Truth Unites - Is Online Apologetics Poisoning Our Souls?

Episode Date: September 24, 2026

Gavin Ortlund offers 10 reflections on how Christians can engage in online apologetics and social media without being spiritually shaped by anger, anxiety, pride, and the need to win.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

The internet can be a very spiritually dark place. Maybe you have noticed this. There's lots of cultures on the internet that are highly addictive, especially on social media, but also highly formative and not good ways. Most of us will have moments when we realize our engagement with the internet, especially when we're arguing with other people, is not good for our soul. I've been thinking about this lately because I've been hearing about people who are so anxious and irritated about various disagreements that they're struggling to just read their

Bible and pray and do basic spiritual disciplines. What's scary about this to me is it could be like the frog and the kettle dynamic where it's heating up and you don't all of a sudden decide one day. I'd like to be an angry, anxious person. But suddenly you find yourself there because of this slow, gradual process. And this is especially dangerous in apologetics. Apologetics, meaning defending your faith, Christian apologetics I'm thinking of here. This can be a great thing at its best. It fortifies us in our faith.

It reminds us of our hope. It grows us in our love for God. But the internet can convert even a good activity like apologetics into a mechanism for spiritual deformation. And it can become a way of fueling anger and pride and tribalism and the need to win and so many things. Let's talk about all this. By the way, this is not in an accusatory way toward any group or any person. Honestly, a lot of this is coming out of my own reflections of year after year trying to not, you know, just pay attention to the frog and the kettle dynamic and always returning back and saying, okay, help, how is this shaping me and what do I need to be

aware of? And then pastoring others, wanting to be an encouragement to others. So, here's 10 ideas, 10 thoughts for those in the trenches out there who are engaging on the internet, for how we can do this well over the long haul without losing our soul. Number one, it's not all bad. This is just helpful to say up front, because there are people who think the answer is just complete disengagement. You know, delete all social media accounts through your cell phone and a lake and so forth. Maybe some people need to do that, but I would say it would be legalistic to prescribe that for everybody. And there is enormous good that can happen online. I have to say I find YouTube a lot of fun, just genuine, healthy fun. You know, you learn a lot, you meet some

amazing people. And in itself, access to information is a great thing. So I am not trying to say we all need to completely disengage. The question is, not is the internet all bad, but it's how is it shaping us? What kind of culture am I being drawn into? And how do I manage that over the long haul? Second thought, understand how social media works. Social media companies are very skilled at getting our attention and they are designed to keep us engaged because our attention is being monetized. I always say we don't use social media as much as it is using us. And unfortunately, some of the ways it keeps our attention are through vices. So it's not, this is very poignant to think about. Social media isn't just saying, hey, I'll make, I'll give you lots of things you want to keep you

focused. It's actually saying, I'll give you a lot of things you don't want to keep you focused, like anxiety and anger. Think of X, for example. The overall culture of X has a lot of wrath and contempt. Instagram and Facebook appeal to envy, lust, vain glory. Other platforms can encourage endless passive consumption, just one more video, one more post, one more scroll like this. So it's often vices that are pulling us into the internet. And it's very sad to think of, you know, I once heard someone compare X to a car pile up, a car accident where you just, you don't want to look, but you can't look away. And so our attention is being drawn to things we don't even want or not pleasant at all. How much more pleasant is it to think about the

beatitudes and the culture of Jesus' kingdom, social media, often blesses the exact opposites of the beatitudes. So Jesus speaks of poverty of spirit, meekness, mercy, peacemaking, these beautiful qualities, and all of these things are blessed by Christ. Social media tends to go in the exact opposite direction. So it doesn't just tolerate the opposite of the beatitudes. It blesses things like, let's make up some examples. Blessed are the outraged, for they shall be heard. Blessed are the vain, for they shall be seen. Blessed are the snarky, for they shall win. Blessed are the loud, for they shall get in the last word.

Blessed are the vengeful, for they shall be feared. And we can go on and on and on. Now here's the scariest thing. And this second point is maybe the heart of this video. In apologetics specifically, social media can fuel vices that feel like virtues. So you can have enmity and hatred in your heart, but you tell yourself you're just zealous for the truth. You can enjoy someone being humiliated, but tell yourself you just want error exposed. You can love the applause you get after winning an exchange, but tell yourself you're actually

doing God's work. And so this is just something to be very sober about, that every post, every engagement, we should constantly return to this question, what kind of person am I becoming? Is the frog in the kettle? Is the temperature getting hotter, you know? And what is the culture I'm contributing to? When we drift from Christ, we just want to be able to come back. None of this is hopeless.

It's just an encouragement. Keep coming back to Christ and to the gospel. Number three, learn to recognize the warning signs. You might find yourself thinking about online arguments while you're trying to pray. You might feel a little bit of a compulsive need to see what people are responding to, what they're saying about you. You might become increasingly irritated with people that you disagree with. You might notice, you know, three years ago I didn't get as angry.

now I'm getting more angry. You might instinctively find yourself with more dismissive interpretations of motives, interpreting people the worst possible way unnecessarily. You might enjoy people being embarrassed who are on the other team. You might be reading theology and constantly be finding yourself saying, how can I use this in an argument? You might find yourself becoming anxious when you're away because you might be wondering what's going on. Maybe, here's one of the saddest ones that may.

maybe is a good sign is your theological life is expanding while your spiritual life is stagnant or even decreasing. So there's lots of arguments but little prayer, lots of polemics, but little devotion. And that is a sad place that we don't want to be. Now, obviously we know this. I don't want my video right now to feel like law, just beating people up. I hope it feels a little bit like gospel because in all of these points, again, we can just return to Christ. But the brutal thing is the internet has a culture that is shaping us. We need to be mindful of it, monitoring, saying, how is this affecting me? Keep coming back to that. Again, we don't need to feel hopeless. The Lord will help us, but we want to notice the warning signs. All right, here's number four.

Now we're going to get into some areas. Maybe we can make some improvements. Take lots of breaks. I've noticed this lately when I'm watching rebuttal videos. Sometimes it's just genuinely depressing to see the constant escalating and accusing and so forth. Sometimes we just need to, sometimes our psychology gets flooded. This happens to me sometimes, and I just say, I got to take a break. It could be a daily break, like maybe after 7 p.m. or after 5 p.m. or whatever works for you, just turning the phone off at that point. Maybe it's a weekly break, like on Sundays or at least Sunday mornings.

I used to do this. I'm not doing this right now, but I used to do this from Saturday night through Sunday lunch, just no screens of any kind. Things like that in your weekly rhythm can help. Sometimes it could be an annual thing. I did all July off of social media. It's amazing. These breaks really help us get perspective.

It's like the frog getting out of the kettle for five minutes and getting back in and now you see how warm it's gotten, right? We need these breaks to reset. And I think that can also look like breaks from certain aspects of social media, like reading comments or watching certain kinds of videos or engaging with people that you know

are going to discourage you. Sometimes we need to mute certain people or block. Sometimes we need to delete apps from our phone or sometimes I'll even log out so that I don't even have the temptation for a quick check of something. And by the way, don't be ashamed if this is hard. These devices are designed to be addicting, but the health of your soul is not worth sacrificing. So we've got to work hard to be disciplined to set boundaries. You know, it's just like in anything in life. If you want to feel good, you need to exercise and sleep well and eat healthy food, and that takes discipline. You can't just do what you feel like in the moment. And the same with our social media usage and our relation to the internet more generally, especially in the area of apologetics.

I'm hoping all of this is coming across as just, hey, let's wrestle with this. Let's think of some ways forward. Number five, seek authentic community. Now, we all know this, that social media should complement rather than replace actual friendships and actual church involvement. But sometimes, especially in apologetics, people's online theological identity is more rigorous than their actual service at their local church. So they are a crusader for a particular tradition. But in actual life, they're not using their gift in their local church and really actively engaged.

And this is really sad. Now, here's the solution, though, always trying to push it in the direction of how do we move forward. Instead of just trying to spend less time online, we should replace whatever function the internet is playing in our hearts with healthy relationships. The Scottish minister Thomas Chalmers famously spoke of the expulsive power of a new affection. Wonder if you've heard this. Oh man, you may have heard this, but I come back to this over and over for sanctification and pastoral ministry. It just works. Okay. The idea here is the most effective way to banish the the love of sin in your heart, is not merely by negating that, but by replacing it with a superior

affection for Christ and for the good of the world. And so as a metaphor, think of it when you break up with a girl and you're just really sad and you're just trying not to think about her, that's harder. But now if you meet a new girl that you love, this captures your heart. It's a lot easier to move on. Christ is to be that. So in this point, take your heart directly toward vulnerable, healthy relationships and embodied experiences. Dive in at church, serve there. You'll find it's a lot easier to break from the Internet as you pour your heart into those things.

Or even just, you know, have people over and smoke cigars on your back porch and talk theology. Do that there. Play soccer at the Y. Play chess with your neighbor. Throw the frisbee with your child. These kinds of things are all helpful, you know, superior affections and your heart won't be tempted to care about the Internet. as much. Number six, devotional theology over polemical theology.

Polemical theology is saying, here's what's wrong and needs to be exposed. That is important, and there's a place for that. Much of the New Testament is polemical theology. But devotional theology is saying, here is what is true and what it should do for me to move me toward love for God and to edify me in my faith. That should be more of the emphasis and tilt and desire of our hearts. Polemical theology is necessary, but devotional theology should make us excited. Think about the book of Jude. This is a book of polemical theology, but notice how it starts, and what I underlined here, Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith. A lot of Christians

reverse this. They're eager for the polemics. They want to contend. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's necessary to celebrate theology too. And we want to make sure our instincts are with Jude there and with the dominant court of the New Testament to say, you know, think of how I'm trying to set this in a positive way. Think of what it's like to open up a theology text with a view to these kinds of questions. And even the most simple points of theology can be edifying if you approach them in this light to say, how does this help my heart adore the triune God more? So as I'm reading this, my love for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is expanding and filling up into new areas of my heart. Or how can my mind marvel and wonder at the incarnation more because of what I'm reading

and so on and so forth go through different parts of theology? That's devotional theology. And there's such a rich feast in church history of devotional theology. Read Thomas Acempus. Read the Puritans. There's so much more other than the polemical stuff that we can get into. Number seven. Be okay, not know.

I think a major problem we have from the internet is information overload, where we just get bombarded with so many scandals, so many things. This is a huge in apologetics. You wake up in the morning, and we're simply not designed to process this endless stream of disputes coming at us. You wake up, and within 15 minutes, you can be acquainted with three or four new controversies going on. Someone wrote a thread over here. Someone's replying to that. They're getting dunked on. They're getting quote-tweeted.

They're getting ratioed. Over here, there's a rebuttal. There's a rebuttal to the rebuttal. And the glory is, you don't have to participate in this. You don't have to know everything. You don't have to weigh in on everything. I was just thinking about this for myself recently because everyone's now talking about the new Narnia movie

and Aslan being cast as Merrill Streep and so forth. I did a video on that a year and a half, and I was thinking, do I need to get caught up to date on what's the latest? And do I need to update what I said in my video and so on and so forth? And then I thought, no. Who cares? It's like, I don't have time this week. I'm traveling.

I'm busy. I don't have time. I can't watch everything. I can't do everything. I don't need to follow every controversy. Now, it takes wisdom. Sometimes you do need to weigh in on something. But it's freeing to know there's always going to be something that feels more urgent than it actually is.

Here's a thought experiment. Just picture yourself sitting at a lake. If you like fishing, picture yourself fishing. If you don't like fishing, just picture yourself watching the waves. All right. Something is blowing up on X. You get a text about it. You put your phone down and you genuinely don't care.

Doesn't that sound nice? Let's angle our hearts toward that. Not that we shouldn't ever care about anything, but the internet always feels more urgent. It's always screaming for more attention than it actually deserves. Be okay losing arguments. This is very sanctifying. Or at least being willing to let other people think you lost.

You don't have to answer every criticism and correct every misrepresentation and have the last word in every controversy. If you try to do this, it's exhausting. Also, it's better to walk away and seem to have failed in the eyes of onlookers than to sin in the eyes of God. And sometimes relentlessly going back can lead us into sin. Let us never forget these sobering words of our Lord, who said, whoever says, you fool, will be liable to the hell of fire. I think about that verse a lot.

I mean, just how often do we say, you fool to people? A good prayer is, Lord, how be to be to be more, how way to fear you? More than I fear getting canceled online. C.S. Lewis wrote this wonderful poem called an Apologist Evening Prayer. He said, From all my lame defeats and oh much more, from all the victories that I seem to score, from cleverness shot forth on thy behalf, at which, while angels weep, the audience laugh, from all my proofs of thy divinity, thou who wouldst give no sign, deliver me. I won't read the second paragraph of this.

don't want this video to drag on too long, but he's basically saying, and part of this, let me trust in you, not in my thoughts about you, which is a powerful distinction. Here's another happy thought experiment to tilt your heart toward. Imagine you get back to your house after a debate, and you sit down and you think about it and you check your phone, and you crushed it, you demolished the proposition and the debate. All the comments are pouring in praise.

Now, you know what's an appropriate prayer in that moment? Jesus save me. That is a spiritually perilous moment. Don't let this distract me from you who you actually are, which is always above me. I'm never, you know, lording it over my faith. Help me not to be clever when you're calling me to be kind and that kind of thing. And there are times to walk away and just not need to win every single exchange.

If you need to win every single exchange and always have the last word, it's more likely that the internet's going to draw us into sin. Number nine, I threw this one in so I could get the 10. But maybe this one's still worth saying briefly. Reach out privately. A lot of our interactions on the internet and in apologetics are performative before a watching audience, whether we realize it or not, this can shape how we're functioning.

For example, have you ever had an interaction with someone online and you think, man, I really do not like them? They're being so unkind. I'm noticing all these other things that I don't appreciate. and then you meet them in real life and you're like, wow, they're so nice. And it's like, is that the same person? What's happening there? You see how we're all victims of the Internet in certain ways?

It escalates certain features. For example, I have so many people who will say, so-and-so only ever does videos about this topic. And all they would need to do is Google search it. And I'm talking about, you know, a Catholic apologist, you could say, and it's like, no, they don't do that. But that's what the algorithm feeds. Again, the Internet's escalating everything.

reaching out privately offline can sometimes hopefully de-escalate. Number 10, this is the most important thing, and it's my deepest heart for everybody who watches my videos, relentlessly return to the gospel. I think one reason apologetics can become so emotionally charged is sometimes we start asking it to do things it never was designed to do. We want to be right. We want to be justified by our theology, our correctness. We want to be on the winning team.

We're afraid of being on the losing team. And it's helpful for us to remember and return to this. We need this over and over to remember. You are not justified by your theological correctness or by figuring out every controversy and knowing all the answers. You are justified simply by Christ and the merits of his work on the cross for you. When Jesus hung on the cross, he fully canceled the debt of our sin. And that means the fullness of God's love rests on you when you're simply

trusting in Christ. You don't have to have all the answers. You just need to have sincere faith. And the gospel says, in your place of deepest failure and deepest shame, you are loved most tenderly. Your deepest fears, your deepest nightmares that you might worry what happened, they already happened to Jesus on the cross. You don't need to be afraid the hammer's going to fall. The gospel says you're actually genuinely loved by God right now for the sake of Christ, even though you have sins and problems. And when we return, to that and enjoy the love of Jesus. It helps direct our hearts away from these unsavory tendencies of the Internet. So for those of us who feel called to be in this area,

let's, this is just a State of the Union update. Let's check in and keep working on this. Let's keep doing apologetics. Let's keep studying theology. But let's also take some breaks, laugh at ourselves every now and again, try to forgive each other where we can, try to avoid certain things that are not going to be helpful, and just watch and make sure our soul is being shaped by the gospel more than by the internet. I hope these thoughts help. Let me know what you'd add on. Give me 11, 12, and 13 and your thoughts, because I'm sure we could add on a lot more. And I appreciate you watching all this, watching this video. God bless you all.