Theology in the Raw - S2 Ep1039: Are We Being Discipled By Our Phones? Jay Kim

Episode Date: January 5, 2023

Short answer–absolutely we are. But not in a good way. From addiction to tech, to feeding the outrage machine, to diminishing our capacity to do deep work, our phones are stunting our growth into Christ-likeness and Jay helps us figure out how to get out of the vicious cycle.  Jay serves as the lead pastor at WestGate Church in the Silicon Valley and is the author of several books including: Analog Church (IVP, 2020), Analog Christian (2022) (which is the focus of our podcast conversation), 40 Days through the Book: Colossians (2022), and a contributing author to Before You Lose Your Faith (2021), Red Skies (2022), and The Upside Down Kingdom Study Bible (2024). His written work has also been featured in Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, Missio Alliance, Outreach, and Relevant Magazine. If you would like to support Theology in the Raw, please visit patreon.com/theologyintheraw for more information! 

Hello, friends. Registration is now open for next year's Exiles in Babylon conference, and I cannot wait for this conference. Here's a few topics that we're going to wrestle with. The future of the church, disability in the church, multi-ethnic perspectives on American Christianity, and a conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. We have Eugene Cho, Elise Fitzpatrick, Matt Chandler, Michelle Sanchez, Justin Gibney, Devin Stalemar, Hardwick. The list goes on and on. Joey Dodson's going to be there. Greg Boyd and Clay Jones, they're going to be engaging in this conversational debate on the problem of evil and suffering. And of course, we have to have

Ellie Bonilla and Street Hymns back by popular demand. And Tanika Wya and Evan Wickham will be leading our multi-ethnic worship again. We're also adding a pre-conference this year. So we're going to do an in-depth scholarly conversation on the question of women in ministry featuring two scholars on each side of the issue. So Drs. Gary Brashears and Sydney Park are on the complementarian side and Drs. Cynthia Long-Westfall and Philip Payne on the egalitarian side. So March 23rd to 25th, 2023 here in Boise, Idaho. We sold out last year and we'll probably sell this year again. So if you want to come, if you want to come live, then I would register sooner than later. And you can always attend virtually if you can't make it

out to Boise in person. So all the info is at theologyintherod.com. That's theologyintherod.com. Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Rod. My that's theology in the rod.com hello friends welcome back to another episode of theology in the raw my guest today is my friend jay kim jay is a uh the lead pastor at westgate church in the silicon valley he's also the author of analog church and the recently released analog christian uh which uh forms the better part of our conversation we talk about all things digital related and a big part of our conversation really We talk about all things digital related, and a big part of our conversation really focuses on just the addictive nature of social media and smartphones and the internet as a whole, which I think is a huge, huge discipleship conversation that needs to be

had and continue to be had. And that becomes a big part of our conversation. So please welcome back to the show, the one and only Pastor Jay Kay. Jay, you were on the podcast. If I remember correctly, it was right in the middle or the beginning of the 2020 pandemic. Because you had written a book on digital media and the church, everything. And it was so timely because everybody was going online. I don't know if you planned it. Obviously, you didn't plan it that way. But you just came out with another book, Analog Christian, Cultivating Contentment, Resilience, and Wisdom in the Digital Age. Why don't you just

briefly describe your first book, and then let's dive into the second book, and how do these play off each other? Yeah. Well, first of all, it's so fun chatting with you again, Preston. Yeah, the first book, Analog Church, it was released in March of 2020. I remember the release date was like two weeks after our church had to shut down and not gather in person. And then I release a book about why it's so important to be in person. So that was, yeah, I mean, obviously super ironic, but in hindsight, it was, I'm grateful for it in a weird way, just because if there was anything I would want to say in the midst of the pandemic, it would have been that book. So yeah, that came out in March of

2020. It was really a book about the intersection between our ecclesiology and the digital age. It was a book I wrote with mostly with church leaders and pastors in mind. This new book, Analog Christian, is still at the intersection of the digital age, but it's more about who we're becoming. Discipleship or formation are the popular words to use. It's just about who we're becoming in light of the digital air that we all breathe. It's not a book about being a Luddite and throwing away all your technology. That's not who I am. Some people think that's who I am, but that's a misunderstanding. I have an appreciation for digital technology. I just think with all technologies

and with all things really in life, we have to put them in their rightful place. So yeah, it's really a book about how we can be mindful and thoughtful to invite the Spirit of God to form us into the sorts of people God longs for us to be, rather than letting digital media and social media and the digital age form us into people that we don't want to be. I just had on the podcast a guy named Doug Smith, who is a software engineer, a great thinker. He wrote a book called Unintentional that talks about, yeah, more of the just the addictive dangers of, in particular, social media, but I think just broadly, you know, smartphones and other things. you know smartphones and and other things um it was talking to him i mean it was like you saw the social dilemma right on netflix yeah so he doesn't have netflix so he hadn't seen but he knows about the documentary but a lot of what he was saying very much um was was similar to what you um what we saw in that in that movie which was frightening that that i mean and it, and if it's even half true,

that should raise all kinds of alarm bells. But I don't see any chance. I don't know. I think people, here's my, I guess I'm getting to a question. It seems like a very urgent matter that we are being co-opted and used um by for lack of better terms big tech or whatever you want to call it and we keep going we keep doing it we're we're we're

like enslaved to these devices and social media we know it's producing more anger and disunity in the church and and it's not it's leading to anxiety and depression. And yet we just keep on going. Do you address some of that in the book? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that's probably a universal sentiment for most people, at least living in the modern West, sort of shackled to their digital devices. Yeah, I mean, we're addicts, right? Most people are digital addicts. Most people don't want to admit that or they don't recognize it. There's all sorts of studies done. The average smartphone user, I think, touches their phone released some data a year or two ago about the average iPhone user unlocking their phone. I think it's like 150 times a day. That's average. And when people hear those statistics, nobody's like, oh, yeah, I do that. Everyone's like, that's insane, all those crazy people out there.

But if you actually kept track, like literally counted, you'd quickly realize, no, that's you. Like you probably open your phone 150, 200 times a day. We just don't know it because we're so addicted. It's so pervasive and ubiquitous in our lives. And, you know, it's interesting, right? That word addict comes from a Latin word that, you know, in the Greco-Roman world was used to describe slaves. It was a legal term used in the court of law to describe when a person would be deemed the property of another person. So to be an addict is to be a slave, and that's exactly what you said. We are truly enslaved to these devices. And so I think awareness of that, you know, people, it's so interesting. The social, the social dilemma on Netflix, I think it was like the number one documentary on Netflix for several months running. And, um, I, they've done some studies about, it was like tens of millions of people watched it and globally. And they did some studies shortly thereafter, like, did it have

any sort of real effect on people's smartphone usage? And, you know, it's kind of early to tell, but the early data shows like, no, not really. So it's interesting. There's a real distance, you know, a chasm between information, knowledge, I felt the same way. I was like, this is frightening. It's alarming. It's frightening. This is, you know, it's a major problem that's destructive in so many ways. But when it comes to like, what are we going to do about it? We just don't, we don't do much about it. Because when you're an addict, it's like addicts know, addicts know that this is destroying their lives. And yet they keep going, when it comes to alcohol, for example, they just like can't help it. They keep going back to the bottle. And I think we're in a very similar sort of precarious and like you said, frightening situation.

So have you ever preached on this? I wonder because I don't – it's typically like a pulpit conversation. It's typically not like a pulpit conversation. And yet, I would suggest, and correct me if I'm wrong, addiction to social media is one of the main hindrances to discipleship in the church. And we saw this when every single pastor I talked to, your pastor, I can ask you the same question. Like, what was it, how difficult was it discipling your people in 2020 and why is that it wasn't like oh it's hard to prepare a sermon or people had theological problems it was like debates about masks and lockdown measures and the race conversation and politics and stuff that all comes down to what's the steady drip that they're getting from whatever social media outlet or whatever.

So much of it went down to that, right? That's why people were angry and divisive. If there was no internet, we would have just had a pandemic to worry about. We wouldn't have all the division in in in the church and families um yeah so is that is that an overstatement that i mean figuring out a better way to not be enslaved to something that is just really i'm destroying the church might be too strong but dividing the church is probably not strong enough i mean no – No, yeah, I agree with you. I agree totally.

So to answer the first question, yeah, we at our church, we have preached on it. And actually we also drip in the influence and formational power of social media and news media and the digital age. We drip that sort of thing in all the time. So it's in the air, it's in the, it's in the cold, it's in the air of the church that like, this is people just, there's an awareness of. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I think if you were to ask our folks, Hey, how often do the teachers here talk about social media and digital media, news media? Um, I think if for folks who are around for a bit and pretty regularly, I think most of them would tell you like, oh, yeah, it comes up quite a bit, actually. And for us, it's not because we're trying to like touch some hot button issue. It's because

we think it's so formational. It is like it's so ubiquitous. It's just the air we breathe. Therefore, what that means is it's forming our people. So if, you know, it's interesting, um, Neil, Neil Postman, I think a lot of listeners will at least know his name. Um, he was writing, gosh, 40 years ago, 30, 40 years ago. But if you read his book, amusing ourselves to death, it's prophetic in the sense that it feels like he wrote the book two days ago. I've said this. He's got this whole thing about how technology has changed ideas. And we see this today in ways that he didn't even see when he was writing the book.

But he basically talks about how the telegraph changed everything, right? Late 19th century um samuel morse famous for the morse code yeah he develops the telegraph right like electrical wires and you can send signals and now you can send ideas and information across long stretches of land and then eventually even across the sea because they by 1890 or something, they had developed a line between America and Europe, so across the Atlantic. Now, with so much immediacy, you can share ideas and information. Well, before the telegraph, the fastest that information could travel was like 35 miles an hour on a train. What what he talks about, what Postman says is before the telegraph

ideas, because they traveled slow ideas were, were almost always local and therefore ideas, ideas and information, it was almost always local. And it was almost always for the sake of doing something with the idea or information. Like it was pertinent to where you lived and the people you were doing life with and how it affected your town or your neighborhood or whatever. And you had to do something with it. And then he says the telegraph introduced a whole new thing and he calls it, it, it introduced the idea of ideas and information as a commodity. And then he talks about how television took it a step further and it turned ideas and information, not just into a commodity, but into entertainment.

Right. And now you think about the internet and you're talking about division amongst Christians and all these arguments we have online about X, Y, and Z. And it's like, the question I always have is you're screaming, we're screaming at each other online, but how does this make any tangible difference in the, in your house, in your home, your neighborhood, your workplace, your church, your city. It's like, it's a fascinating thing and it's formational, right? We've, we've, we've just sort of become enraptured in this milieu of ideas as commodity and entertainment and now really as like bullets in our digital guns or just like shoot each other in the wild west of the internet for no good reason while like our real lives aren't being formed in the way that we want them to. So I think Postman was really prescient in that way. And I think we need to take heed of that and consider how the internet is forming us. Someone just told me that one of his students, because that's the, you know, the book is so prophetic and you're just like, oh, I wish he was still alive today to write part two, you know.

But somebody told me one of his students did write a book i think maybe 10 years ago kind of saying oh here's what here here's how this would apply today or something like that have you heard of that book um no i haven't but i'm gonna look it up now yeah i i forgot the name of it and i looked at this the sales rank and it's like it's not it's like in the millions or so it's not it doesn't seem like it's a really popular book but um yeah i i would because yeah that book i mean postman i mean i've said this a lot that it's it's like he was writing yesterday like how the things he said and he was talking about television primarily right that the the the medium of television shapes the very thing we're doing it is created yeah um an entertainment industry out of uh news right

because you want somebody that's good looking on the whatever you need to capture attention and then and then fast forward now to even the political arena now so much of it is performance right and so when people treat it as anything other than that, I think that's wrongheaded. So going back to your church, because identifying the problem is pretty easy, but I'm like, how do we alert people to, again, the discipleship, ecclesiological dangers of having this steady drip of propaganda? of having this steady drip of propaganda or whether it's a news outlet or just social media or people just buying not just for your attention or your wallet, which they are, but also your affections. Like they want you,

they purposely want you to be angry because that's going to keep you on there. They want you to be addicted. They want you to keep scrolling and keep, we know this. How do we wean people off it? So when you said this, I'm curious, well, both, you say you have preached on it, but also the kind of steady drip. Can you talk to... What does each of those look like, the preaching and the steady drip?

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, you said some of the words, those are verbatim words we use here. And for some people, it might feel like we're talking about it ad nauseum. It's just like, oh, my gosh, this again, because we sort of repeat ourselves like a broken record. But one of the reasons is because we just are people keep in myself like self indictment here. We just all keep doing the same thing, you know, so we just like keep repeating what some of the words you said. Like these these technologies and these tools, they're not neutral. They're non-neutral technology. So it's, it's very different than a hammer, like a hammer, just like any technology hammer can be used for good, or it can be used

for harm, but a hammer doesn't sit there and blink and glow and ask you to pick it up for no good reason, whereas the smartphone does. And it's in our back pocket, and the hammer's utility is super clear. But a smartphone, because of the way it's designed now – I mean think about it. How often do you use your smartphone as a phone? It's like very rarely. It's kind of silly we call it a smartphone? It's like very rarely. It's kind of silly. We call it a smartphone. It's a computer in our back pocket. It's access to the worldwide web. And so we talk about a lot how this technology in particular is vying for your attention,

your affection. And then we take it a step further. And what we say is, ultimately, what it really wants is your allegiance. It wants you to bow at the altar of technology. And it doesn't call itself technology. It calls itself all sorts of beautiful things like being connected and information and, you know, being up to date, whatever, all that kind of stuff. So the way it looks for us is we've done like a mini series on formation and technology, some of it sort of out of my book. And then really for us, just as a church, we, and different churches have different sort of modes of operation, just our sense for our people here in Silicon Valley. We think discipleship to Jesus, formation into Christlikeness is of utmost importance. We feel like that's, as a church,

that's what we're sort of called to call our people to. So that makes it really easy for us, because we talk so much about formation into Christlikeness, it gives us very open access and avenues to talk about, well, what are the things that are forming us? And that almost always comes down to a number of things, but one of the things is digital technology, social media, news media. So that's why it comes up quite a bit. And then the other thing we've found really helpful, sort of borrowing from guys like Jamie Smith, we talk a lot about how just knowing stuff, information, is critically important. We value robust, rich theology and biblical narrative, all those sorts of things. We've got to know that stuff. But knowing it doesn't change you.

You've got to allow the knowledge and the information. You've got to participate with it. Those are Peter's words at the beginning of one of his letters. You've got to make every effort, participate with the Spirit of God, with the knowledge that you have. And what that does then is it reorients and reforms your desires. And I think that's really at the heart of the matter for us. We're trying to figure out a way and it's, you know, it's a slow and steady process, doesn't happen overnight, but we're trying to figure out a way where we can help our people begin to desire the wrong things less and less and desire the right things

more and more. So when it comes to digital technology, one of those things might be to desire engagement in the sort of social media landscape less and less. So one of the things we've invited our church to do is like the one a month challenge. So it's like so hokey to call it that, but it just makes sense. It's like, we, we invite our folks like, Hey, for the next year, can you delete or have like a net negative of minus one on the number of apps on your phone? Like at least every month, can you delete an app and just see how that goes? And a year from now, hopefully you've got 12 less apps on your

phone than you did a year before. If you just keep going, I think what you will find is no, like you can manage and live a rich, meaningful life without all of that, all of that clutter on your smartphone. This is constantly vying for your attention and affection and allegiance. Yeah. Have you, have you seen people change? change have you seen the last couple years or whatever like improvement in people's and it's hard to measure but i mean yeah anecdotally for sure yeah yeah anecdotally as i talked to i mean i just think about like the small group i belong to there's nine guys it's like 18 of us it's a young married small group. Like the husbands get together one week, the wives another week. So out of the nine guys, four of them work at Apple and then two of them work at other

tech companies. So like two thirds work in tech. They're like in the business of making the stuff that so ubiquitous in our lives. And yeah, we've, you know, we talk about it quite a bit. And as, as we talk about it, yeah, I've seen it. I've seen these sort of incremental but really profound and beautiful changes in some of our lives. And it's little things, but it's the little things that are big things. It's stuff like, yeah, I'm spending more time with my kids, or I've got this practice in place where now I come home and there are

no phones outside of sort of the kitchen. So we have a docking station in the kitchen. We leave our phones there. And from the moment I get home till the kids are in bed, the phones are away and we're just spending time together as family. These sorts of little things I think I've seen and I think it's had a profound impact. It's had a profound impact on my life but i've watched it have a profound impact on on their lives as well so and it goes beyond

that it goes beyond my my small group um so yeah anecdotally we've seen we've seen progress and that's i think worth celebrating did you guys face um as a church a lot of the kind of just divisiveness like 2020, really. I mean, and I don't know. I haven't really talked to people much about it in the last like six months. Has it died down? Has it gotten better?

But I mean, gosh, during 2020, I mean, people were fleeing this church or that church because of different responses to the pandemic or they were preaching politics too much or not enough or the wrong kind of politics. I mean, it was pretty disastrous. Some churches, it was disastrous. I talked to a small handful of pastors that said it was difficult, but it wasn't – we got through it.

Most pastors said this is the most difficult pastoring I've ever had to do. Did you guys face a lot of that? Just a division over all the hotbed issues? Our church, so during the pandemic early on, we committed to doing everything we could to continue fostering what was already a very strong relationship with our county and our city. So we just said, okay, no matter how hard it gets, we're going to do our absolute best to sort of work with them and adhere to the rules and regulations. And I'm in Silicon Valley, which is in Santa Clara County. We were actually the first county in the entire country to shut down. Oh, wow. And we were the last to totally open.

Wow. And that had a tremendous effect on churches, obviously. But we tried our best to adhere, and we did adhere to county rules and regulations. We would tell them like, Hey, this, this is why we feel like it's unnecessary, or this is making it really challenging for us, but we're going to do what you're asking us. We just need you to know, like, if there's a little wiggle room here, can you work with us sort of thing? And they were actually pretty generous, but all of that to say, like other cities, like ours, there was one church in our town that did the major sort of like,

this is the devil, the government is Satan, and they are trying to squelch the work of the spirit. So we're not doing anything. We're going to gather, we're going to jam pack our room, no masks, nothing. And we're going to sit extra close to each other. I serve at, yeah, I serve at a church that's, you know, fairly large. We had, it's, it's, it's, it's not an overstatement to say we had like hundreds probably of people upset that we were not gathering. And then when we gathered that we were wearing masks and they left and they all went to that one church. So that one church, I don't know how they're doing now.

I, you know, I, I just don't think anger is a good way to build a community, but that's my opinion. Um, uh, yeah, they went from like, ah, gosh, I think pre pandemic, they, they had maybe like 300 people or something. And I heard at one point they had to go to like three services and they had like 1500 people or something. It's like everyone, every angry Christian that was like, no masks, COVID is a lie. They all sort of gathered in this one place, you know?

So we certainly had that. The political stuff was challenging too, but it didn't hit us as hard. I felt like we navigated that decently well. But still, you know, we had some effects with, you effects with social justice issues and all of that. So we've definitely felt it. But we did a survey nine months ago at our church, and 50% of our church has been at our church three years or less. So half our church is pandemic people. So the internal mantra for our staff right now is, hey, we're learning a new church in a new city. And it's a new city because here in Silicon Valley, we had a mass exodus in

the last few years, people just moving away up to Boise, Idaho and other places, you know. So yeah, it's a new church in a new city. And that's been really exciting for us just trying to figure out, you know, what this new chapter looks like. Yeah. And, but yeah, you mentioned Boise. We get a lot of Californians here. A lot of people, Oregon, Washington. Well, it's funny because the natives here, the native to Boise, um, they just think, oh, California, that's a liberal state. And all these liberals are coming up here. I'm like, you're not getting the liberals, dude. You're getting the hardcore conservatives are willing to uproot and move States for political reasons and they're not which i i if i if i think politically it just seems that this post-pandemic shuffle um is

going to make red states even redder and blue states maybe perhaps even bluer um yeah i don't know whatever who cares what do you um yeah what do you what are you doing to prepare your people for what will probably be another very divisive election cycle in 2024 is this something you're anticipating or you said you weren't hit your church wasn't as divisive around politics as much as maybe some other churches so maybe it's not a huge huge thing you need to anticipate or yeah i mean no we're still we're still bracing for it if i had to guess i mean here santa clara county silicon valley san jose it generally the area is a very blue, very progressive liberal. If I had to guess, this is very anecdotal about our church, I'd probably guess if people had to lean one way or the other, like if you force them to politically. My guess is that our church, our congregation would be like 60 percent blue, 40% red-ish, something like that. But

I actually think the majority of our congregation, like 80% of our congregation, is more along the lines of what Jonathan Haidt calls the exhausted majority. Yeah, they have some leanings, for sure. If you were to say, okay, what about this issue or that issue? Sure, you could kind of shade them bluish or reddish. But I think the majority of them are like, dude, I'm just tired of this. I just want to get along and I want to move forward. And I'm here not because the pastor is going to tell me to vote for this guy or that guy. I'm here because I want to figure out this Jesus thing, you know?

And so if there is some criticism that's lobbed our way, it might be something along the lines of you're not talking about politics enough. Although I would suggest we talk about politics a lot. And I think it's a political statement to say, and we say this all the time, like the path to human flourishing does not run through the White House. It runs through the cross at Calvary. Our allegiance is not to an elected official. Our allegiance is to Jesus as King. Those are literally words we say probably every Sunday in some form or fashion. So I think that's how we're trying to prepare our people. And if we're ready for anything,

I think we're ready for the loss of those who are going to be angry because we're not making blatantly political statements in the way they want us to make them. And I'm okay with that. There are other churches in the area that do that. And, you know, God bless you as you go there. But yeah, generally, I think our church is made up of the exhausted majority, and we're just going to try to serve them well. Where did Haidt talk? Was that in Righteous Mind?

Or is that more recently? No, where I first read it, it wasn't in one of his books, although he might have talked about it in in Coddling of the American Mind. But he I read it first in an Atlantic article he wrote that came out probably six months ago. Yeah, I forget the name of it is something along the line. The title was great. It's something along the lines of like why the last 10 years of America have been so profoundly stupid or something like that. That's a great article. I don't think I read the whole thing.

Incredible. Yeah. He always does that. He'll drop these bomb articles in The Atlantic like once every few years and they're just so prophetic. And then he writes a book about it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, talk to me about your book, Analog Christian. I mean I was looking at the table of contents. But can you walk us through it? Yeah. Yeah. Well, talk to me about your book, Analog Christian. I mean, I was looking at the table of contents, but can you walk us through it? And what do you hope the readers will walk away with? Yeah. I mean, it's pretty simple. I'm trying to identify some of the symptoms of our digital addictions. And there's probably dozens of them.

But I just – I mean, the book is a much more personal book than my first book. I wrote it as a prayer and as a confession. discovered in sort of long before I was even going to write this book, what I discovered was that, you know, Paul's really profound words in his letter to the Galatians, you know, that famous passage about the fruit of the spirit and these beautiful characteristics of the spirit's fruit, you know, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. As I sort of pondered that reality, what I realize is like, oh, if the Spirit of God can have his way in me and form me into the sort of person God longs for me to be, and that leads to my life bearing the sort of fruit that only the Spirit of God can grow in me, those characteristics of the Spirit's fruit, man, those are the antidotes to so many of the symptoms I experience in the digital age. So essentially, the book's fruit, man, those are the antidotes to so many of the symptoms I

experience in the digital age. So essentially, the book just breaks down, like, if the Spirit of God moves in us, we're going to experience love instead of self-centric despair, joy instead of comparison, peace instead of contempt, patience instead of impatience, kindness and goodness instead of hostility, you know, faithfulness instead of forgetfulness, kindness and goodness instead of hostility, faithfulness instead of forgetfulness. And by forgetfulness, I don't mean like forgetting where your keys are. I mean, forgetting that it's a real human on the other side of this thing and forgetting that our allegiance is to Christ, not to information or data or whatever. You know, gentleness instead of outrage, self-control instead of reckless indulgence. So those symptoms are all symptoms that I was experiencing in my own life over the course of many years as I found myself sort of continuing to spiral into my digital addiction.

And as I began sort of asking God prayerfully, okay, God, I want to be freed of this. I want to live a liberated life where I can still use digital technology, where I don't need to run from it, but I can put it in its proper place. So help me to do that, you know, and help me to do that by your spirit, you know, cultivate this fruit in me. And it's a process that obviously I'm still in. It's a process I think I'll still in. It's a process I think I'll continue to be in for the rest of my life. But I have experienced in the last several

years leading up to the book and then writing the book and releasing it. It's true. If we give ourselves over to the Spirit of God and what He wants to cultivate in our lives, liberation and freedom from our digital addictions, it is possible. And, and, and it really is, that's the life we really want to live, you know? So, so that's the book that's, you know, the book came from that own sort of self-diagnosis and I'm hopeful that it'll, it'll be helpful to some. What, what, what, like, can you tease out what your addiction, digital addiction looks like? Like, what was it for you? Cause I know everybody probably has different things, whether it's a certain social media platform or just news or whatever.

Yeah. For me, it was primarily email and then, um, Twitter. Okay. I, I found myself incessantly checking my email and it wasn't because I needed to, it was, you know, when I began doing some self work, I realized it was actually – it's just – I think this is common for a lot of people who do the same. It's just like deeply connected to my own insecurity and my sense of significance. And every time I got that dopamine hit of like the ping of the email, it was like, oh, I matter. I'm important. If I don't address this, then everyone's screwed. So, you know, it was like a lot of that kind of stuff. And then, yeah, I mean, social media,

Twitter specifically, not that I was posting a lot, but I was finding myself doom scrolling that thing and my entire worldview being framed and shaped by my feed that the sort of machine algorithm was feeding me. Email. I don't typically hear email thrown in there. But I can totally see that quest for significance or somebody reached out to me or what about the, you know, it's almost, or it's almost like a, is there some new email that's like a book offer or this or that, or some, some kind of like status elevation or something, or a positive review. I, there's all kinds of stuff where you like, every time you check it, it's like, Oh, is there something here or something here or something here? You know, I can totally see that. Yeah. It was, it was totally that it's,

it's essentially like the slot machine, right? I was like a gambling addict sitting in the casino and I'm just pulling that lever, you know, it's like, is it going to come up like, oh, there it is. There's the email that affirms, you know, my significance or whatever. And, um, yeah, so that, that's, that's a big reason why I wrote the book actually. And yeah, so that's a big reason why I wrote the book actually. And then Twitter. I've been pretty good. For the most part, I don't scroll. I'll post stuff.

I'll check notifications, who commented, whatever. And even that, I'm like, I probably shouldn't. I don't need to do that. But I wouldn't say I spend much time at all on it. that but i don't i don't i wouldn't say i i spend a much time at all on it but i would say the last few days for whatever reason i've been hitting the home thing where i just look at i've been kind of scrolling you know kind of in a bored boredom and i i'm reminded again how much of a cesspool it is it's like though yeah and then it's sad i was just talking about this to um doug smith on the podcast of the day like it's it's so because i mean when you do if you do that

as few times you begin to see the kind of same people just living on like twitter is their world and i'm like oh my gosh because i i mean i get a glimpse of it and it's like like can you imagine if this was this was like your life and like oh oh my gosh, for some people, this occupies a huge part of their emotions, their connection, they're involved. Like this is their world, you know? Yeah. Um, and that's like, that's, that's just so, it's sad and like, oh, that's so, it is, it's sad, you know?

And, and you just live in a constant state of anger and bitterness and yelling at somebody. And did you, did you experience, is that kind of what you're talking about? Like you, you got sucked in. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. I mean, again, I would not wade into those waters by like posting and replying a bunch, but yeah, I did find myself just glued to the interactions. Yeah.

And you know, there's an entertainment factor there. Yeah, I did find myself just glued to the interactions. It's entertainment. There's an entertainment factor there. I mean – Oh, 100%. Yeah, and there's like – I would find myself sort of like feeling so much contempt inside. In psychology, they talk about how contempt works up and down. They say you envy up and scorn down. And I found myself doing that on Twitter all the time. What does that mean? Can you, can you explain that more?

Yeah. So essentially the way contempt works, contempt is always directional, right? Contempt is not, you don't hold contempt for yourself. You hold all sorts of other things toward yourself, you know, insecurity, or, I mean, I guess sometimes there can be like, this gets really destructive and dark for people when they, it's like this is really dark. But like suicidal ideation comes from in some ways like self-contempt. Like I can't bear – I'm so angry at me sort of thing. But generally speaking, contempt is directional. So it extends out from me to someone in a particular direction. So in the

world of psychology, they say it depends on the direction, but when you feel contempt towards somebody that you sort of in a strange way, admire or revere, but, but you feel contempt because you long to be where they are sort of thing. The way the contempt looks is envy. So it's interesting because we think envy is like, oh, they should be flattered. I envy them. It's actually a form of contempt. You actually have a real sense of like envy and contempt dance together, you know? So that's what contempt looks like toward those you sort of, you know, admire or revere or think you do. And then they talk about how contempt toward those that you're just like, oh my gosh, I can't believe they would, or I can't believe they

said that scorn it. You just scorned down. So envy up, scorn down. And in, in so many ways, I think Twitter is just when, when people use Twitter that way, that's literally what's happening. You're just envying up. I mean like Instagram as another example is a perfect example of this. Instagram is like the envying up sort of machine. You're just constantly scrolling the feed, envying everybody. But it's actually a form of contempt. You're planting seeds of real bitterness toward these people for like

no fault of their own. Like it's not their fault. They're just posting whatever it is they want to post, but because you constantly scroll the feed, you're starting to build bitterness. Like why doesn't my life look like their life? And it's a sort of envying up and then scorned down. This happens a lot. I think on Twitter happens a ton on Facebook, you know, where especially with political things. Yeah. You know, it's just like, oh, my gosh, did you see what so-and-so posted about such and such? And it's just scorn. It's like complete contempt, you know, and it's so dismissive, you know.

And there's all sorts of like neurological things happening when we do that. And those things have been tracked and mapped. It's not conjecture. It's not hypothetical. It's like neurologists have mapped it. Like there's stuff happening in our brain chemistry when we do that that's killing us. It's destructive. But it's also hyper addictive.

Like most things are. You know, like smoking cigarettes kills you and it's hyper addictive. Drinking too much alcohol kills you and it also hyper addictive. Like most things are. You know, like smoking cigarettes kills you and it's hyper addictive. Drinking too much alcohol kills you and it's hyper addictive. And so it is with social media. Golly. But it's – I think we get away – like we don't treat the addiction to social media as severe because it's not a chemical, right? Like we're like, oh, yeah, we could joke about being addicted. But no one would say uh like yep

i'm still addicted to crack you know you know and move on but you know um so it's kind of a socially acceptable addiction and people don't because it's not a chemical people don't see how harmful it is but it neurologically as you said it's just incredibly harmful all the way down to all the way down even if you're not actually addicted to, say, social media or whatever, just that constant checking, it is lowering, right? I mean, you tell me. Lowering even our attention span, our ability to concentrate. I've noticed this. I might be in the category of somebody who scoffs at people who check their phone 150 times a day, and I probably check it maybe 120 times.

who check their phone 150 times a day and I probably check it maybe 120 times you know I do in my honest self-evaluation I think I think I'm probably below yeah for sure I'm below average but it's still higher than I would like to be for sure so I've noticed in my life like reading a book especially I have to put my phone somewhere else otherwise yeah or even when I'm reading and I'll see a footnote I'm like oh I should probably order that book and I'll go to my phone somewhere else. Otherwise, or even when I'm reading and I'll see a footnote, I'm like, oh, I should probably order that book. And I'll go to the phone, order it, and check Twitter. And like, oh, I got a message on it. And you can't be, you can't, for somebody like you and I

and other people who are in, like our job is deep work. It is deep thinking. It is, you got to get, you have to be our jobs result revolves around being able to concentrate right i mean whether it's preparing a message or thinking through something or or in a counseling situation or whatever so has that been pretty much proven that that that it's really diminishing our attention spans and our ability to kind of do that kind of deep thoughtful work yeah yeah i mean you know when you say deep work I think a lot of people think of Cal Newport because he wrote a book called Deep Work a few years ago. And it's a fantastic book. And he talks about science-based, research-based. He talks about how he's got this

phrase that I found so helpful. He calls it frenetic shallowness. And he says, and this is not him sort of waxing poetic. This is him talking about what the science is revealing to us. He says, the more and more you wire your brain for frenetic shallowness and frenetic shallowness is exactly what you're talking about. You're reading a book, you see a footnote and you're like, Oh, I got it. And then you like break your train of thought from the ideas of the book and you go to your phone. Amazon is like, oh, it'll be really quick.

But what we, what Cal Newport talks about is like, no, it's not that quick because the way your brain works, it, there is a gap and a chasm there. It takes time for you to snap out of, and then for you to re-engage deeply, it's not immediate the way you think it is. Like your eyes are looking at the words on the pages of your book right away after you order the book on Amazon. Your mind though, is not engaging the way it did when you had been sitting for an hour reading. And for you to get back to that state of mindfulness and deep thought, um, it takes a lot of time. But the problem is before you can take that time to re-engage,

there's another footnote. And you're like, oh, great. I got to get that. And then there's a text and you're like, oh, one quick second. Let me just text back. And then you're bored and you're like, well, I just take Instagram really quick. And that's frenetic shallowness. And when you do that, the real danger, Cal Newport says, and Nicholas Carr in his book The Shallows, he gets deep into the neurology of this as well. The real danger is not just what's happening in that moment. The real danger is neuroplasticity, which is like a fancy way of saying – some people have heard the phrase like neurons that fire together, wire together. And what all that means really is your brain is there's plasticity to it.

So it can, it can change and rewire. And what Newport and Nicholas Carr and others have said is the more and more you ingrain yourself in frenetic shallowness, that's not just a problem when it's happening. Your brain now is rewiring, one, to desire that sort of frenetic shallowness, and two, to decrease in ability and aptitude to do deep work. So I totally agree for you and I, especially for anybody that does deep work, like they have to think deeply about ideas. We are living in precarious and dangerous times, you know? And, um, I think the loss of boredom is another big one. You know, you think about waiting in line

for something, there's some research that's being done recently that's showing that, uh, boredom is actually one of the most important pathways to creativity, like deep creativity. And so there's some people are starting to say, like, we may, we may have, we may have passed the most creative era in sort of human history because nobody is bored anymore. And we may see just less and less creativity in the generations to come, which is sad. I mean, just utterly tragic.

So, yeah. That part, what you're talking earlier about, I read the book a while ago, Cal Newport's book, which I highly recommend to anybody listening. Super eye-opening. And I made some changes in my life after reading that. And I

slowly drifted back into just kind of a bit more scattered, just not, not, not, not being as vigilant to be able to engage in deep work, which I want to get back into that. Um, cause yeah, I just, is it as simple as like, he even said, shut off your email. Don't be online. If you're doing some writing, thinking, don't have your phone nearby. Have you found that to be largely a huge first step? I mean to get back to cultivating better rhythms of deep work? Yeah.

I mean I think this is descriptive, not prescriptive necessarily. Cause I think, you know, people are different and you got to figure out what works for you. For me, that's totally true. So just to get super practical when I'm preparing a sermon or writing, you know, whether it's a book or an article or something, or doing anything that requires me to sink deeply into thought. And, um, it's always structured in two different sort of modes. So I have research mode and when I'm researching, I've got the internet up and I've got my Kindle with, um, you know, my books and quotes and I'm doing all of that work, but I, I never write in that mode. Like I'm never writing words that are going to, that are,

that other people are going to read. I'm literally putting together notes and the notes always look like sermon notes, whether it's an actual sermon or a book or an article or something. I just put together a bunch of notes. But when I write, like when I have to sit down and do the, like research is deep work as well. But when I want to do like put my soul into writing something, yeah, I turn off my internet. I have no internet connection. I print my notes like paper notes. I print them out. And then, um, I just have a silly program. I paid like 10 bucks on the app store for called right room, like right room, W R I T room, all one word. And it's so dumb, but it's so profoundly helpful. All it does is it blacks out my computer

and it's literally just a cursor and words and a black screen. That's it. So I can't see anything else. My phone is away and I've got my printed paper notes. And then I'm just like writing and tweaking at that point. That's been hugely helpful for me. Okay. That's good. Going back to Twitter, I'm curious, this is a change of subject. Do you have thoughts on Elon taking over Twitter? Oh my gosh. Well, it's like, it's right here in my neck of the woods and my brother-in-law used to work for twitter oh yeah so he and i were he and i were just talking a couple weeks ago and i was asking him he hasn't worked there for several years but i said man do you still have colleagues

or friends there and what are they saying yeah he said yeah yeah he does and it's interesting you know this gets to the social media thing he said yeah I mean, Elon seems like he's crazy and sort of like nuts. But he's not the sort of what my brother-in-law said was he's not the sort of crazy that social media and news media is making him out to be. He said that just makes for a really good news story. And it's so funny because it's all over Twitter. So it's like helping Elon with his own bottom line kind of thing. But he said, actually, there is a sort of sensibility in what he's doing here. And my brother-in-law was talking about in not all big tech, but in

social media tech companies, his experience has been, and he's been in that space for a long time. His experience has been that there is a lot of, um, sort of ideation that isn't really work. It's just kind of walking around talking about how they're going to change the world. So he said, I think, you know, his opinion, Elon's just cleaning house and trying to bump up the bottom line. So I don't know, man, I don't know what's going to happen. Like there's all of the, that's kind of the business side of it, but there's, you know, like the free speech side of things. And yeah, I don't know. One thing I think that's been helpful for me is like, it's been a good sort of reminder, like, Oh, God has done some good work in me because I have thought about like, Oh, what if Twitter just completely shuts down? How would I feel? Like even, even just with some of, you know, you and I, we, we create work that,

you know, is, is public. I mean, you create really public work. Some of my work is somewhat public and it's like, Oh, what, what would happen? You know, will publishers be upset? Cause I, there's no Twitter and we can't, you know, and I, I realized I don't really care yeah if twitter went away tomorrow i i don't think i would bat an eye and that thank the lord for that you know because i don't think i would have been in the same space a couple of years ago well what was so i i did see people talking about is twitter gonna shut down or all that like where's that what's that based on because he just literally spent billions of dollars a bot why would it shut down and it seems that the stats seem to be it's at its highest user

level it's ever been like what is that just random fear yeah i don't but i saw several people talk about that like i think some of the fear has gone away what i read was, one, some of their highest level engineers were resigning. And then two, there was one specific team, and there's some sort of back end team that if they don't do what they're supposed to do, the application itself wouldn't work. And that entire team, I don't know if that means like hundreds of people or a few dozen but supposedly the rumor on twitter was that the entire team collectively um resigned so so i think when all of that stuff started buzzing online it was when that happened this particular team it stepped down and they're like oh this thing might shut down tomorrow but it didn't you know it didn't yeah that's the point still like going strong he's

pretty smart whatever you think about it he's pretty smart dude i would hope he'd yeah if he spent 40 billion dollars whatever he would figure out how to run the app i don't know i mean i don't know that whole world yeah the whole i mean because i'm so um just not invested in the culture wars and stuff to me it is almost like you know i treat it almost like watching a tv show because it kind of is you know the old postman right i mean it's like so to me it's just there's just an entertainment value like yeah i never i mean it's i've been scrolling his account here and there it's like actually if you're not invested if you just don't really care too much it's actually really hilarious like he's like people complaining about the the blue check mark thing

and you have some disgruntled person yelling he's like thanks for your feedback that'll be eight dollars yeah yeah it's hilarious like it's so funny and people people think that like yelling at twitter is really gonna make it really gonna affect elon musk or like he like as if he like stays up late looking at all the critiques on twitter whatever it's it's yeah honestly honestly whatever you think about him it does seem like he's sort of having a good time oh yeah that's that's what it is for him i don't know that there's there was a he found a bunch of like stay woke t-shirts in the back room at twitter i'll do this and he posted a video like what i found and then the next post was a t-shirt with the same shirt stay woke it was but it has to hashtag stay at work work oh that's pretty funny and i just drove people so mad it's like oh why are we so invested

like who cares you guys but anyway exactly my my original thought again having maybe half a percent of my emotion even wrapped up and caring about it is twitter is already a huge cesspool. Like, I don't get it. I can't imagine whatever he's going to do, whatever you think about him, it's going to be worse than it already has been. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway.

Well, bro, I got to hop on a plane here in a few minutes. So it was great talking to you again. The book is Analog Christian, Cultivating Contentment, Resilience, and Wisdom in the Digital Age. Well, dude, you're I mean, you're kind of my go-to when it comes to stuff like this. So I'm super glad you're still writing and speaking on it. So thank you for your work and hang in there, Pastor Kim. Yeah. Thanks, Preston. Appreciate it, man. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.