12 ways your phone is changing you - Season 1 Episode 6

November 27, 2020

12 ways your phone is changing you - Season 1 Episode 6 with Tony Reinke

Kyle: [00:00:00] Hello everyone and welcome to the Furies The Curious Show. I'm your host, Calvin Ruttenberg. This is a show that learns about people's worldviews, beliefs, and stories from people around the world. How I grew up and what I was taught shaped me and what I believe. Now I wanna learn about other people's stories, beliefs, worldviews, and how they got there.

Okay, so today on the show we have Tony Ranke. Tony is a senior writer for the online ministry Desire. And God, if you don't know about desire, and God, please do go check it out@desireandgod.org. It is awesome. It's a great resource. Tony's also the author of many books, including 12 Ways Your Phone Is Changing You and Competing Spectacles, treasure In Christ and in Media.

H Tony, welcome to the show.

Tony: Oh, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.

Kyle: So, before we get talking about your books, I'm wondering if you could share a little bit about your, uh, background.

Tony: Yeah. I was, uh, born in rural Nebraska. Grew up in Omaha most of my life, and, uh, so I'm a Midwestern boy and, uh, born into an agricultural.

[00:01:00] Inventive family, but also a family of, uh, contractors and builders. And so that was kind of my, my life, blue collar world. Um, kind of intuit and do it kind of, you know, just figure out things as you go. That's kind of my background. And, uh, I think it was in fourth grade, I had an English teacher who, uh, graded one of my essays.

And, uh, as she was handing them back to the class, she handed me mine, but she didn't release her finger on it. So we were both like, tugging at it. And so I made eye contact with her, and, uh, when I did, she said, you know what? I think, uh, I think you have a gift here. I think you, I think you should write more.

And that was really the first time anybody has sort of like, celebrated some particular gifting in me that I remember. And it just set me on this trajectory of, you know, I wanna write and, um. I got to high school and I was straight into the journalism club. Uh, loved to write news features, loved to cover sports especially, and that, uh, just sent me on a trajectory [00:02:00] towards sports journalism.

Um, that really took off in my high school years. Uh, I think by the time I was a, a junior, I was working for four different newspapers or magazines, um, and just loved to write feature length articles on sports. Um, so by the time I was a junior in high school, I was covering the Husker football team for a full color magazine.

I was covering division two football and volleyball with a local newspaper in Omaha, Omaha World Herald. Uh, I was covering high school sports for, uh, uh, this, this, the, the newspaper of the high school that I was going to. And then, uh, even as a junior in high school, I started working for the college paper.

University of Nebraska, Omaha, they were short on writers and uh, was like, Hey, let me start early. So I was already writing for the college, so, and that just culminated as in my senior year. I just loved it so much and then went to college to become a journalist. Um, and uh, [00:03:00] that kind of set me off on the trajectory that I'm at now.

Kyle: Right on. So, um, and how did you transition from, uh, sports writing to c Christian writing? Like, did you become a Christian in that time? Did you grow up in a Christian home?

Tony: Yeah, so I grew up, uh, in the Lutheran Church. Um, to my recollection and obviously is, is very fallible, but I don't remember hearing the gospel really clearly.

And so I grew up really being a good kid. Um, I had siblings that kind of went off the rails and did the prodigal thing. I didn't, I was in church every Sunday. I, I did the things a good Christian boy should do and I assumed that on that basis I was good. I was a Christian. And, um, so. What happened when I was in college, you know, trained to become a journalist.

What was happening is the journalism industry was actually collapsing because what was happening is the, um, the web was introducing, uh, new platforms for writing new platforms for [00:04:00] publishing, and it was stealing away marketing dollars from traditional publishers. And, uh, this is in the mid nineties, everything looked really bleak.

I think Denver had three daily newspapers, was collapsing into two and some people thought it would go down to one. Uh, and that was happening in cities all over the country, um, just as the revenue was drying up. And so I got some counsel, uh, from the Boston Globe sports editor, was a guy I kind of befriended in in my early years in college.

And he said, yeah, I think it's a good time to step out of journalism for like a decade and go find something else to do. And so that was a shock to me, you know, 'cause I had these dreams. Of what I wanted to do and be, and I realized that the money just was not there. Um, and also, uh, as a sophomore in college, um, my boss's sister became the, uh, copy editor for the school paper.

She had been at Georgetown, was coming back to Nebraska, [00:05:00] um, and needed a, a side gig. And so was the copy editor, and her name is Carol Lee. And she would eventually become my, well, she was first my editor, then she became my friend, and now she's my wife. And so early in college I realized like, I want to, I want to get married, you know, I want to have a family and sports journalism is not gonna pay the bills, or it's gonna be a really hard struggle to do this.

And, um, I, I looked at, I just weighed the options and I said, you know what? I'm gonna go back into the family business and do residential remodeling and construction. And, uh, just weighed it out and see what happens with the news industry. Um. So I was married in 1998 to my editor friend Bride, who is still my editor friend bride.

She still edits all my books to this day and is a phenomenal book editor. Um, so Carol and I have been married for a long time, decades now, which is awesome. Is it 22 years now? Nice. Unbelievable. And, uh, [00:06:00] so God has been so kind to me in that way. So I actually ended up not finishing my journalism degree. I I did two years.

I did all the journalism courses. I did Comm Law, I did magazine article writing, newspaper article writing. I did, uh, uh, photography. I mean, this was back in the day in the, in the early nineties, if you wanted to be a journalist, you had to know how to take photos and not only take photos, like you had to develop your own film.

You had to create your own prints. Okay. So when you said, I want to be a journalist, wow. Like. Unless you're working for Sports Illustrate, or some big paper that has like dedicated photographers that go out to eat each sporting event. Like if you're covering D two sports, like I was, you're taking your own photos.

You know, they're not sending a photographer to North Dakota to cover the football game. Like it's you, you're writing and taking photos. And so I remember, you know, going through all the coursework to learn how to develop my own photos, make my own prints, and you come with the story to the editor and you have a black and white print, you know, that'll get scanned and used in the paper.

So it was really a [00:07:00] fun time to learn journalism because you had to, uh, learn all of those tactile skills as well. But I burned through all the journalism classes in two years and had zero interest in math and science and all the other, uh, classes that you had to get for your degree. So I, I stepped outta that.

Gave up on college about two years and knew that journalism wasn't gonna pay the bills. Went back into construction. Um. A year after my wife and I are married, my wife has a very similar story to me of growing, uh, up Lutheran, being a good child, going to church every sun Sunday. Um, and after about a year of, of marriage, we were in a local church, a good bible teaching Bible church, um, and a guy was there, a really gifted evangelist, was there one Sunday, and he preached a sermon on the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector.

And he talked about the story of how easy it is to [00:08:00] slip into this, this idea that we are righteous before God because we're good enough where we've done enough things right, or the good outweighs the bad, that somehow God is going to accept us based on our own personal righteousness. And this evangelist just took a sledgehammer to that idea and left my wife and I in tears.

We realized that God had to be merciful to us good kids who needed Christ. We were just as sinful as the Pharisee, as the tax collector. We were the Pharisee, we were the good kid. We were the Pharisee, and we were as sinful as the tax collector. And we needed Christ as much as the tax collector that sunk in that one Sunday morning, a year into marriage.

And uh, it became the day in which we both point back to our conversions. So God was really kind to save us on the same day. Once that happened, [00:09:00] like all the instincts that had to write into research now had a gospel focus like I wanted to. All of that energy that I felt in high school as a college, freshman and sophomore, that love of writing and journalism that came back in a new way, but it came back with gospel centered focus.

I wanna serve the church with these gifts. And that was a, that was a pretty radical thing. And uh, I didn't know how that was gonna work out. I thought I, like, is God calling me to be a pastor? I don't know. Should I go to seminary? I dunno. I knew I needed to finish up my degree. So I went back and, and finished up with a liberal arts degree, uh, from a business school.

So it was a, like a, I finished with a business degree in liberal arts, like a co-major. And, uh, that gave me tools for research and writing that sort of like, built on what I knew as a journalist. And then, uh, it just started praying that God would open up doors, went and looked at several seminaries. It never felt like [00:10:00] God was calling me into seminary or pastoral life.

Definitely not into academic theology. And so I was, for years I was sort of con confused of like, how do I, how do I do this journalism thing, uh, for the church? And that slowly just emerged over time as I, I started to blog in 2006. I got my first, um, full-time online gig in 2008 working in the DC area for a denomination.

Um, and it just sort of snowballed from there.

Kyle: Wow. That's quite the story. Thank you for sharing that. Um, so I, I wanna talk about your book, so I'm gonna hold 'em up here so the audience can see them. I'm gonna lick 'em in the description below as well. Um, what was your inspiration for writing the 12 ways your phone is changing you and, and how would you, uh, pack it and what it's about?

Tony: Yeah, so it's, it's a autobiographical book, 12 Ways My Phone is Changing Me, so it's, uh, I wanted to help my [00:11:00] kids navigate, got three kids, uh, one grown outta the house and then a 14-year-old and 13-year-old in the house. And, uh, I knew I would need to help them navigate the, the pressures and tensions of the online world.

And, uh, I knew in order to do that I would have to do that for my own soul. And so to what ways your phone is changing you is literally me just looking at the ways that the, the smartphone had changed me, uh, in the 10 years that I had one. And, um, it was sobering. It was humbling. Um, and, uh, what I learned, I was able to then put into a book form and share with the world.

And, uh, it's been pretty well received. People have been benefited by it, but that's the, that's the origin of it. Um, 12 ways your phone is changing You is not me pointing the finger at the reader. It really is, uh, me pointing the finger at me first about what the smartphone does to us. And by smartphone I mean social media and, uh, texting and the, [00:12:00] uh, availability of communications technology at the, uh, at our fingertips.

Kyle: So in your, in your book, um. Uh, and then maybe with your last answer, this kind of answers it for me, but, uh, you addressed the reader as if they're a Christian. How did you think about when you were writing it, the, the non-Christians reading this book?

Tony: Yeah, I didn't know how many non-Christians would read the book.

Um, it turned out what what was really interesting is a lot of non-Christians did read it because the way it was promoted and the way we, we put the, we brought the book to market was not explicitly putting Christianity on the cover. Not putting Christianity in the dis description or, uh, back cover copy or anything like that.

It was just 12 ways of phone is changing. You, there aren't a lot there. There were not a lot of books at the time talking about, uh, smartphone overuse and abuse. Um, in fact, the, the history of the book, I mean, I was talking about, you know, social media detoxing, digital detoxing [00:13:00] back in 2015. In very few people had even thought of that or thought they needed that.

Well, what I saw in the 20 15, 20 16 is parents and pastors were starting to raise red flags, saying there's something wrong with my teenager and what they're doing with social media. Parents and pastors were pretty much the first ones who in my, uh, from what I could see start, they didn't know how to articulate the problem or the concerns.

They just knew something was up. And, uh, so the book went to market. Um, it was, I think it was ahead of its time by a year and a half or so. It really, it didn't take off right when it launched. It, it took about 18 months for it to really hit its sweet spot as far as spread. Um, and it started to spread pretty, pretty widely within the church, but then also outside of the church.

Um, so if you go in and you look at the, like the most critical reviews in Amazon, the one stars are all non-Christian saying, I was hoodwinked into buying this. [00:14:00] I thought it was just a, a secular book, but it's from a Christian perspective. But that's what I do. Like I. Uh, I don't think of Christianity as, uh, the view of a sect in somewhere in the world that sort of privately holds these views.

I write as a Christian because God created the entire material universe out of nothing, and he determines what's true, what's right, what's beautiful. And so I write as a Christian, not because that's my chosen genre of thinking, but because Christianity explains why we have a world and all of the realities within that world.

So I don't know how else to talk about the world except through, uh, biblical categories because it is, it is the worldview of what is true, good and beautiful. And so for me as a, as a journalist, like that's where I take my cues. I'm trying to write objectively, but I'm using an open Bible to do it.

There's a lot of Christian journalists who report as if their [00:15:00] Bible is completely closed. I, I don't understand. It is stunning to me. There is many Christian journalists who don't use the Bible as objective reality on which to report the events of the world. Uh, they're out there and I scratch my head.

It's like, you know, these, these, these men and women think that it's more objective to ignore the Bible and act like Christianity is not defining ultimate reality. Um, and I just, I could never do that. Like it is my objective basis for reporting. Um, and so I don't know where to go with that except to say, I've gotta report with an open bible.

And that's what 12 ways your phone is? Yeah. Is, is, is doing is it's, it's Christian reporting with an open Bible.

Kyle: Yeah. So you do right in the, in the preface, uh, this book fails if having read it, you only hate yourself more. It [00:16:00] succeeds only if you enjoy Christ more. Can you unpack that a bit?

Tony: Yeah, I think it's really easy to make people feel guilty to bring conviction.

I don't find that to be super hard, especially when we're talking about smartphones, talk about pornography, talk about smartphone overuse, talking about times you've, uh, texted slander about somebody else. Um, the overuse of digital media, um, those kinds of things are, they're just a universal problem that we're all facing.

And so just bringing about more conviction isn't what I'm trying to do. That wouldn't be successful in a, in a Christian worldview. What would be successful is for people to see that when you take out all of the, the dig, let's call 'em digital idols. If you take the digital idols out of your le uh, out of your life, you're just left with a vacuum, [00:17:00] and that's not success.

That's not Christian virtue. Christian virtue is not just not doing bad things. Christian virtue is about filling your life with what is ultimately satisfying that has to happen.

Kyle: You say in the book you did, uh, you wrote this book for yourself. And so in your research of this book, what was the biggest lesson for you personally?

Like, I, I, I mean, I, I was blown away by the book how in depth it goes on all the different areas in the history of technology and things like that. So what was, what was the biggest lesson for you as you were doing this research that you didn't know before, that you were like, wow, like that, that this is impactful and that that has lasting?

Tony: Um, I read a, uh, study early on, um, where a researcher kind of asked, um, college students about whether or not they, uh, have found a healthy balance in their social media life. And they broke it down by [00:18:00] majors. And there are certain majors where the students were more, more focused and other students with other majors were less focused.

And what the, the report found is that pre-med and pre-law majors were the most disciplined with their smartphone u smartphone use and, and habits. And it's pretty intuitive when you think about why that is. Pre-med and pre-law majors have a goal that is so high, and it is they're aspiring to it, uh, to become a doctor or to become a lawyer that takes decades of your life in commitment.

That means because you have such a high goal, it's easier to find balance with lesser priorities. And that, for me was an aha moment early on, realizing that one of the fundamental issues that we're dealing with in smartphone abuse, whether it's teenagers. Whether it's 20 somethings, 30 somethings, I mean, and the [00:19:00] whole demographic has smartphone issues.

Grandma has, you know, smartphone issues, you know, um, when, when we're talking about those, uh, smartphone overuse is a product of a lack of life purpose. When you don't know what God has called you to do and to be, you're gonna be more susceptible to smartphone abuse and just sort of wasting your time on whatever's being delivered to you.

Um, like candy out of your social media apps. And so that was, that's I think really to this day is I, I try to raise teenagers in the digital age. That's the thing that I, I take away from my research. I've gotta give them a compelling vision of the future that's way bigger than the drama that they face with their teenage peers.

Uh, that's way bigger than the drama of teenage life, that there's. A vision for their life of what God is calling them to do and to be that [00:20:00] exceeds whatever promises come through YouTube or Instagram or TikTok.

Kyle: So with, with that being said, for you personally, uh, did that change anything af after you had written the book or did it just solidify a belief you already had?

Like did your, did your smartphone habits change for you? 'cause you were like, okay, I need to be more focused on, on, on God and, and that naturally made you want to pick up your phone less?

Tony: It definitely led to some changes. One of the things was, um, just wanting to aspire to bigger projects. Um, I'm writing a book right now on technology that is like the most daunting project I could have imagined writing.

I thought it would take five years to write it. And with the coronavirus shutting everything down and I'm not doing any travel, not doing any speaking events for about. A year, it seemed like the Lord was just saying, Hey, now's the time to research and write this big book on technology. And so what I found is like, as I've immersed myself in this huge book project [00:21:00] that is just all consuming, it's due two months.

So I'm really feeling the crunch right now, having that sort of priority and that sort of goal in mind really cuts down on social media. I mean, I've, I follow two people on Twitter and I, that's been the case for six months and Twitter is kind of like my main social media platform. I go in and just check a couple of times a day.

What's being talked about on Twitter? Uh, well, I, I follow guys that sort of filter things for me. And so Justin Taylor is a big one and, uh, and John Piper, I follow him as well. Okay. And so those two guys kind of, I, I hear a lot from Justin. About what's going on. And, uh, they'll actually keep me informed, even offline, just what's happening in the world.

But I don't feel lured in and compelled like I did previously. Um, in previous years, I would've felt more, you know, need to follow a thousand people and [00:22:00] kind of be on top of everything. And, uh, I've kind of just wean myself from social media on a day-to-day basis because of those big priorities that I have.

And so it's been freeing. I mean, I don't know how people manage social media that don't have big projects, but it's gotta be super hard. And, um, it's just book writing for me is one of those ways in which I have this excuse to step away from social media and to focus, uh, time and attention on it. So I, yeah, it's, I mean, just having those big projects in mind has a very real, uh, a very practical impact than on how much time I spend on social media, which is less and less.

Kyle: But you're not saying Go get more busy. 'cause I, I think of a parent that comes home after work, uh, you know, and they have four hours, uh, and before they go to bed, you're not saying to them, okay, go hold yourself in your office and work and, and, and, and neglect your kids that way.

Tony: Yeah. The calling is [00:23:00] to, to know what God has called you to do and to be, and to really hold onto that convictionally that this is what God has called me to do.

And I'm not gonna escape. I'm not gonna escape. I mean, writing books may sound glamorous, right? It's like, Ooh, yeah. But the reality is it is hundreds of hours with your butt in the chair thinking hard, rewriting sentences over and over again, deleting stuff that you loved and thought were gonna be in the book.

Adding paragraphs, adding, adding whole chapters, because someone has pointed out like, you haven't talked about this, and you're like, oh man, I gotta add a whole chapter to address that. It's hard. I mean, it's in a sense, I mean, it is a, it is a type of shepherding, you know, you're trying to bring something along that requires just a ton of time.

And so it's not glamorous at all. But I think what it is, is like we have to come to conviction about this is what God has called me to, to do and to be, whether it's a parent, uh, whether it's a [00:24:00] businessman, uh, writer, music producer, whatever it is that God has called you to do, that you understand that this is my calling in such an extent that it is going to push back all the superfluous uses of my time that are gonna dis distract me from this.

And that's hard. I mean, I'm hearing from missionaries all across the, the world that, you know, um, it used to be when you were a missionary who went from America or North America to say, India. You had to immerse yourself into the culture. You had to become part of the culture that you were going into, and that meant saying goodbye to family and friends for months, maybe years, maybe multiple years.

Maybe you called them on holidays. Otherwise you were immersed in the culture. Well now because of the smartphone, what's happening is missionaries are going to other countries, but all of their familiarity is right here. So they don't have to culturally immerse themselves anymore. They can always retreat to what [00:25:00] they are used to.

And so that's causing problems on the mission field because there's so many, uh, so many ways to escape the immersion and go back to what's familiar and that's not been helpful. Um, so something like that is happening. I think with all of our vocations. God has called us to love him above all else, and then to love our neighbor as ourself.

And that loving the neighbor is ourself is the calling. That's where we find our calling. Uh, it's where home managers stay at home, wives find their callings, where men fathers find their calling. It's where we find our calling to serve others in the marketplace. There's lots of ways that we serve others, um, and it's very easy to take our eyes off of that and think that there's something more compelling or more important in social media.

Kyle: Wow. So, um, in the chapter, we are addicted to distraction. You quote, 17th [00:26:00] century Christian and mathematician and proverb, making sage blaze, Pascal. And he says, I've discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. Hence, it comes that men so much love, noise, and stir.

Hence, it comes that prison is so horrible punishment. Hence, it comes that pleasure of solitude. Is, I think incomprehensible. So talk, talk to me about that.

Tony: Yeah. The need for constant distraction there, he's, he's within the context of what he's talking about is the, the reality of mortality. The, the way you push off death and thoughts of death is just keep yourself very, very busy.

Just let Netflix load the next show and, and just let it happen automatically. Just let YouTube load the next video. And as long as YouTube keeps loading the next video or Instagram just keeps popping up the new feed, the new video in your feed. You'll never have to think about death. [00:27:00] So mortality is one of the things that he's talking about There is like, men distract themselves to death so that they, they don't, they don't have to think about eternity.

That's a big problem. Uh, he's also talking there about world travel. I think world travel is akin to something like we have in, in digital media in the sense that just always wanting to see something new, something novel. Um, it can become an, an addiction in the sense that that's what drives your life.

Your life is always seeking after the novel, the new, something you haven't experienced before. Rather than embracing solitude, not loneliness. Loneliness is bad, solitude is good. There's a difference between the two. Solitude is good because that's where we can meet with God. That's where we can do eternal things.

We can think about eternal realities. We can think about our soul. We can think about the cost of sin in our lives. We can get real with God. We can confess our sins. We can trust in him [00:28:00] if we're constantly on the move. You know, if we're, we're tweeting without ceasing, we're not gonna pray without ceasing.

Those are in direct conflict with one another. And so there's a battle for like. Even over the little momentary transitions in life. Those are the, those are the places that we fill up with social media and those are the places that God says, Hey, fill those up with communion with me. Don't neglect me.

Pray. Seek God. And I think what Paul is saying when he talks about praying without ceasing is not a 24 7 life of a monk. I think what he's talking about there is that in the gaps of the day, we redeem those gaps by pointing our mind and attention to Christ. We we're not angels. We can't think of God and think about, you know, the, the trap in a plum, you know, the plumbing under our sink and trying to replace that.

We can't think of Christ and also change the trap under our sink. At the [00:29:00] same time, like you we're just, we're creatures who have minimal attention spans. We have to focus on the things that we were called to do. But there's gaps in the day. There's gaps. In our time when we can focus on Christ and we typically just fill those up with digital media.

And so I think that's an extension of what, uh, Blais Pascal is talking about.

Kyle: So we have the temptation to say that technology is evil because it is causing so much trouble in the world. And, but you say in your book, technology is not inherent evil, but it tends to become the platform of choice to express the fantasy of human autonomy.

C can you unpack that?

Tony: Yeah. Since the Tower of Babel, that's been the challenge. We as centers, we as centers use technology in order to make it seem like we are in control and that we have tamed the creation or we have buffered ourselves from the [00:30:00] dangerous parts of creation. We are in control of our existence.

So that is, that's the spirit of the Tower of Babel. Uh, let's collect together. Let's use this new technology, which is brick making. Let's build a tower into the sky. Let's storm heaven and be our own God. Um, and that's, that, that is always the temptation in our technologies to think, because I have so much technological and communications power in my hand, I am now godlike.

I can be my own God. I don't have any needs. If I need something, I can probably get it through this. And that is a direct confrontation with faith. And so there's a way of using technology that is faithless and there's a way of using technology that's faithful. And that, of course is the story of, uh, David and Goliath.

Uh, it is not the story between someone who has [00:31:00] technology, Goliath and someone who doesn't have technology. David knows the story of two guys with two different types of technology. They, they're both using technology. David's using a sling. He's just amplifying the strength of his arm behind a rock. And that's a technique, that's technology.

Goliath is dressed out with the, you know, he's plundered the ancient near east, and he has taken from every warrior he's killed, whatever equipment he thinks is the coolest and the greatest. And he has shroud head to toe with a conglomeration of the greatest wart tech the world had seen all on one dude.

You know, so he's got, he's outfitted with wart tech in his own way. David comes in as a sniper, but it's not a story between, uh, faith versus technology. It's a story of faithless use of technology and faith. Full use of technology using physics and faith is what [00:32:00] David did.

Kyle: Wow, that's good. Um, let's chat about your, your latest book, competing Spectacles.

Uh, how do, how do you describe a spectacle? First of all,

Tony: spectacle is a moment of time, of varying length. Um, could be, uh, the Super Bowl. It's four hours long. Could be, um, a gif or gif, however you say it. Uh, a four second gif or gif of, uh, um, a slam dunk in end up in the NBA. Could be a, um, could be, could be a magazine centerfold, could be a billboard, could be a television show, could be a political advertisement, uh, could be a number of things.

It's, it's some moment of time in which the collective gaze is focused and fixated on a specific event that's either live or been captured and shared. Digitally. So that very simply is what a spectacle is. Could be a, a number of things. Could [00:33:00] be a blockbuster movie, could be a music video, uh, could be, this video could be a, an, any number of things.

Something that's created to hold together multiple people's attention at the same time.

Kyle: And so in your book, competing Spectacles, what, what, what is your goal? What are you, what are you trying to, um, tell the audience?

Tony: Yeah. I'm trying to help Christians understand the attention economy. The attention economy.

That is, the more time you spend on Instagram, the more time you spend in YouTube, you are making a lot of people a lot of money. Your time and attention is being monetized. Your likes, your retweets monetized. People are making money because you give your attention. To certain spectacles. So part of it is sort of that aha awakening for Christians to see, um, you know, during this pandemic, there's [00:34:00] been a great little show on YouTube called, uh, some Good News.

John Krasinski. I dunno if you've seen it. It's haven't, it's really good. It's kind of like a, it's worth checking out. It's on YouTube. It's just a simple little show about, you know, there was coronavirus and so much bad news. John Krasinski from the Office, uh, just, uh, he sits in his, at his desk at home and just does a 20 minute news story, uh, 20 minute news broadcast of all the good, good things that happened that week.

And so he just goes through like a number of different things. Hey, this guy, uh, became healthy in the hospital and survived Coronavirus, and look at this good thing that happened and look at how these people came together to produce this great thing. And, uh, it was, it is, it is just a brilliant little.

Show just to celebrate the good things that were happening in the midst of the pandemic. Now, what happened at the end of the, the broadcast? You know, I don't know, I don't know how [00:35:00] many episodes there were, maybe like 10. There weren't a lot. He decided he was gonna monetize and sell the show, I think the CPS, and he did.

So now, CBS owns the, the show. Some good news. Now what it, what's really interesting is if you watch the show, you realize it's really crowdsourced. I mean, it really brings the audience into it. The audience creates the logos, the audience, you know, replies the audience sort of dictates the future of the show and what things are shown.

Uh, John Krasinski on Instagram and Twitter gets suggestions like, here's a story. And so he's taking the stories that were crowdsourced and sharing them. So it's a very sort of like crowd crowdsourcing type of a show. And so when he monetized it and sold it to CBS, a lot of people got mad. They're like, wait a minute, this was gr, you know, this was free.

This was just sort of like our free thing that we were doing together, and people were offended by that. And I think that's one of the, the ways the attention [00:36:00] market works is you don't realize that the more time and attention you invest into a spectacle like John Krasinski good hearted show, the more you are adding value, monetizing value to it that he can in turn cash in on as he sells it to CBS.

That's how the attention market works. Uh, the more viral spectacle, the more valuable it is Now. It's just not just about money. Uh, politicians use spectacles to generate votes. Gaming spectacles, you generate money, uh, porn, spectacles, you know, call for lust, lustful responses. Um, there's all sorts of ways the spectacles call us to respond, and that I think is what Christians don't think about.

They don't think about like every spectacle put before you is asking for something, asking for some response from you. Um, and that I think is, is sort of the first half of the book. Competing spectacles is what, how I wanna show [00:37:00] not only are we competing, our, our attention is competing against spectacles, but this whole spectacle industry is competing against one another.

Kyle: And, and I guess it's also competing against our attention for, for God.

Tony: It is now, the intuitive response from a Christian would be, okay, I'm gonna throw my TV in a lake, I'm gonna throw my smartphone in the ocean and I'm gonna be done with screens. And the the reality is God doesn't respond that way to the spectacle industry.

The spectacle industry is ancient. It's, it's, it's not digital age, it's coliseum in ancient Rome. It's the theater district in Puritan London. I mean, I kind of go through the historical background to show. That we're not just talking Hollywood, Bollywood, Twitter, Instagram, it's been around the, the attention economy has been around for thousands of years.

The response that God, uh, the response of God into this culture of spectacles though is really unique. And that's what I want Christians to, [00:38:00] that God is not antis spectacle. He is not opposed to all spectacles. In fact, we know this because, and this is where the book hinges sort of the first half, is the, the attention economy.

The second half is devoted to the spectacle of God. There are a lot of spectacles that God is behind for our eyes. You can look at nature, you can look at the created world. You can look at cosmos. My son and I like to go out in the backyard and just look up in the Arizona sky and look off and, you know, all point out different stars.

You know, we're looking at stars in our backyard that are a hundred times bigger than our sun. You know, and it just blows his mind that we can see these blue and green stars, you know, twinkling at night that are massive compared to our son. Those are spectacles that God has put before us to to, to remind us of him.

But the greatest spectacle in the history of mankind and the history of the cosmos, bigger than all the stars that you can see that are [00:39:00] billions of light years away. The greatest spectacle in human history is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, the gospel of Mark tells us it was a spectacle. Christ hanging on a cross bearing the wrath of God in order to justify sinners is the greatest spectacle in human history, and it's meant to capture the gaze and the awe of Christians ever since it happened.

Even to today, this becomes the basis of, of sort of why we go to church and why we do what we do at church. Paul talks about, uh, preaching is the way in which we sort of represent to our age the death of Jesus Christ. So when we're talking about preaching, we're not just talking. You know, you hear the catch word is sort of like cross center preaching.

Well, what it is, is it, it's [00:40:00] preaching that re sort of brings to the public forefront in our cities the death of Jesus Christ. The Lord's Supper is the same thing week after week. We are presenting, we are re proclaiming the death of Jesus Christ until he comes to our culture. So what we're doing is we're Pec Re and whatever, and res spectating, we're re uh, we're bringing the spectacle of Christ's death, which is always relevant back into the face of our culture and saying, look, look at Christ.

He died for you. That I think changes the conversation. It's not just about not having spectacles in our lives. It's about having our lives centered on the right spectacle. And the right spectacle Is the son of God nailed to a tree dying for sinners? That is the greatest spectacle there is. And that's sort of like the hinge of the book.

Then the, the second half of the book is all about a Christ and how he is the greatest [00:41:00] spectacle. So it's, it's counterintuitive 'cause we would think just do it away with screens, but the reality is it's all about the spectacle. Yeah. That's good.

Kyle: So I'm ask some more broad questions. I, I imagine someone listening to this podcast and is, and is saying, yes, I, I'm addicted to my phone and, and distraction.

What are some practical things we can do to break these habits and, and what are some practical things you did?

Tony: Yeah, so there's some really practical things you can do. You can, um, uh, go gray scale on your home screen. I dunno how many people do that. Let's see if I can, so like, there's my home screen.

It's color. Yeah. Come on, focus. No, it's off now, but yeah. Well, here, let me, lemme see if I can just hold up.

Kyle: Okay. Yeah. It's focus, that's color.

Tony: Yeah. Then I have it set to just a triple click [00:42:00] and after a triple click, the screen goes gray scale. Yeah,

Kyle: yeah.

Tony: Now you can set this up in iPhone. You can set this up in any, any smartphone. It is pretty easy to set up. Uh, usually in accessibility. Uh, usually for people with sensitivity to colors is where you're gonna find the setting.

What that does is it deprioritizes all those little bubbles that you see on each app. Those little bubbles that tell you, Hey, you've got four messages, you've gotta respond immediately. Well, it just, once you take the red out of the bubble, it, it is not as compulsive. And so your phone in general becomes less compulsive.

So I would, I would encourage people to use it for a week or so, just black and white, and you'll feel less compulsion to the screen without the colors. It's a very practical thing to do. The other thing to do, don't sleep it, uh, with your smartphone in your room. Get a alarm clock that's not connected to the web.

Just a simple alarm clock to get you outta bed. Um, especially if you have a hard time like getting [00:43:00] off your phone at night. Um, there's all sorts of settings that you can use. Of course now, um, you know, sleep settings on the iPhone that will help you manage your phone use. Um, there are apps that will actually not allow you to use certain apps.

There's always an app for that, right? Um, so there's certain practical things that you can do that way, but just the keeping the phone out of physical proximity was really helpful for me for a season I did that. Um, and just knowing like, Hey, at a certain time my phone is off and it's gonna stay off. All night.

Um, for the kids, all my kids, any laptops that they have or iPads or, uh, my daughter has an iPhone, those have to be plugged in in mom and dad's room by 8:00 PM every night and can't be taken till 7:00 AM the next morning. And so we've got little charging stations in mom and dad's room. That's where it happens.

There's no screens in the kids' rooms overnight. [00:44:00] Um, so for parents, that's really, I think, important, uh, an important step. Um, what other things have been useful? I've heard from a lot of different people about different apps that they find useful for time management. Um, there's a whole host of, of apps that will help you do a number of different things.

Um, sometimes, uh, a digital detox is always useful. I use, um, I try to do a digital detox for two weeks every year. Um, and that is where I. I still have my phone around me in case I need to be contacted, but I'll delete, uh, social media from my phone. So I won't have the apps for Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, um, those are the big ones for me.

They'll be gone. I'll take them off my laptop, so I'll still be able to work, still be able to do emails, still be able to text and get calls, but I won't have social media and I'll do that for two weeks. Typically, I'll arrange that for family vacations at the [00:45:00] start. So it'd be like day one of the digital detox is family vacation, travel day, and then, you know, however long it is with the family, uh, on vacation, then return home, uh, able to get back into work using email, using texting, but then, uh, not using social media for another week or so to, to fill out the two weeks.

Um, I've always found it easier to sort of start the digital detox on day one of family vacation.

Kyle: A lot of parents are wondering probably how much, uh, technology should give their kids. So I, I mean, you mentioned already that all the kids have to, uh, and your household anyways, plug everything in by 8:00 PM Um, what, what age do you give, uh, your son or daughter a, a phone, that kind of thing?

How did you work through that and, and what do you do at your house?

Tony: Yes. We, we use the stair step process. We start with, uh, an iPad. Excuse me. We start with a, an iPad, uh, for [00:46:00] coloring games, math games. And that'll happen pretty early, uh, in a child's history, four or five years old, maybe even, you know, it depends on what kind of coloring games.

And so what we're doing is we're watching for how they respond to it. You know, they over overuse this, are they too addicted to the screen, even at a young age? And then we'll graduate, you know, we'll graduate them into maybe, um. Maybe they'll need a laptop to write projects at eight, you know, age 6, 7, 8.

You know, maybe they'll need to do some sort of typing projects. And so you, what we're doing is we're, we're watching how our child responds to each integration of technology. At some point, maybe age 10, 8, 9, 10, we get a dumb phone, a little flip phone, and that becomes part of their life. And we see like, how does, how do they respond?

What do they do with it? How do they text? What kind of relationship do they have with their friends through the dumb phone? Is it healthy, [00:47:00] is it weird? Is it too much? Um, so even simple technologies like that. Um, then we start to introduce, you know, Google searching parental controls on for maybe research projects.

How do they respond to that? Maybe, uh, messaging, maybe they have a messaging app. They start to text friends, um, using, uh, messenger Facebook, uh, again watching to see like how do they respond to this? So you're, you're stair stepping technology over the years, um, and you're watching to see how your child responds to them at each, each step of the way.

And then once you arrive at the smartphone, that is a, that's a graduation because once you hand your child a smartphone, you are essentially giving them access to the mobile web in which parental controls basically are pointless. Now, there's ways, of course, to hack a phone and there's ways to, you know, put parental controls on it.

And if you, if you are a father or a mother and you're insecurity, you, [00:48:00] you can probably figure out a good way to sort of like, lock down a smartphone and then give it to your, your teenager. The problem is, when it comes to texting, when it comes to texting, their friends can send images, links, things that you can't parentally control, uh, in most cases.

Nude selfies. I mean, if you want to, if we wanna be freaked out about what's happening among teenagers today, just, um, go to a reputable news site and look for, uh, nude selfies. The, the phrase nude selfies within the New York Times, within a newspaper within, yes, you don't wanna do that just in a general Google search, but what you'll find out is that as a common trend among boys and girls in middle school and high school, to initiate a romantic relationship with someone by sending them a nude picture of themself, common practice.

And there's no principal control for that. And this, you found a way to limit, uh, images [00:49:00] from being texted to a phone. So once you move to an iPhone, you, you've really graduated and you're saying, I trust you child with this digital technology and what you're gonna do with it. I trust you enough, uh, to give you a smartphone.

And I think you have to have conversations before you actually just hand over the smartphone too. You have to have conversations about what happens when the unsolicited picture that your daughter didn't ask for when it comes to her phone, what do you do? Is she gonna run scared and shame and not tell mom and dad or have mom and dad already prepared her for that, saying, okay, we're gonna have to, we're gonna address this together and we don't want you to, to feel ashamed because we gave you a smartphone.

We're in this with you, we're in this with you. Um, a lot more that can be said there. I think personally for me, it's always been helpful to, um, whenever I give a digital device to a child, I, I let them know I own this. [00:50:00] Dad owns this laptop, iPad, iPod, iPhone, whatever it is. I own this. I bought it. I pay for the plan.

You can buy a case for it. If you want a case is yours. The phone is mine. This is an experiment that we're gonna try to see if you are mature enough to handle such a powerful communications technology. So that too, I think has, has been really helpful. Just to set the parameters right. I'm not giving you your iPhone, I'm giving you my iPhone that I bought for an experiments, and that experiment is called, let's see if you're ready for an iPhone.

Kyle: Yeah, that's good. Um, how, how much should, uh, churches be embracing technology? I know the reformers really fought for just the Bible being preached off of pulpa and not all this extra stuff that the Roman Catholic Church was doing in the 16 hundreds. What, what does that look like today? Like how, how, how should churches be approaching technology?

I know some churches go nothing at [00:51:00] all. Like the, there's absolutely bare bones. People go to the other end of the spectrum and it's, it's a, it's a big show. Uh, how do you, how do you navigate that?

Tony: There's extremes, right? Extremes in both directions. Um, I think excellence is the driving category. We wanna worship God with excellence, and for some churches that's gonna mean some cool LED lighting that they can do that.

It looks excellent, but that's not, that's not the nature of the spectacle. I think this is why, it goes back to the what, what is the nature of the spectacle that's being proclaimed in this church? Are you coming to this church because it's a, it's a seeker friendly, uh, it looks like a theater. Everything is so well done.

You're just a passive recipient of content in a theater. It's like you're at the movies, right? I've been in churches where you go in and you sit down and you enjoy the show because it's so [00:52:00] well done. There's laser lights and there's fog machines, and there's a world class drummer and there's amazing vocalists and there's world class preaching.

Um, if that's what you're trying to win people with, that's what you're trying to win people to. Okay? So whatever you're trying to win people with is what you eventually win them two. And if you want the theater, the spectacle of the theater to be what you win people with, that's what people are gonna be.

One, two very dangerous. Now, I think the, if we truly understand the spectacle of God, it gives us, I think, freedom in how we do excellence on Sunday morning. If we realize that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters was Jesus Christ. Crucified, proclaimed this weekend. Doesn't mean every sermon is gonna be all about the cross, but if you have the Lord's Supper, that's sort of like the way you do.

[00:53:00] Gospel preaching every week is just to celebrate the gospel through the, the communion, the bread and the wine. And so, uh, that's ultimately the question that leaders of churches have to wrestle with. Are we winning people to the spectacle of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners, or are we trying to win people coming into our church because we've got a children's ministry that looks like Nickelodeon and we've got stage props that look like the best sort of theater production in the city.

That's a heart issue that leaders of churches have to wrestle with. But within that, a true Bible believing gospel centered, Christ crucified preaching church, I think there's a lot of flexibility and freedom to use, uh, excellent stage props, excellent lighting and prof, uh, a level of professionalism in what happens on stage.

So I think I talked about that a little bit. Like I'm not [00:54:00] opposed to the big conferences that have the big speakers and have the great bands. I think that can be a wonderful thing for Christians to experience. Uh, but it all comes back to what is the spectacle that we're really trying to convince and woo people to embrace.

Makes sense.

Kyle: So I've heard people complain that we need to shorten sermons and do different things in church because it's so hard for people to concentrate nowadays with technologies being so entertaining or just listening for 45 minutes or an hour, just people can't do that anymore. Would you, would you agree to that?

How do we, uh, how would you approach that argument?

Tony: Yeah. Length of sermon. Wow. I don't know what I would say about length of sermon. I mean, it's, it's, uh.

Kyle: We'd like the, we need to, we need to make it more entertaining because, uh, attention spans are so short nowadays that we need to, we need to do that in church now too, because we, we can only

Tony: sermon needs to hold, hold steady at 35, 45 minutes.

I mean, I, I don't think it, you can get much shorter. And I think it's, it's, it's [00:55:00] on the, it, it's, it's the responsibility of the church to come to church. And this is part of the reason why I wrote the book. The problem is like lay people are showing up on Sunday mornings, having so juiced themselves all week on the latest offerings of Netflix.

The latest Instagrams, the latest tiktoks, the latest, uh, controversy, political controversy on Twitter, the latest news report, the la like all the headlines have so dominated people's lives, whether it's social media, mass media, just gaming. I mean, we used talk about gaming and how addictive gaming is. If you're coming to church on Sunday morning and you spent six hours Saturday night gaming in an amazing, you know, created world that you live in, it's such, so thrilling.

And you've been in combat with, you know, six of your guy friends and, and then you show up on Sunday morning and the sermon seems drab and the, the music seems drab and, um, everything just [00:56:00] seems boring in comparison. Well, that's not the problem of the church necessarily. That's the problem of Christian laypeople feeding themselves.

The sugar hit buzz of social media and mass media and gaming, that when they come to church, they can't focus for 40 minutes on God's word That. Is a huge sign that something is wrong with the soul. And so what I'm saying in the book, the whole book came out of this, uh, debate over which movies are sinful and which movies are virtuous.

And what I found really interesting is that Christians don't want to have that conversation. Period. Uh, I did a survey of 8,000 Christians. They don't want to, they don't want to go there. They don't want to talk about, Hey, that movie you watched last night, was that virtuous or sinful? So the question is, okay, how do you address media in a way that's not sort of pinpointing that was sinful?

You shouldn't [00:57:00] watch it. That's virtuous. You should watch it. Um, the way I go about it is this book, namely gauge your media diet based on your affections for Christ. If you have no affection for Christ, my guess is your media habits are out of whack. And so when you show up on Sunday morning and you just can't get into it.

It may not be the problem. It may not be the fault of your preacher. It may not be the fault of your worship leaders. It may be the fault of you ingesting too much media, and maybe that media is virtuous. Maybe you watch the Hallmark Channel all week. I don't care what it is, but you fed yourself on so much media that you're affect, zeal for Christ is gone.

That's the concern. So moving the whole conversation out of the, um, you know, what movies are virtuous and sinful, and moving it into the saturation question, what happens to my soul [00:58:00] when I can feed myself even on virtuous media all week long? That's gonna have an impact on Sunday morning.

Kyle: That's good.

Tony, uh, one last question here. It's a little off topic, but I'm, I'm curious about your thoughts. Um. Desire in God, uh, is not shy about writing about controversial topics. So how do you take the criticism and self-reflect when you get, when you write these controversial topics and people write back, um, but also not sway from what you believe and also just keep pumping out that stuff, um, on certain topics like, uh, the election or politicians or whatever it is without, um, yeah, I, I guess, yeah, self reflect, reflecting, but also not changing, um, not shying away from those topics.

How, how do you, how do you guys navigate that

Tony: this, this tension that I feel as a, a sinful, fallen writer who likes to [00:59:00] write about sort of like cosmic things and whose worldview is so shaped by my tiny little existence growing up in Nebraska, traveling a little bit around the country, a little bit outside the country, like I know so little about the world.

And yet I'm trying to write about big trends, cosmic trends, you know, and so I feel this weird tension of I'm deeply fallible, deeply fallible in my perception, and I need to listen to what others have to say in their critique. Uh, I just got edits back from my tech technology book from an academic theologian who's brilliant, way, smarter than I am, way smarter than, I mean, he's genius level, uh, thinker, who, uh, just picked apart my manuscript in about 80 different places.

And it was so sobering. And I like, there's places where I was just like, oh man, how did I not realize I was saying that or implying that? And so I'm, I, I'm [01:00:00] very aware that my worldview is so small, I need the help of other people. At the same time, I know that my open Bible is absolute truth. That's the grounding.

As long as I'm constantly going back to and orienting myself towards the eternal word of God, that's where I found my, find my stability. That's where John Piper finds his stability. John Piper is fallible. He knows that. He knows he is gonna make mistakes, but the more he can go back and build his entire worldview and what he says off of scripture, um, the more sound and safe he's gonna be in what he says, not infallibly.

So that's the, that's the tension I think that he feels, and I definitely feel this, is I have to listen to other people because my worldview, my, my understanding of the world is so small, so tiny, just my, my existence, but also I'm relying on an open Bible, and that [01:01:00] gives me confidence to speak to big general topics of the crucifixion of Christ, the nature of sinfulness, why the resurrection must happen.

Why the cosmos must be recreated. Um, and so I live somewhere in that tension and DG lives in that, that tension as well, listening to the criticism and being confident with the Bible. Um, and that feels like two very different experiences. It really does. You can't be overconfident that how you understand the Bible is infallible, but you have a Bible that's infallible and your perception is very fallible.

Yeah. And you live within this tension and, uh, I don't know how else to do it except to keep listening to criticism and keep trusting in the Bible. Um, but that's kind of the, the tension that I live in and it's a healthy tension.

Kyle: Nice guys. Uh, Tony, I really [01:02:00] appreciate you doing this. Guys. If you, uh, if you're listening to this, please pick up these, these books and, and get 'em for yourself.

They're, they're very awesome. They're a spectacle. Worth your time. And, uh, uh, Tony, thank you for coming on the show. Um, I really appreciate the work you do and these books. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe, and if you wanna help spread the word, please leave us a five star review and tell your friends and family about this show.

We are available on YouTube, Spotify, apple Podcasts, and wherever we get your podcasts. And you can follow this show on Instagram and Facebook at the handle at Furiously Curious Show.

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