.640 | You have to say like, "Hey, I've noticed these trends in your life.

01:01:22.400 | I don't think this is helpful.

01:01:23.880 | I don't think this is beneficial."

01:01:26.760 | The smartphone book that I wrote is really me coming to terms with all of the facets

01:01:30.300 | of what drives me to my phone personally.

01:01:33.760 | And so once I became more clear about what desires were inside of me driving me to my

01:01:39.760 | phone, now I can parent my kids and say, "Hey, you know what?

01:01:43.160 | I know that desire to be liked and to be popular and to be loved online is so powerful.

01:01:49.080 | It's so potent."

01:01:50.080 | It's even got, I mean, it's sparking the dopamine in their brain, right?

01:01:55.600 | So this dopamine molecule in the brain, it says, "Yes, do more of that."

01:02:01.040 | So it's related to sugar, right?

01:02:03.680 | You eat sugar and your dopamine is like, "Yes, do that more.

01:02:07.240 | Eat more sugar," right?

01:02:08.240 | So it's pleasurable to have sugar.

01:02:10.280 | The same exact response happens with sex, with cocaine, with heroin, with tobacco, alcohol,

01:02:19.320 | those kinds of things.

01:02:20.320 | Your brain is telling you, "Oh, more, more, more."

01:02:23.840 | And you shouldn't have more, more, more, but your brain is telling you more, more, more.

01:02:28.200 | The same thing happens with social approval.

01:02:30.720 | If you do something and you make someone laugh or you make someone smile, that same response

01:02:35.800 | happens in your brain, that dopamine, "Do that more, more, more, more," right?

01:02:40.280 | I've got a son who's a class joker.

01:02:42.960 | He's a practical joker, and I can't explain to him how his brain works in those moments,

01:02:48.440 | but he knows when people laugh at me, his brain is telling him, "Do that more, more,

01:02:52.920 | more."

01:02:53.920 | And mom and dad are saying, "Stop, stop, stop," right?

01:02:56.160 | And teachers are saying, "Stop, stop, stop," because it's not right.

01:02:59.600 | But the brain is telling him, "Do that more," because social approval is one of those tricks.

01:03:04.760 | You do something and someone likes dopamine, boom, pop, do that again.

01:03:09.160 | Your brain tells you to do it over and over again.

01:03:11.520 | And so that's part of the thing.

01:03:15.760 | Just like sugar, you've got to separate yourself from that social approval that's going to

01:03:21.120 | spark that in your brain.

01:03:23.360 | I think you have to get real with your own heart and what drives you to social media,

01:03:27.320 | then go to your sister and say, "Hey, here's what I've learned.

01:03:30.360 | Does this sound like something you struggle with?"

01:03:32.720 | That to me is the only approach that I know how to take, is just honesty with myself.

01:03:37.100 | And that quite frankly is why I get so fed up with these Christian books and even non-Christian

01:03:40.880 | books that are like, "Your teenager is addicted to smartphones, here's how to fix them."

01:03:44.840 | No, no, no, no, no, because grandma's addicted to Facebook memes, right?

01:03:48.880 | I mean, let's be honest, like 60 plus year olds have some serious problems on Facebook,

01:03:54.480 | right?

01:03:55.480 | And so it's more about, "Okay, well, how is dad addicted to social media?"

01:04:01.420 | And then I go to my kids and say, "Here's what I feel in my own life going on and what

01:04:07.120 | drives me to do those things.

01:04:08.520 | Can you relate?"

01:04:09.520 | So there's no shortcut to you getting honest with your own desires and then going to your

01:04:14.440 | sister and saying, "Hey, does this sound similar?"

01:04:16.840 | Is that helpful?

01:04:17.840 | Yes, thank you.

01:04:18.840 | Thank you.

01:04:19.840 | Thank you all for coming.

01:04:20.840 | I appreciate the questions and your attention.

01:04:23.840 | We could just thank Tony one more time for coming.

01:04:31.400 | Really grateful for the students and leaders at Texas A&M, a pretty incredible school just

01:04:35.240 | by sheer size.

01:04:36.920 | Very impressive.

01:04:37.920 | What a trip.

01:04:39.280 | Special thanks to the host of the event, Rachio Christy Temu, and the Veritas Forum for that

01:04:45.240 | event.

01:04:46.240 | And thank you to Micah Green and to the moderator, Jared Oliphant, for leading so well that evening.

01:04:51.440 | Of course, listening to a recording like this one is a special form of torture for me.

01:04:57.200 | I kick myself for all the things that I left unsaid.

01:05:02.360 | For students hearing all of this, and even non-students who are listening to this and

01:05:06.960 | who feel the weight of guilt from years of sinful patterns of smartphone abuse, I should

01:05:12.280 | have explicitly invited them to come to Christ for forgiveness and in Him to be freed from

01:05:17.560 | that weight.

01:05:18.560 | I didn't.

01:05:19.560 | I regret it, although I was able to do this in a few of the personal conversations that

01:05:23.440 | resulted after the meeting was adjourned.

01:05:26.720 | And to that student on YouTube who finds himself too easily distracted, I should have suggested

01:05:31.480 | that he also use audio-only podcasting apps.

01:05:36.080 | Eliminating the visual element helps to tamp down distractions.

01:05:39.600 | Alas, that's the end of retractions and additions.

01:05:43.960 | The Pipers are back in the Twin Cities after a fruitful trip to South America.

01:05:47.920 | Pastor John is scheduled to return to the studio next week, and I'll get you new episodes

01:05:51.920 | with him just as soon as I have them.

01:05:53.600 | I'm Tony Reinke.

01:05:54.600 | We'll see you soon.

01:05:55.520 | [END]

01:05:56.020 | [END]

01:05:58.020 | [END]

01:06:00.020 | [END]

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