Book Highlight: The Next Story

This week's book highlight is from Tim Challies entitled The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion.

Living in the Digital World
In the past thirty to forty years the development of digital technology has radically altered the way we as humans both perceive and engage our world. Once a premium device reserved exclusively for high powered business men mobile phones have become ubiquitous. The personal computer has replaced the television as a gathering point for families. No need to find space for 40 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica on your shelves, just open your laptop and go to Wikipedia with your questions. Technology has made voluminous amounts of information accessible to us and allowed us to never be inaccessible to anyone…as long as we can get a good signal. Is all of this good or bad? Yes. Some of it’s good and some of it’s bad. You’ll have to decide for yourself which is which. As Christians living in today’s world we all need to give thought to our theology of technology.

Tim Challies’ The Next Story: Life and Faith after the Digital Explosion is a resource that will help us think through the topic of technology and social media and it’s affect on the world in which we live. Challies is no stranger to the digital world having been a part of the blogosphere since the early days. Nor is he categorically opposed to new technology. He recognizes that “God has gifted human beings with remarkable ability to dream, create, and invent technologies that serve us as we serve him, technologies that enable us to better serve him.”

His concern, however, is the powerful and shaping influence technology can have when we blindly introduce it into our lives and the lives of our families. Paul exhorts us to “look carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise making the best use of time because the days are evil. (Eph 5:15,16). To live in a circumspect manner is to give consideration to understanding the purpose for a particular technology and it’s effect on our lives before we adopt it. Challies poses this penetrating question; “What is it that draws me to the device, and when I look beneath the surface, why do I really want it?” This is not to assume our motives are sinister. They may very well be virtuous. In light of the amount of space the Scriptures give to addressing the heart; however, one would be naïve to think that are hearts aren’t regularly tempted to wander from God. (I know mine is).

Challies spends the first half of the book laying a foundation. He does this by covering thematic elements found in all technology. In his historical overview Challies traces the ever increasing pace of life beginning in the 1800s, when nothing moved faster than the speed of a horse, through the invention of the steam locomotive, that eventually made it possible to travel coast to coast, to the invention of the telegraph which connected individual communities and finally to the advent of the Internet which has made instant and worldwide communication an every day experience for most people. With the introduction of each of these technologies the human experience has changed dramatically.

In the second half of the book Challies gets specific and practical. This is where I found The Next Story most helpful. The author addresses topics such as understanding the biblical purpose of communication, the differences between mediated relationships and face-to-face relationships, the impact living in a distracted world makes on deep thinking, perspectives on the inexhaustible information that is available via the Internet and the dangers of moving between “second lives” in cyberspace and our actual lives in the real world.

Challies poses the question “are you the slave of your digital devices or are they your servants?” He reveals much of his purpose in this book when he says, “We are looking for that sweet spot where our use of technology is not just thoughtful and informed, but it is informed by the Bible, by an understanding of God’s purpose for technology.“

Digital devices aren’t going away anytime soon and this can be a good thing, depending on how we interact with them. Whether you’ve just purchased your first smart phone or you’ve been functioning in the digital world for years, The Next Story will challenge you to think biblically about your use of technology.