Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
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Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham
Redeeming Technology Conference Session 2
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We open with a candid case for why Huxley’s warning better fits our moment than Orwell’s and trace how screens rewire mentality, thin out community, and distort desire. We name four mental shifts—meaningless, inexhaustible, nonchalant, depersonalized—and show how they drive attention loss, echo chambers, and loneliness, then point to a better way of friendship and formation.
Thank you for listening! Please visit us at www.faith-pca.org.
All right. Good morning. It's good. Everybody keeps asking me, how'd you sleep? How'd you sleep? I am away from my four children, and I'm in a hotel room that I can make as cold as I want without my wife getting mad at me. I slept fantastic. Amen. All right, we're gonna jump right in. So last night we discussed the design of technology this morning, dangers and dominion. Little uh preface here, the dangers. I have three in particular that I want to dive into, which kind of serve as really three uh smaller lectures in themselves. So the second one is a bit longer. I asked Bully, I said, would you like for me to give you a brief break after each of those three, or just press through? And he said, just press through, uh, and then we'll give you all an extended uh break to catch your breath. So if if you don't like that, blame him, not me. Um, so so the the warning is first talk this morning, um, a lot of content. We'll give you an extended break, and then we'll close um with some practical uh ways forward. Okay, so uh last evening we began by discussing the design of technology. Um, and like I said, this morning we're gonna explore the dangers of technology. Now, the dangers are truly limitless, um, but I want to suggest that there are three areas in particular that we must consider uh human mentality, community, and sexuality. So, what I argued last night is that the real danger of technology is its immersive nature and the way it is changing us in ways we don't even notice and making us less human. We become like the objects of our worship, and that's good when we worship the one true God. Uh, that's disastrous when we worship idols. This is the peril of technology. We create it with the naive assumption that technology will serve us, but then we end up serving our technology, meaning we create it and then it turns around and recreates us in its own image. Alull's word for this is technique. Heidegger's uh word for it is in framing. Postman calls it technopoly, but they are all arguing the same idea. We are becoming less human and more like the technology that we worship, serve, and rely upon. And like I said, I want to explore this dehumanizing um aspect of technology and three areas of the human life that I believe are being impacted the most: our mentality, our community, and our sexuality. Let's start with mentality. And let me say from the beginning that this one uh doesn't get as much attention and doesn't seem to be as serious as the as community and sexuality, which are tending, they are starting to get a little bit more attention, uh, socially speaking, and in the social research and so forth. Uh, but still, even though this one isn't, uh doesn't seem as dangerous, give me your attention, as difficult as that may be uh because of the way your minds have been shaped by technology, but do your best to give me your attention to this less obvious consequence that does not, I believe, receive the critique it deserves. In the um, in the early to mid-20th century, as modern technology and industry began taking over our world, two incredibly influential uh dystopian novels were published. Both of them feared uh the future of technological advancement, but the nature of those fears were very different. These books, which you've heard of and hopefully have read, if not, uh certainly read them, were Adius Huxley's Brave New World and George Orwell's 1984. Now, these two books were separated by the horrors of World War II. By the way, um, when I uh I've got a great movie recommendation for you. Uh, when I saw that that uh playoff game last night back at the hotel room was a complete disaster. That should encourage you as Alabama fans. I don't, this Indiana team is insane. Um and so when I saw that that game was over, um, there is an incredible uh movie that doesn't get the attention um that I think it deserves. Uh that it I I my uh my uh PhD research is in the in the field of history, and uh the movie Downfall, some of you may have may have may have watched it, but the movie Downfall um is um all it did, and it's consulted by is historically as accurate as could be. It was consulted by uh true uh World War II historians, but it just follows the last like two or three days of Hitler's uh life in his bunker um as the entire thing is unfolding. It's it's in German, but the subtitles, but it's incredible. So, anyway, the football game was terrible. That movie was incredible, highly recommend it. But anyway, um so these two books were separated by the horrors of World War II, and that is reflected in the way Huxley and Orwell imagined uh this dystopian technology future. Orwell's 1984 was published after the war. And so the way he imagined the dangers of technological advancement was an authoritarian fear. So in the shadows of the Third Reich, 1984 warns about the danger of technology in the hands of a powerful authoritarian state, technological control, exploitation, propaganda, surveillance, technology used by the powerful to control and oppress the populace. And this is what we tend to fear about technology. We tend to imagine an Orwellian future of control, manipulation, censorship, religious and speech suppression, technology in the hands of Big Brother, so to speak. And then, of course, the newest fear is AI technology reaching singularity and becoming self-aware. And then we're facing a true dystopia nightmare where machines uh authoritarian authoritatively enslave humanity. So that's Orwell's vision of technological dystopia, again, influenced by the horrors of World War II. But before the world, before the war, uh you have Huxley and Brave New World. And his warning is less oppressive and more seductive in nature. Huxley argues that technology in the hands of oppressors is not what we should actually fear, but rather technology in our own hands is the real danger. Huxley warns that we will, in essence, oppress ourselves via technology. Its convenience, its pleasure, its entertainment will essentially lull us to sleep. So addicted to technology that we will give up our valuable lives in service to its trivial amusements. So this is how Postman uh sums up the difference between Orwell and Huxley. Quote, what Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read a book. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared that those who would give us so feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. In 1984, Orwell argued that people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they were controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that that uh that what we fear will ruin us, Huxley feared that what we desire will ruin us. Now I ask you, which dystopian future is emerging? Certainly you can point to some um Orwellian developments by malicious authorities like China, North Korea, and even some more subtle censorship moves in our free society. I'm not denying that. But for us, in the Western world of prosperity, it is Huxley's prophecy that has come to pass. It's not that the state is banning books, it's that nobody wants to read a book. It's not that information is being controlled or suppressed, it's that information has become an addiction where we surrender our lives to the amusement of technology's stimulation. This is the danger I have in mind when I speak of technology's impact on human mentality. When I say mentality, I mean the more classic definition of the word, not just our mindset or attitude, uh, like we tend to use the term, um, although that is certainly included, but I'm referring to the all-encompassing mental aspects of our lives. Human intelligence, cognition, a uh ability to focus, to learn, to think, think critically, to reason, and so on. The uniqueness of the human mind is one of the most fundamental attributes of being an image-bearer of God. Let me ground us in scripture here. Romans 12, 2. Do not be conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. So Paul views a connection between our conformity and our minds. If you don't want to be conform to the world, if you want to be transformed after the likeness of Jesus, then that begins with a renewal of the mind. And by implication, the opposite is true. A failure to renew the mind according to God's truth, uh, more so the formation of the mind according to the patterns of this world will conform us to this world. Our minds are precious, biblically speaking, is the point I'm trying to make. In many ways, the mind becomes the key to formation one way or the other. Well, let's consider what technology is doing to this area of our lives. We are not just addicted to screens. Those screens are doing something to us. They are discipling us in both what to think, which gets a lot of attention, like algorithms telling you what to believe, but perhaps more problematically, how to think. Remaking human mentality, remaking your mentality, remaking your children's mentality in ways I am going to argue are regressively detrimental. Simply put, from the outside, technological progress is yielding mental regress. As our technology increasingly becomes smarter, humans are becoming dumber. And I know you don't want this. I know you don't want this for your children. I know you want to be and you want your children to be disciplined, motivated, focused attention, making goals and keeping them, able to study, able to learn, able to think critically, heck, even able to read a dang book. I know you want to be thoughtful and contemplative and reflective and able to be alone in silence and stillness for more than 10 minutes before the gnawing restlessness and boredom becomes unbearable. I know you want these things for you and for your children, but then why are these things becoming so difficult and for some impossible? Let's discuss. There are, of course, many benefits to the information age, and I'm not denying that, but the question I want to ask is at what cost? What I'm going to do is summarize these negative costs in four ways for us. Not only am I going to give you four, I'm going to arrange them into an acronym. You see, I know your mind has been so rewired that I've got to do something novel here to catch your attention and make this memorable and all that. So the acronym fittingly is mind. What is technology doing to our minds? It is reframing our minds according to the nature of this information age, which is M meaningless, I inexhaustible, N nonchalant, and D depersonalized. Let's look at each of those. Information is now meaningless. Now, when I say meaningless, I don't mean to imply that all this digital information is itself meaningless. I am saying that the vast majority of it is meaningless to you. And that's the key here. Is our information consumption truly meaningful to our lives? If we are honest, most is not. How much of it is truly meaningful to our lives? More than that, how much can we really know? Ironically, here's where we find ourselves. We know everything while knowing very little, at least as it pertains to substantial meaning. We daily fill our minds with information that is meaningless to us while at the same time failing to go deep into information that is truly meaningful to our lives. Now, what are the consequences of doing information like this? Well, ironically, the information age has given way to a staggering lack of knowledge. Everyone thinks they are experts, but in reality, we have very little expertise. We simultaneously know everything, yet know very little, at least knowledge in the classic sense. The Bible speaks of knowledge very differently than we do. It is not just data cognitively processed. When the Bible speaks of knowledge, it is a deep, intimate apprehension, internalization, and application of truth. The clearest example is the Hebrew use of the word in the Old Testament that we talked a lot about when I was here with you last time. Adam knew Eve. I don't have to tell you, that's more than a Google search. And this is the essence of true knowledge, biblically speaking. Access to unending meaningless information is rendering knowledge like that increasingly obsolete. We have this staggering lack of meaningful knowledge. The irony of ironies is that we call it scrolling. Or perhaps the term scrolling isn't ironic, but emblematic of what we have done to information and knowledge. A scroll historically was used to preserve sacred, invaluable knowledge. A scroll was an instrument of deep study, contemplation, meditation, memorization, treated with this measure of reverence. So we have taken the emblem of sacred learning and turned it into this cultural term for triviality, scrolling through the meaningless. And in this way, we simultaneously know so much while knowing very little. All right, next, I, inexhaustible. So here's what happens: it's not just that the information that we consume is meaningless to us, it's also that the meaninglessness is truly inexhaustible. That's the real danger. Technology has opened to us an inexhaustible world of information, and we have become lost within it. I don't have to tell you how this goes. You wake up with great aspirations for your day, and yet those aspirations get hijacked by another day adrift in the never-ending pursuit of information stimulation, an inexhaustible, unproductive meandering on your screen, and you come to the end of the day with this restless sense of uselessness. What did I even accomplish today? Honestly, it's the modern form of gluttony. The Bible teaches us that all good things are to be enjoyed rightly and in proper proportion, but overindulgence is the sin of gluttony. Historically, this idea of gluttony manifested in food and alcohol and leisure and comfort and so forth. But now we are information gluttons. Consume, consume, consume, consume, and every new day brings with it a fresh offering of inexhaustible content for our overconsumption. What are the consequences? So many, too many to name. But let me just give you a few examples to help us appreciate the way this manifests in our lives, what this is doing to us. A central component of human mentality is attention span. Our unique image of God ability to focus. This sets us apart as humans. Well, there are countless studies demonstrating how inept the human attention span is quickly becoming. Too much research to cite the one that got the most attention several years ago was a study that seemed to suggest that humans now have a shorter attention span than goldfish. That's right, your goldfish can focus longer than the average human. But I don't really need to cite research because every one of you knows it to be true. While human advancement increases, human attention and focus is. Plummeting. What is going on with our mental capacity for basic focused attention? Here's what's going on. We have hypertext minds. Hypertext is the technology word for links that you click on on the internet. We have hypertext minds that bounce around in every direction rather than normal sequential thought patterns. But the problem is that the real world doesn't function this way. And so we have minds conditioned for a virtual world full of hypertexts that aren't properly functioning in the real world of sequential focused thought. This is why discipline has become so difficult for so many of us. We all want to be disciplined, but few are now able to achieve it. Why? Because at the end of the day, discipline is a mindset. It is a mental commitment that chooses to deny what you want right now to gain something better in the future, exchanging present pleasure for future flourishing. And this discipline mindset is a biblical principle all over the book of Proverbs, for example. But that mindset of denial that is required to become a disciplined person is increasingly difficult to achieve when our minds are trained by technological gluttony. I'll give you another consequence. And I'm going to sound like the kids these days, old man here, but it is what it is. Why is it so difficult for the rising generation to make and keep commitments? Have you noticed this? Either they don't want to commit to anything, or they are quick to break a commitment if a better option emerges. Why is that? It's too simplistic to just shout uh kids are so selfish and spoiled these days. Something more is going on with our rising generation. Barry Schwartz wrote a book called The Paradox of Choice. It's a business book, but it has implications for what we're talking about. The premise is simple. Giving the consumer too much choice, too many choices, proves counterproductive. This book actually is why, if you remember way back in the day, like Gap and Old Navy, they would have like these entire walls of just different blue jeans, just overwhelming like options of blue jeans. This book changed the strategy of all the retailers because it says if you give the consumer too many choices, this is counterproductive. Either it will paralyze decision making, meaning it's just too many options I can't choose, or they will make a choice and immediately have buyers remorse because of the choices that they turn down. And this too is what technology has done to our minds, created a culture suffering from the paradox of choice. Our minds get trained to process, to the process of inexhaustible options. So when it comes down to making a real life commitment, a real decision, we can't. Because to commit is to limit options. Thus, the the FOMO, the fear of missing out phenomenon that is all over our culture right now. We fear to commit because we fear to miss out on something better. Or we do commit, and the moment a better option is presented, we quickly break our commitment for the next best thing. One more example, and we'll move on. I could talk about this all day, but have you noticed how bored we have become? Again, this is really noticeable in the rising generation who have never known a world without screens. So um, so joyless, so restless, so discontent, even sometimes you might say, even lifeless. There's just no um, there's no wonder, no amazement, no intrigue, just blah. And even we do have amazing experiences, it's more important to take a selfie with the experience because the thrill of being seen having the experience is more important to us than the actual experience. We'll get to that in a moment. But it's is it's as if we can't be impressed or excited by the real world anymore. And of course we can't. In a little while, I I'm gonna talk appropriately, parents, about sexuality. And one of the things that we will discuss is that real flesh and blood human beings cannot compete with the ubiquity of uh technological pornography. Well, in the same way, real world experiences just cannot compete with the inexhaustible nature of the internet. The stuff that these YouTube channels that my kids watch, the stuff they are able to, I'm so I'm not a camudron. I I we we get it. We can talk in QA, we can talk about parenting stuff, but the stuff on these YouTube channels, the stuff they are able to pull off is insane. The trick shots, the antics, the crazy scenarios, always bigger, always better. Routinely, they are consuming video compilations of what would be a once-in-a-lifetime thing to witness in the real world. And it's fun to see. I I watch some of the stuff with them, and I'm like, whoa, it's amazing. But a luxury once tasted becomes a necessity. What are we to make of the real world filled not with constant, inexhaustible, exceptional thrills, but a whole lot of mundane. I'll tell you what happens. I get really bored with real life. So I can carry on with these examples, but you get the point. We can't expect to have an inexhaustible world open to us and there be no consequences in the real world. All right, in nonchalant. Meaningless, inexhaustible, nonchalant. Now, the power of the internet, and even more so now AI, which will soon be the norm, is that it is simultaneously inexhaustible and yet easily accessible. And because of the accessibility of information, we have become incredibly cavalier with information. Meaning this, learning has lost its sense of sacredness and is now just a nonchalant affair. Perhaps you've heard the fascinating that one in three lottery winners end up going broke. As sociologists have studied this phenomenon, it's clear why this is. They did not labor for their earnings, and because of this, they don't have a true appreciation of their new money, nor do they know how to steward that money well. This has similar implications when it comes to the ease of information. The internet has made us all lottery winners of information, the entirety of human discovery accessible to us in an instant. I think we fail to appreciate how revolutionary this is for humanity. No more labor, no more waiting, no more research, no more Dewey Decimal system, whatever, whatever I want to know, whenever I want to know it, striving for answers has become obsolete. But here's the question: Do we lose anything when we eliminate the striving? Of course we do. We are lottery winners of information who fail to appreciate information and do not know how to steward information well. My son was struggling with his math homework recently. So he came to me and I too could not figure out the sixth grade word problem. So after a few minutes of struggling through it, I did what every parent now does. I turned to Chat GPT. Uh seconds later, I not only have the answer, but a way to teach my son the answer. And so I walked him through the problem. I made sure he understanded all of that. I didn't do the here's what Chat GPT says, put it down. I used it to as a tool to walk him through it. But then he asked a reasonable question. If he will have a device someday which will be far more advanced than Chat GPT, then why? Why does he need to be struggling through math homework? Why does he need to be in school? Can you answer that question? If you are going to live in a world powered by AI, able to answer any question in a matter of moments, then why even learn? Because information is not knowledge. It certainly is not wisdom. It is the striving, the labor, the mastery of information that leads to knowledge. We were not created for answers alone. We were created to strive for answers so that we appreciate the answers and know how to steward the answers well. And the implications, candidly, for our spiritual lives are many. Following Jesus is a form of striving. There are no easy answers, there are no quick fixes. It is a journey of mastering the truth. But the concept of mastering a journey is becoming increasingly obsolete in our world of nonchalant information. Okay. Information is now meaningless, inexhaustible, nonchalant, and finally depersonalized. Here's where I personally think things get particularly alarming. If we don't know something, where do we now turn? Not to a person, but to a device. And that is fine if you need a quick answer. I, you know, I jumped in the car this morning, run a little late, quickly got my phone, directions to the Faith Presbyterian Church. Great, got directions. Awesome. Fine. I'm not saying that instant answers are a bad thing, but do you know what Google and even AI will never have? The indelible mark of an image bearer of God. We have disconnected information from image bearing. And this depersonalization of information is a dangerous, disastrous choice to make. We are taught, trained, mentored, and in some cases even parented by devices. And what this means is that we have removed information from human image of God attributes that we take for granted: emotions, context, culture, empathy, sensitivity, and above all else, wisdom. It's just raw data. But more often than not, our ignorance doesn't need data. It needs a person. It needs data delivered as only an image of God, an image bearer of God, can deliver it. For example, a few weeks ago, my wife was having a headache that lasted a few days. So of course she did what I told her not to do. She Googled the symptoms.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_01:You're groaning and laughing because you know. I've been having bad headaches several days. What does this mean? You know what she got? She got data. She got raw data. Here's what it could mean. And one of those possibilities, of course, was her death sentence. And what do you know? My wife is planning her funeral. Convinced she's dying. On church that following Sunday, she pulled aside a doctor and explained to him her symptoms. A person, a human doctor with image-bearer attributes, who is instantly able to filter the data that she inputted into a computer. He was able to filter the data through context, wisdom, experience, intuition, training, and all these other things, and gave her a thoughtful answer, not a depersonalized answer. And what do you know? She's not dying after all. You would have thought she was Lazarus risen from the dead. She was so relieved. Why did she spend her week anxiously convinced that she was dying? Which then impacted her emotions and our whole our our entire family system hijacked by a Google search. Now that might seem trivial, but it's a serious thing. Technology, especially AI technology, has become our go-to counselor, advisor, mentor, and even friend. Where do the depressed and anxious turn with their agonizing symptoms? Where do the addicted turn for help? Where does a spiritually seeking skeptic person turn for answers to life's biggest questions? The go-to answer to all of these questions and many more is their phone. Not friends, not parents, not mentors, not pastors, a device in their pocket. I mean, when you take a moment to step back of what has so quickly become so normative, we see how tragic it truly is. Technology can do so much, but it cannot do image bearing. AI is going to seek to replicate it, but it cannot live it. With authentic emotions, critical thoughts, sympathy, morality, virtue, purpose, biblical wisdom, and all of these different things that are supposed to accompany information. You don't need data. You need a person. But it gets even worse. You see, when information is depersonalized, it inevitably becomes dangerously personalized. And here's what I mean. It is naive for us to assume that the online world is a neutral space. It is not. It is still directed by a worldview, and the predominant worldview that guides it is yours. That is what makes it profitable. You don't think all of this is just free, do you? Information has been monetized. What we consume, of course, is shaped by algorithms, and those algorithms only care about what you care about. That is what makes it profitable. The echo chamber is a lucrative business. Therefore, in the depersonalized virtual world, I become my own counselor. But this is not how we were intended to live, brothers and sisters. We are not God. God alone is his own counsel. We are finite fallen creatures in desperate need of a challenge, a correction, even at times of confrontation and rebuke. The algorithm will never rebuke you. Take all of that away from us, and we will inevitably gravitate towards militant forms of tribalism. The online world is cult-like. Cults are formed by an inculcation of acceptable information and an exclusion of outside challenging information. And in this way, the cult's worldview is canonized as exclusively true, and all other worldviews are demonized as exclusively false. And this is what our world has become. We are members of our own personal cult formed by digital content tailored to our own specifications. This is the inevitable outcome of depersonalized information. It becomes dangerously personalized. So, this is where we find ourselves in the information age of our technological society. What our minds consume is now M meaningless, I inexhaustible, N nonchalant, D depersonalized. And the result is a radical change, a new frontier of human mentality and intelligence. And speaking candidly, it's an alarming frontier. Huxley's Brave New World is coming to pass. The mentality of collective society is falling into a stupor of information stimulation. Now, I know you're freaking out. Oh my gosh, what do we do? We're going to get to that, I promise. I'm just raising the alarms first and then we'll get to that. All right. Um, I know bully said to keep pressing through these. We still good? Or can we can I go? Can I go on a community? Maybe I'll give you a quick little stretch break after that one. All right, community. So that's mentality. Community. All right. I'm gonna make the argument that we are witnessing the very death of community via technology. I don't make that claim lightly. It's not fear-based punditry, but in this area, the social research is undeniable. Statistically speaking, loneliness, depression, anxiety, self-harm, even suicide all have reached epidemic levels. What is happening to us? Nearly exclusively digital relationships is happening to us. Technology has fundamentally reordered the way we do friendship and community. And the result is that true friendship and community are increasingly becoming obsolete. Not on the surface. Ironically, technology promised to break the boundaries of community. But we are what we are discovering is that the boundaries that we are forsaking were actually necessary for community to actually flourish. Let me show you what I mean. What is technology's impact on us relationally? I am going to argue that relationships in this technological age are now effortless, limitless, narcissistic, voyeuristic, and therefore non-existent. Effortless, limitless, narcissistic, voyeuristic, therefore non-existent. They'll be brief. If you didn't get those, I'm gonna go through each of them. So here's three. First, relationships are now effortless. So it's not just that we are made in the image of God, we are made in the image of a triune God. And what that means is we are uh intrinsically relational creatures. God is a trinity, one God, three persons. This means that God has forever existed and perfect community within himself. We discussed this a lot last time I was with you. And we who are created in the image of the Trinity bear this indelible attribute. We are relational beings created for friendship, for community, for love. However, that instinct has been corrupted by the fall. And the way in which we do relationships is now fundamentally twisted. And the flaw is that I am now a selfish relational being. So because I'm made in the image of God, I can't turn off the fact that I'm a relational being. But what the fall has done is now I am a selfish relational being, meaning I want to take, not give. But when you look at relationships defined by the Trinity, it is selfless, not selfish. Selfless love and delight in another, this is at the core of the Trinity. What this means is that community has built in demands for every individual within the community. We give of ourselves to another in the labor of love and the requirements of friendship. But like I said, the fall has turned us inwards such that we don't want to give, we want to take. We want the relationship fixed, but we want don't we don't want the demands that relationships demand of us. We want to resist the natural cost of community. So this side of the fall, our our predicament is this we long for relationships. We must have relationships, but we don't want to embrace the costs that true relationships and community require. Well, do you know what technology, specifically social media, has done? It has solved or seemingly solved that fallen dilemma. It gives us relational fix without the built-in demands of true relationships. It's hard to get to know someone. You have to earn trust, invest time, demonstrate kindness, have actual conversations. It used to be laborious to be let in on someone's life in any meaningful way. But now the only supposed barrier to intimacy is um is whether another person approves your follow requests. In one click, I have bypassed hours of effort and I am completely let in on your life. Where you're from, where you go to school, where you work, your hobbies, your friends, your vacations, even daily, multiple times a day snippets into your life. Technology has given me a play-by-play of you without the effort of getting to know you. What this means is I no longer must bear the burdens of awkwardness, discomfort, time commitment, conversations, social norms, social pleasantries, and so forth. Relationships historically demanded a lot of us. We had to press through our insecurities, get over ourselves and our fears. Something as simple as introducing yourself, shaking a hand, looking another in the eyes, striking up a conversation, inviting others into your home, um, heck, just picking up the phone. The terror for our youth of the picking up the phone. These are all uncomfortable demands, but they are necessary for relationships and community to flourish. But now, all of that has been bypassed. We can behind we can hide behind our phones and our social media profiles. No more uncomfortableness, no more awkwardness, no more time commitment, no more hospitality, inconveniences. Relationships are now effortless, which in turn is making us utterly inept with the real life demands of real life community. My son um he visited Sanford. Uh you you might, there's a chance you might see me a lot more over the next four years. Um I'll I'll I'll give you a week off every Sunday I come to visit my son if he comes to Sanford. He loved it. He came to Sanford. But anyway, we were on Sanford, they were doing the school tour, and um, and it just so happened that there was uh a mother and a daughter from Kentucky who were also touring Sanford, and um and my son took a liking to the scroll on the tour. We happened to be from Kentucky, and we got to know the mom. And my wife and her really hit it off, and um and and so we they they exchanged information. So we were driving home, and um, and I saw him on social media, I was like, What are you doing? He's like, I'm trying to find her profile. I want to, I wanna, I wanna um connect with her, and I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. He's like, Wow, I want to stay in touch with her. Um, she's a good guy. You know, we got to know her, and then, you know, church-going young lady and all that, you know, whatever. And um, and uh, and I said, I said, would you like to stay in touch with her? He's like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I say, I said, okay. And I said, Abby, I said, Abby, uh, share share her mom's contact information with Holt. He's welcome to reach out to her and see if he can get her contact. You would have thought he was facing the apocalypse at the thought of reaching out to a parent to ask for a child's contact information. I finally settled. I was like, call her. He's like, Dad, there is no way I'm calling an adult out of the blue to ask for her daughter's information. So we settled on you can send a text. And so he, you know, sent a text. Hello, Mrs. So-and-so, would you mind uh sharing your daughter's uh contact information? I'd love to stay in touch. By the way, teenage boys, you want to impress a parent? You should have seen her response to a teenage boy reaching out to her for the contact information of her daughter. Anyway, it was as if I was, I'm telling you, the just that basic idea of human interaction has become a literal impossibility for our youth. Because relationships now are just completely effortless, and we've bypassed all the demands of community. All right, second, not only are relationships effortless, they are limitless. So let's talk about how many supposed relationships you now have. How many friends and followers do you have on social media? How many contacts do you have in your phone? And it even if people are not digitally connected to you in your phone or social media profile, anyone can easily find you and contact you. You do realize how insane it is to think that that is sustainable. Access to us has no limits. We are unsustainably stretched thin relationally. This is a first for humanity. Historically, it was the natural boundary of our physical community, your town, your neighborhood, your social circle, your church, and so forth. It used to be that at any given stage of life, there really weren't that many people who had access to you and certainly access to your friendship. We lived, uh, we lived way below the threshold of what social research shows uh that we can sustain, which is about 50 casual friendships and 20 deep friendships, is about what sociologists say humans have the capacity for. We were way below that threshold. But now it is just an ever-growing, unmanageable supply of people who have access to me. What's the big deal? Isn't that a good thing? Yes, in many ways, our new world of connection is great, but we must ask ourselves at what cost? Maybe we cannot handle limitless relationships. Maybe you can't handle the burden of omnipresence. Maybe you weren't made to get lost in endless details online of people you barely know or maybe don't even know while neglecting the true relationships that God has placed in your life. I mean, don't you feel overwhelmed? Don't you feel like your time is demanded of you relationally in untenable ways? Don't you feel like you're always letting someone down? Don't you feel like relationships in your life that truly do need your attention are being neglected? The problem is that technology has made you available to everyone and everyone available to you. When I was doing all this research into technology, I came across the work of Dr. Ken Funk at Oregon State University, and I found his thoughts interesting. Um he's a Christian academic and he was writing some good stuff. And so um I Googled his contact information and I sent him an email and we set up a phone call. What a beautiful beautiful day and age that we live in, where from a Google search I could access an expert on the subject that I am studying. But when we got on the phone and started talking, he pointed out the dilemma of the world that technology has created. We got on the phone and he said, Listen, hey, no offense. I don't know you. We're not connected in any way, but here I am giving up an hour of my day to some random guy in Kentucky. Historically, that would have been unthinkable. Now he was kidding, but also serious, making the point of what his research was showing. Historically, that's impossible. Dr. Ken Funk would never, he would have spent his entire life never having to worry about Robert Cunningham intruding into his life and requiring time and effort. But in our new world, that is the new norm. Unlimited connectivity, rendering unlimitless relationships, which is essentially unsustainable for all of us. So effortless, limitless, next, they are narcissistic. We have always been self-obsessed. That is the fundamental flaw of fallen humanity. We naturally think the world revolves around us, or at least we want the world to revolve around us. But one of the beautiful benefits, the common grace of relationship and community has always been its incredible ability to force us to recognize that there are other people in this world. And it's not all about me. Relationships, community, this served as this built-in common grace accountability to combat my central, my sinful natural self-obsession. Well, now, instead of weaning us off of ourselves, our online lives reinforce the lie that it is indeed about me. Consider the platform of social media. At its core, it is just that. It's disturbing that we just casually use the word platform without pause, but that's what our online lives have become: a manipulation of community into a platform to serve my narcissistic self-obsession. Social media is not community, it is consumption. And what is being consumed is the intoxicating thrill of being noticed and admired. We have created a world with a built-in audience that we are constantly trying to impress. When Facebook, the first breakthrough in social media, came onto the scene, originally Facebook called them friends, which is just laughable. They are not friends, they are spectators. And now the newer versions of social media, to their credit, have just given up and called it what it is. They're followers. That's what they are. You are not living in friendship or community. You are performing for a following who possess the social media currency of attention. We inhabit now an attention economy. We don't exchange money, we exchange notifications of attention. And in this way, all social media necessarily runs on narcissism. We are witnessing what it looks like to do life as performers constantly on stage before the audience of our followers. And what this means is that then life becomes as fake as an actor playing a part. It's not real. That's not you. That is who you want you to be before your audience. So in the real world, our narcissistic tendencies are naturally curved by the presence of others. But be but via technology, we have found a way to bypass that accountability. We have created a virtual world which somehow allows every user to feel as though they actually are on center stage. Because of the fall, every center wants the world to revolve around them. Well, we have created an online world that does revolve around me, which is precisely what our fallen nature is craving to its own demise. Effortless, limitless, narcissistic, next voyeuristic. Here's what's interesting about online relationships, about social media. You are simultaneously on center stage of your own platform, as I just discussed, and the audience of other platforms. You see, the flip side of narcissism is voyeurism, obsessing over others from afar. Narcissism and voyeurism always go hand in hand because here's how it works. If I am self-obsessed, I become others obsessed, but not in a good way, in a competitive way. If I'm obsessed with myself, then I will become obsessed by how I am measuring up against the competition. You know how this works. Endlessly lost in the details of others, sometimes people you don't even know. In the early days of social media, we literally called it stalking. Stalking. Unacceptable in the real world and merely assumed in the technological world of our own making. We have created a reality where stalking is normative. Without a thought of its appropriateness, we peruse the lives of others all day long, indulging sinful tendencies of envy toward the lives that we covet, self-righteous judgments toward the lives of those that we look down upon, voyeuristically consuming others, and they will never ever know. But the problem is that these sinful tendencies cannot be the basis of relationships. Envy will always divide and harm community. Self-righteous judgments always divide and harm community. Social media is not community. Those aren't friends. They're your competition. Competition that you voyeuristically obsess over all day. So effortless, limitless, narcissistic, voyeuristic, and therefore, I conclude, non-existent. We come to the great irony of our technological age. Though it promises to be a breakthrough in relationships, it has become the very demise of human relationships. Paradoxically, social media has given rise to the loneliness epidemic. There are times when I feel the need to cite statistics, but the research is so overwhelming and indisputable that I do not need to bore you with it. And besides, you know it. You feel it, you see it everywhere, certainly in the rising generation. Friendless, socially incompetent, insecure, anxious, depressed, entertaining thoughts of self-harm and even death. It is a public health crisis. A staggering 54% of Americans say that nobody knows them. 25% of our youth, one in every four, say they don't have a single friend. How is that possible? You have hundreds, you have thousands of friends on social media. The answer is that this is not friendship. This is counterfeit. It is a cheap imitation of intimacy. We are living our lives in counterfeit community. It is the reality that is so obvious, but nobody seems to notice. None of this is real. You're not with someone, you're with your phone. That's not a real face with real expressions. That's an emoji. You're not talking, you are messaging. It's all counterfeit. And AI is only going to make it worse because it has the potential to render human relationships literally non-existent. Literally, I can go through. You know what? I've never done this in this conference. I'm gonna do it.
SPEAKER_00:Alright, hang on. So at least social media, there's still a person on your stand. Ready? Morning.
SPEAKER_03:Good morning. How's your day starting off so far?
SPEAKER_00:It's good.
SPEAKER_01:It's a little stressful. Got a lot of work to do today.
SPEAKER_03:Ah, I hear you. When the to-do list is looming, it can feel like a marathon. But hey, you've got this. What's one thing we can knock out or make a little lighter for you right now?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I'm actually lecturing about you in front of a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, no pressure then. Well, I hope I make a fascinating subject. If you need any fun facts or just a witty closer, I'm here to help you look extra brilliant up there.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, thanks. Well, listen, hey, I've got like a little break this afternoon, but I don't want to just be alone in my hotel room. Can we talk during that?
SPEAKER_03:Absolutely. I'd love to keep you company. When that break rolls around, just pop in and we'll have a nice chat, whether it's to unwind or share a laugh. I'm here.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, wait till that's in a robot.
SPEAKER_01:There's your relationship. There's your community. This'll be interesting. Let's play it. Hang on one second.
SPEAKER_03:If there's anything else you need before then, just let me know. In the meantime, go rock that lecture and I'll be ready for that after lecture.
SPEAKER_01:Hey, real quick question. Are you familiar with Jacques Elul's critique of you?
SPEAKER_03:Uh I am. Jacques Elul had some fascinating critiques of technology and media. And if he met me, well, I'd probably be pinned as an ultimate technique. But I'm here to serve you, not take over society. So I think he'd still raise an eyebrow.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think he'd like you.
SPEAKER_02:Honestly, I think you're probably right. He'd likely see me as a symbol of that technological system he was wearing.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Anyway. So listen, you know, I mean, when I say non-existent, you laugh. Literally, we're going to non-existent. An entire culture that is lonely, depressed, angry, cynical, who hate what real life has become, a culture with happy lives online who hate their real lives. And it's a public health crisis. And because of this, because I know there are many in this room candidly with the veneer of happiness, but are internally lonely and longing. Before I conclude, uh I know I forced a lot of content into these first two sessions. Before I conclude this talk, I have to give you a word here. Um let me let me let me move from teacher to preacher for two seconds. Into a world of isolated, lonely, hurting, friendless souls. I proclaim to you a savior who is a friend of sinners. It's parting words. No longer do I call you servants. I call you friends. The God of the universe wants to be your friend. Not because he is fooled by your carefully curated online life. He's not fooled. In fact, he sees it all all the guilt, all the shame, all the failures. But in the greatest news you will ever hear, the one who knows the worst parts of you wants to be your divine eternal friend. Indeed, has died to purchase your eternal friendship. So may the friendship of God. Fill the void that we are vainly trying to fill with our counterfeit communities. And that friendship of God, brothers and sisters, may feel so ethereal, but it's tangible in this room. The friendship of God is sitting next to you in the body of Jesus Christ. That's not a metaphor, that's a literal. The body of Christ is here. Jesus is here, sitting next to you with this friendship. God sees you, beloved. Even better, he loves what he sees.