Digital Liturgies (eBook)

Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age

Samuel James (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
208 Seiten
Crossway (Verlag)
978-1-4335-8716-0 (ISBN)

Infos

How the Habitat of Internet Technology Undermines Christian Wisdom With advancements in internet technology, people can get instant answers to just about any of their questions, connect long distance with family and friends, and stay informed with events around the world in real time. In Digital Liturgies, tech-realist Samuel D. James examines the connection between patterns in technology and human desires. Everyone longs for a glimpse of heaven; James argues they are just looking for it in the wrong place-the internet.  This accessible book exposes 5 'digital liturgies' that prohibit people from contemplating big truths, accepting the uncomfortable, and acknowledging God as their Creator. It then calls readers to live faithfully before Christ, finding wisdom through Scripture and rest in God's perfect design.  - A Biblical View of the Internet and Technology: Readers explore the connection between human desire, the internet, and wisdom through a Christian lens - Great for College Students, Parents, and Pastors: This book encourages readers to live faithfully for Christ  - Offers a Tech-Realist Perspective: Samuel D. James highlights the inherent dangers of digital technologies, offering wisdom for navigating our internet-saturated world 

Samuel James is an associate acquisitions editor at Crossway. He is the author of Digital Liturgies, a regular newsletter on Christianity, technology, and culture. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his wife, Emily, and their three children. 

Textauszug

1

Embodied Wisdom in a Faceless Age

In the black recesses of lonely space, a well-dressed man arrives nearly silent on an enormous space station. Before he begins his important astronomical work, he goes to a wall in the station, where there is a screen about the size of a small television. Almost absentmindedly, the man punches a few keys near the screen. In a matter of seconds, a face appears, looking at him through the glass: his daughter, on earth. Her visage is as clear and bright as if she were standing in front of him rather than on her bed some 230,000 miles away. Across such a chasmic gap, they talk with one another in tones no louder than if they were only a few feet apart. The video call is live and crystal clear, the audio perfect and near-instant. After a brief conversation, they say their goodbyes, and the last act for both of them is to reach their arm somewhere just out of camera shot to switch an unseen button. The monitor goes blank, and they are, once again, planets apart.

Because you are reading this at some point (most likely!) in the twenty-first century, the scene I’ve just described sounds like it could be some overwrought description of a normal day for any astronaut in the Western world. Nothing about it feels extraordinary, because all of the technology in that paragraph, and the experience that the technology facilitated, is taken for granted in our era. We have names for it, like FaceTime, Skype, live-streaming, and 5G. Even those of us who prefer not to use these tools are barely able to move about in society without experiencing them.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, the scene I’ve just described is not taken from the log of a modern astronaut but from one of the early scenes in the classic 1968 science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey.1 The film, directed by Stanley Kubrick and based on a story by novelist Arthur C. Clarke, is a dazzling vision of the then-future. That scene is the work of moviemakers; it’s a visual effect, and audiences who saw the film knew it. They knew that the idea of a man who could merely punch a few buttons, see his daughter on another planet, and speak to her in perfect real-time was just make-believe, as was the artificial intelligence HAL 9000 who plays the movie’s most important role. In 1968, these were merely futuristic dreams on the silver screen.

Today we put those dreams in cheap cases and keep them in our pocket. Today those futuristic visions get plugged in to charge by our bedside every night. Today nearly everything from our work to our school, our hobbies, and even our church depends on what was once movie magic. We don’t only take such things for granted; we get frustrated when they don’t work as quickly, as clearly, or as efficiently as we think they should. They’re such a part of our day that we get neck- and backaches from looking at them. We even develop psychological tics that make us think these futuristic machines are talking to us when they’re really not.2

It’s an astonishing thought that a piece of movie magic from sixty years ago would have already become so routine. Our technological world has changed in ways and at a speed that no other era of human civilization could comprehend. And the vast majority of us cannot even fully describe our own world. Most of us are like the comedian who joked that if he were transported back to the Middle Ages, he would announce to the people that smartphone and internet technology were possible, and when they asked how such tools worked, he would say, “I have no idea.” It’s funny because it’s true. We really don’t comprehend our own world. We are much like the fish in David Foster Wallace’s fable who don’t know what “water” is. We’ve swum in its depths our whole lives and have no category for anything else.

Our inability to really comprehend the technological revolution that has permanently altered nearly all of our lives is a profound spiritual, emotional, and cultural dilemma. Digital technology merely from the last thirty years has transformed Western society thoroughly and quickly, but our fundamental response has been mostly to just go with it. We buy the latest version, sign up for the freshest platform, stream the newest stuff. All the while many of us sense that our communities, our friends, and even we ourselves are somehow different because of all these screens and pixels. Our eye-strain headaches tell us something is different. Our lethargic desire to binge-watch tells us something is different. Our sense of anxiety and loneliness and isolation after a marathon of giving and receiving “Likes” tells us something is different. But we just don’t have the ability to name it. We feel we understand our world less and less even as we have more and more access to it.

One reason why 2001: A Space Odyssey is a powerful film is that its technological Eden eventually falls. The HAL 9000 computer that operates with godlike power over the astronauts’ space mission turns against its human masters. In the end, Kubrick and Clarke imagine a world where humanity’s inventions become inhumane. The world of 2001 is a divided world where technological sophistication has tried to conceal a lack of something the Bible tells us is far more important, something that really can help us live fully and humanely in this wondrous, often terrifying world—

Wisdom.

What Is Wisdom?

What is wisdom? Culturally speaking, we often identify wisdom as the ability to make correct decisions. Many times, wisdom and “getting the right answer” are treated as synonymous; thus, we get the notion of the “wisdom of the crowd,” which refers to the increased likelihood of arriving at the right answer if you poll enough people. We also conflate wisdom with experience, speaking of people who have seen or done a lot as “wise” and admonishing the youthful to “wise up,” i.e., to stop being naive or aimless. In any case, the idea of wisdom is frequently a relative concept. It measures someone’s aptitude in navigating a particular task or particular problem.

When the Bible speaks of wisdom, it speaks a bit differently. Christian wisdom is holistic. It does not reduce to book or street smarts, nor is it merely the sum total of our lessons learned. Instead, Christian wisdom is about living a life that responds correctly to reality. In his helpful book The Fear of the Lord Is Wisdom, theologian Tremper Longman III describes biblical wisdom as containing three essential levels: the skill of living (practical), becoming a good person (ethical), and fearing God (theological).3 All three ways of living are wise not only because they are commanded by an authoritative Creator; they are wise because they are responsive to objective realities in the world.

Practical wisdom is the art of being able to discern what’s really going on in a relational, vocational, personal context. Particularly in the book of Proverbs (which, along with Job and Ecclesiastes, makes up a part of Christian Scripture known as “wisdom literature”), a truly wise person is someone who can discern the right course of action in a puzzling or tense situation. Longman describes this wisdom as “similar to what today we often call emotional intelligence. . . . Emotionally intelligent people, like the wise in the book of Proverbs, know how to say the right thing at the right time. They do the right thing at the right time.”4 In other words, while others misinterpret reality and do or say something unfit for the moment, the wise person can “read the room,” looking past surface appearance and seeing people and problems for what they really are.

This wisdom requires more than memorized idioms and platitudes. It requires a living knowledge of what people and the world are really like. Someone armed with only aphoristic knowledge of human nature will offer advice to a friend that backfires spectacularly, because that advice is not actually rooted in awareness of objective reality. People who are enslaved to their impulses will make decisions that get them in deep trouble because their emotions make them indifferent to the facts of the situation. To be wise is to live daily life in light of reality.

This kind of wisdom doesn’t stop at emotional intelligence, however. To live in light of reality also has a moral dimension, what Longman calls the “ethical level” of wisdom. If there really is such a thing as right and wrong, if objective moral standards are real in our universe, then a wise person must live in light of that truth as well. A desire to succeed at life is not enough. We have to be shaped in light of the reality of virtue.5

It was not that long ago that many in Western society believed that any talk of “objective morality” was misguided at best, despotic at worst. The philosophy of postmodernism was supposed to annihilate any appeal to universal ethical standards. “What’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me.” But moral relativism has fallen on hard times, even—perhaps especially—among those who reject Christianity. Even the most committed relativists now will quickly agree that racial injustice is always wrong, or that violence and prejudice against women or LGBTQ+ people must not be tolerated in a just society. The contemporary West has...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 19.7.2023
• Verlagsort: Wheaton
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Kirchengeschichte
• Themenwelt: Religion / Theologie ► Christentum ► Moraltheologie / Sozialethik
• Schlagworte: Bible • biblical principles • Christ • christian living • Church • Discipleship • disciplines • Faith Based • God • godliness • Godly Living • Gospel • Internet • Jesus • Kingdom • live out • new believer • Religion • Small group books • Social Media • spiritual growth • Technology • walk Lord
• ISBN-10: 1-4335-8716-5 / 1433587165
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4335-8716-0 / 9781433587160