Abide in Me

Why the church must not surrender to the digital takeover

I don’t have a smartphone. Never have.

Photo by Daniel Thürler on Unsplash

I’ve shied away from the topic for years, which people probably appreciate, but it does offer a perspective I want to share.

My lack of smartphone does not make me better than others. I know full-throttle phone addicts who are more present, patient and prayerful than me. Pope Francis apparently had 50 million Twitter followers.

But, while my status does not confer moral superiority, it does give me a rare viewpoint.

In a recently published fact sheet, the Pew Research Center reported that 91 percent of American adults say they own a smartphone (97 percent among those 18–29). That’s up from 35 percent of all adults in 2011.

The extent of conformity is staggering: humanity is wired. It is hard to overstate the speed, extent and depth of this change. The internet, smartphones, social media and AI are fundamentally altering work, childhood, how people communicate, how brains work and more. There is essentially no meaningful resistance.

To cast the first stone

We tend to defend and justify what we own and depend on. How free is a Tesla owner to think rigorously about the downsides of EVs? Can a youth pastor tethered to a phone help free youth ensnared in social media?

My choice to partially opt out affords a degree of freedom to question. For instance, I feel both free and compelled to say the church has—with shockingly few exceptions—not addressed the reality and risks of the high-tech phenomena that have profound spiritual implications. For the most part, our response is a little blue thumbs-up to Mark Zuckerberg. We’re on board.

Even hold-outs like me are still subsumed in the digital age. I’ve never texted anyone, and I only use social media for work and to look people up, but I still spend most of my working days and some of my leisure hours in front of a screen. I send emails, do a lot of searching, watch stuff, crave info fixes and listen to music on YouTube (though I like to think my tastes for old rock, new country and occasional worship music fluster the algorithms).

We’re all in this together. And God is with us. John 1:16 says that “From [Christ’s] fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (ESV).

Five narratives

I pay attention to people’s comments about digital tech, and I’d like to name five narratives I hear.

First, many people feel underlying dis-ease, sometimes intensely so. We know that no one dies wishing they had spent more time on their phone. No one feels deeply satisfied after inadvertently scrolling for a couple of hours.

As the writer of Romans says, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15).

A second, contradictory, narrative is giddiness about the obvious advantages of digital tech. Indeed, the web, phones and AI are borderline miraculous. We’re rightly dazzled.

Third, while most people would hesitate to disclose addiction to alcohol, gambling or porn, phone addiction has become a clichéd confession, largely free of stigma.

Fourth, some people are dismissive, derisive and/or defensive in response to any tech non-conformity.

Parents must choose between handing kids over to the algorithmic principalities or condemning them to the social wilderness. Sometimes we do that which makes our souls cringe.

Finally, I hear endemic resignation. Alternatives are few, and resistance seems futile or self-destructive. Tech is required for jobs, playing on the soccer team, joining the prayer chain, meeting up with friends. Parents must choose between handing kids over to the algorithmic principalities or condemning them to the social wilderness. Sometimes we do that which makes our souls cringe.

It’s all far too much. Perhaps this accounts, in part, for church silence and compliance, though the opportunity for prophetic guidance and pastoral care is immense. Perhaps this is why the dangers of social media and the tech-industrial complex don’t make the list of conservative or progressive issues.

The neutrality trap

Despite my critique of tech, I reject blanket denunciation. We’re too enmeshed for all-or-nothing arguments. Similarly, I see little use in blanket justifications. The fact that Zoom reaches shut-ins, phones make life safer for women walking alone and tech addresses certain disabilities in life-giving ways does not negate all critiques. The fact that my Indigenous friends use guns to provide food for their families does not justify all use of guns.

A trap even more insidious than simplistic denunciation or justification is simplistic neutrality. Many people are quick to say digital tech is just a tool; it can be used for good or evil.

A trap even more insidious than simplistic denunciation or justification is simplistic neutrality. Many people are quick to say digital tech is just a tool; it can be used for good or evil.

Of course, every technology can be used for good or bad—guns, nuclear energy, paper—but that fact should not short-circuit the vital process of assessing the potential risks and values inherent in digital tech.

Technology is not neutral; it holds the likelihood of inequality. If a new technology—whether tractor or app—costs money, it tends toward disparity. The wealthier farmer was surely first to buy a tractor, and that tractor surely increased his advantage over his neighbours. Technology helps the rich get richer.

Stated differently, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin—prominent tech commentators who run the Center for Humane Technology—say if a new tech “confers power, it starts a race,” and if “you do not coordinate, the race will end in tragedy.” It’s not hard to see who’s winning the race.

The internet was supposed to democratize communication, to even out the information playing field—everyone could use the new, neutral tools. In many ways we can, so long as we submit to the platforms, some of them owned by the four tech giants (Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai and Elon Musk) who sat just behind Donald Trump’s family at his inauguration—closer to the presumed leader of the free world than even governors and senators. Do they want us to believe new tech is neutral?

When people use the neutrality argument to neutralize criticism, they defend a status quo increasingly presided over by massively powerful players who have one foot in our brains.

Again, rudimentary denunciation is not the point—understanding underlying dynamics is.

Blessed contradiction

If digital tech carries inherent threats, and we’ve all somehow ended up on its bandwagon at spiritually dangerous speed and with no off-ramps in sight, how can we even start to think and act carefully?

I look to John O’Donohue’s gentle words about contradiction. The late Irish poet and mystic said that if we have a desire for spiritual growth, we should attend to a contradiction in ourselves, to look on it kindly and to learn from it. He calmly walks back the history of thought that has led us to believe that something cannot be one thing and also something else at the same time.

Indeed, I know I can be both considerate and inconsiderate; I love both order and change; I am cell-free but could not live without the laptop beneath my fingers; the world is profoundly wayward and alight with wonder; people can be addicted and gifted; we can abide in Christ and in the virtual kingdom.

Attending to contradiction can slowly, gently clear a path out of resignation and beyond simplistic impulses. We can talk about being both dazzled and trapped, eager for the latest gadget but also wanting to put the brakes on change, grateful for daily emails from Richard Rohr yet afraid that screens are a net spiritual loss. The contradictions are not too big for God.

Attending to contradiction can slowly, gently clear a path out of resignation and beyond simplistic impulses.

Anabaptist cousins

We have in our extended faith family an unparalleled example of grappling with technological tension and change. The Amish are likely as imperfect as the rest of us, but, on this one point, I think we do well to draw on their example. I am aware of no group on earth that has been as intentional and discerning about the adoption of new technologies as certain Amish groups.

Some people misunderstand the Amish as being frozen in time, rejecting all new technologies. In reality, they use a deliberate process to decide which technologies to adopt.

Some people dismiss the Amish as hypocritical for perceived contradictions (such as using a baler that is pulled by horses while powered by an engine), but this both misses the selective process and presumes that uncritical and rapid adoption of virtually all new technology is a superior choice.

Scholars like Donald Kraybill, Royden Loewen and Lisa Schirch have written about the coherence of the adaptive process of traditional Anabaptist groups. Kraybill, writing with two co-authors, sums up the approach to new technology as: “Go slow, be careful, and check with the community.”

The mainstream approach is: Get whatever you can afford. Hope the parental controls work.

We tend to look only at benefits, without filling out the cost side of the ledger. The Amish do both, with communal, theological rigour. Theirs is a vital witness for those who have eyes to see. But few do, since the Amish challenge something almost too elemental to notice: the notion of progress itself.

Witness in a rare moment

Yet progress is faltering, even as it hits overdrive. It’s delivering techno-wizardry but not ever-greater meaning and mental wellbeing. It offers virtual reality while literally consuming natural reality.

We live in a rare moment. Christopher Lunsford, a 32-year-old, blue-collar, backwoods American who sings under the name Oliver Anthony, says, “We are the last living people in history to have experienced life before the digital age.”

To what are we as the church called in this moment?

On an individual level, I want to say: take a social media sabbatical, get a non-internet mobile phone, unplug, look away, trade Bluesky for blue sky, find a way to ease off on that which draws you away from God, go cold turkey or just dabble. It is possible. God promises freedom and transformation.

At the same time, we want you to like, share and comment on our social feeds. The tension tugs at me, and I try to move toward the contradictions with trust.

In a practice that’s less fraught with tension, this past summer I started lying on my back on the lawn for several minutes at a time. In the presence of God, I just lay there and gazed upward. It is the opposite of a screen: No corners. No edges. No bait. No pop-ups. Nothing to scroll to. Just: “Be still and know….”

It’s slow, calm and ordinary. I imagine it unspools that which screen time winds up in me. It is my blue-sky antidote.

On a collective level, I say again that, though digital transformation has profound implications for humanity, the church is dead quiet. Conformity is quiet.

Yet the opportunity is vast. We can unflinchingly name realities, offer AA-style support groups, invite youth on wilderness outings, invite grace, hold digital deconstruction workshops, trade binge time for visiting the lonely, call out the tech oligarchy and pray for deliverance. It’s all in our wheelhouse.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is …” (Romans 12:2).

The digital reality is beyond overwhelming, but God is above it and beneath it. As much as tech has worked its way deep into our minds and lives, Christ abides in us and invites us to abide in him. So let us claim the freedom to carve out holy niches not found on Google Maps, niches in which we are prompted not by algorithms but by a still, small voice.