Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis - Owen Strachan - Digital Minimalism and the Christian life

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis: Big Questions, Biblical Answers, is a series that seeks to provide biblical answers to some of the most prominent and fundamental questions regarding God, the Gospel, and the BibleIn this episode author and Professor Owen Strachan discusses digital minimalism and the Christian life.Watch VideosVisit the Website Follow on InstagramFollow on Twitter

Hey guys, my name is Johnny Artavanis and this is Dial-In. Thanks so much for listening to the show. In next week's episode, we're going to finish our three-part series on living for Christ in a hostile world. Thank you so much for all of those who have listened from all over the world to that series already. In this week's episode, though, we're going to sit down and talk with Dr. Owen Strand on how we as Christians can live godly lives in a digital world. I'm going to

ask him about the concept of digital minimalism and how that integrates with the Christian life in our use of phones, laptops, computers, and televisions. Let's dial in. Owen, thanks for sitting down. You know, I want to ask you a question. We live in a world where the average millennial spends six to seven hours a day on their phone. And for everyone else, it's not just the young people. We have been bombarded with the onslaught of social media and the digital life is really the biography of many people today. We live a life of digital just abundance. So I want to ask you about living a life of digital minimalism. What does that even mean? And then as a Christ follower, what are some maybe some

godly habits we need to implement into our life so that we can honor God with the way that even we approach the digital world? Man, that's such an important question, Johnny. Digital minimalism fundamentally is a term that Cal Newport, the guy who thinks a lot about tech, coined as a phrase. And I've engaged some of Newport's stuff over the years. He has an excellent book called Deep Work that is really good and profitable for a Christian to think through because we're not just trying to maximize our workday, our vocation. We're trying to honor God. And in the same way, when it comes to our devices and to being online all the time and to never being out of touch with 50 people at every given minute, what happens is that the whole reference point of our life

shifts from a vertical reference to a horizontal reference. It may not even be an intentional shift, but it's accomplished nonetheless. So it is so important for us as Christians to understand that technology can be a tool. It can be used in different ways for God's glory. We can read the Bible on technology. We can call people who are lonely on our phones. We can tweet Bible verses or hopefully helpful sayings, you know, from tablets. On and on the list goes. There's all sorts of good things. We can, I know a good number of people, I'm sure you do as well, who have been converted through watching sermons on YouTube, including some who had the algorithm, the all-knowing algorithm,

you know, prompt a video from Paul Washer or John MacArthur or someone like that to them. They're not even looking for it. Literally, they're not even searching for that. It just comes across there. The algorithm and the Holy Spirit come together. I guess the Spirit maybe seizes the algorithm at that moment. I'm not sure, but really and truly technology can be used for good, but technology, I would say is a solid instrument, but it is a terrible master. It is not meant to be our master. It is not meant either, I think, to be our continual frame of existence. Now, some people watching this are going to work in tech fields, right? So they are going to be on a computer a lot, let's say. And

I'm not saying that they're in a sinful place. I'm not saying, you know, a young Christian getting a degree right now shouldn't get a degree in a tech field. I am saying, though, whatever your vocation, whatever your calling, you and I need to recognize that there is good offline as well as online. And God has made us as ensouled creatures. We are embodied souls, if you were. So we are creatures made by God and redeemed by God who need face-to-face fellowship. We need conversation with someone in person. We're made for the fellowship of the local church, and that is not to be had on Zoom. That's not to be had on YouTube. That's not to be had on YouTube. That's you actually going to a place where there are other believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and getting to know them.

It's not just us drinking in the ministry of the word through a local church. It's actually us serving people. Can you serve people in technological ways? Yes, but you can in other ways as well. And the whole fellowship of the local church should take us off our screens. It should take us out of that imminent technological frame, and it should instead put us face to face. So we want to cultivate lives of digital minimalism. It's going to look differently for different people. But if we're not careful, our devices really and truly will master us, and we'll end up unable to have face-to-face conversation. We'll end up not investing in people who are right in front of us. We won't strive to make disciples evangelize people who are all

around us. And that's a very dangerous reality for us to contemplate. You think about the importance, we've talked about it elsewhere, of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. He took on human form. He got to know people. He came to an earth that was smelly and sweaty and dusty. He plunged into the thick of it. He took the time to learn who people were. He treated everyone he engaged with dignity in different forms. He made disciples. He had long, stretched out conversations. He answered questions. You think about how important these realities are, by the way, for marriage. Most people are called to be married. You think about how important this reality is that we're discussing for fatherhood or motherhood.

You're not supposed to be connecting with your child, you know, by text message all the time throughout the day. You're supposed to actually put the phone away, I think, and get to know your child and spend time with them, play with them, and shape them, and disciple them, and correct them. So we can use technology, we can steward technology, we can even use it for the advancement of the gospel and the Word, praise God, but technology must not be our master, and a digitally minimal life is us pushing toward that goal. Well, and in conversation with Pastor John MacArthur, he's told me that his life is governed by habits, by godly habits that he sets up for himself. And so as we think through digital minimalism, maybe if you're just breaking this down

to me or you're talking with someone else, if you're going to give him a few things, what are some of the godly habits that you would recommend implementing to make sure that our devices are instruments and not our masters, as you said. I am not the reference point for digital minimalism and don't hold myself up to be. We all stumble in many ways and I stumble too and I have to confess my sin in this area and lots of areas. But I have tried to map out some habits and practices along these lines for myself. Not because I have it all figured out, habits and practices along these lines for myself.

Not because I have it all figured out, but because I know I don't. So what I try to do is if I'm going to engage social media, let's say, I will engage it throughout the day, but I'm not on it all the time. I just find my happiness index plummeting if I am on social media for a long swatch of time. So for me, it's intermittent. That's a quick reference point from the outset. It is not a healthy thing for me to be on Twitter, Instagram, scrolling, scrolling. That's, what do they call it?

Doom scrolling. That's where you end up going. At least a lot of us do. At night, when I'm with my family, I'm a husband and a father of three children. When I come in from work, I am basically committed to being off that phone in a work sense or off my computer as well for the night. There are occasionally times, you know, I have to hop on, but that's my general rule. That's my general practice and habit is to be off the phone. So I'm at the dinner table. I'm not constantly picking it up, you know, putting it down, picking it up, putting it

down. It's gone. It's okay. By the way, part of why technology becomes a master and not an instrument is we think that we can not be creaturely when it comes to technology. And there's a whole nother thread of conversation where technology is used by sinful humanity to try, carefully chosen word, to transcend creatureliness, to master humanity, master the body, overcome limitations, and you can't do it. It's never going to happen because that is a secular eschatology. That is a secular soteriology, doctrine of salvation. You cannot, in a secular sense, overcome your finitude, your limits, mortality. It will not happen. Maybe life expectancy stretches out longer and longer

as the years go by. That may happen. But no one is going to, without Christ, solve the problems of the human race. So some of what we fall prey to, some of why we're not disciplined with technology is we fall prey to the delusion that if we just stay on a little bit longer, we can overcome our creatureliness. And we never can. We have to accept our limits. This is not the way our culture talks. This is not how we are trained to think. These are not the TED Talks that people listen to in our day and age. Accept your limits. Well, that's a TED Talk that's going to bomb hard, right? Defy your limits would be more appropriate, yeah. Absolutely defy your limits.

Is that not basically every TED Talk ever given, or at least many of them? So, look, we need a call to, you know, push forward. We all do. I do too. We need that in a certain form. But actually, part of biblical wisdom is embracing your limits. And so in the practical form here is not being in touch with everybody all the time. You're going to miss some emails.

You're going to miss some texts. Somebody's going to come into town. You're going to miss the call. It's okay. We've all got to accept limits. If we could do that in our doctrine of humanity, we would actually set ourselves up more properly. God in his grace would be working in us to make us wiser and godlier and healthier. So I try to get off the phone and be out of touch and just accept some of my limits there, right? And then I'll try in a given weekend, I'll try to be off the phone on Sundays just because I don't, I need to just focus on the

Lord. I need to honor congregational worship. I don't need to be plunging into all the problems of the world. And I find that that day off, I typically honor that, refreshes me, and then I'll have a week or two throughout the year where I'm off, and that resets me. So that's not the perfect outlay for digital minimalism, but it is at least one man's strategy to work against himself and against a technocentric culture for spiritual health. I think those habits and even as far as your own experience are healthy ideas to implement. And you think about in Psalm 90, it says, teach us God to number our days. And so much of the digital world creates this type of thinking that we're going to live forever and it makes every day almost it becomes like a groundhog day effect where you just live the same day over and over again and it reduces all thinking and contemplation

from our lives when we are doom scrolling and so having godly habits is so essential if we're going to present to god a heart of wisdom and for us to be able to pray with Moses, establish the work of our hands, because if we're distracted constantly, we won't be able to live the life that Christ has intended us to live through his power and through his spirit. So that's really helpful and beneficial even for me. Well, yeah, and I'll just throw in quickly. It's really hard for me to meditate on Scripture, focus on reading the Word of God in my devotions, and pray when I am immersed in technology. And you can become just intellectually lazy too. Sure.

The average person doesn't think at all. Yes. Apart from the Christian, it's even just setting up habits where you can become a learner. That's right. So in opposition to what's on your phone every day. Yeah, that's another one of those kind of worldview commitments. I'll find myself, my hand twitching like an old Western gunfighter. You know, when I get into the Word, if I've been on

social media and the internet and my computer a lot, it's like this act of the will to read the Bible for six and a half minutes straight. And, you know, you're just twitching. And that is not a healthy place to be. And so you can use technology. Your vocation can be technological to the glory of God. We are thankful that Gutenberg, whatever his spiritual exact status was, created the printing press. It pushed the Protestant Reformation times X50, you know, what it would have been. We're in different common grace ways, thankful for modern technologies, right? For phones and those sorts of things. But if we're not careful, we'll immerse ourselves. We won't acknowledge creaturely limits and we'll be unable to break away from technology such that we read the word for 30 minutes uninterrupted, such that we go on a prayer walk in nature, not to take photos for Instagram, but to pray, to commune with the living

God. And so these habits, if you fight for them, will pay off, but you have to fight for them by the power of the Spirit. Yeah, and they serve as a catalyst to actual intimacy with God. They do. And I think that's one of the things that I think so much about in regards to actual intimacy with God. They do. And I think that's one of the things that I think so much about and, you know, in regards to my conversations with students or anybody else in the church, we've been told we can have a personal relationship with God, yet it's never felt very personal because there's actual little time and priority spent on developing that intimacy with God, void of any distraction in your life.

And so that is helpful. And it's necessary in order for us to feel what God has told us to be objectively true. Yes. That He is our Father. And in order to really find treasure and comfort in that, we need to have time void of distraction, unmitigated, 30 minutes, as you said in His Word, or whatever that might be. So, oh, and that's so helpful helpful thank you for your wisdom in this regard sure