Deus Misereatur

I read Neil Postman’s “Amusing Ourselves to Death” years ago. His point, back in the 1980s and 1990s, was about the way we have become an entertainment culture, where television and televised news media, have sucked the life out of our ability to have healthy discussions, process news, and reason. I was delighted that Crossway has just recently pulled together a team of thinkers who are not anti-technology, but want to help fellow Christians think through technology – especially in the areas of multiple media venues, AI, cyber-space, etc. “Scrolling Ourselves to Death: Reclaiming Life in a Digital Age,” is a 256-page softback edited by Brett McCracken, an author and senior editor for the Gospel Coalition, along with Ivan Mesa, editorial director for the Gospel Coalition. This highly readable book is “intended to get you thinking about technology…showing how technology is changing the way we think” (pg. 11). This material is clearly for the digital natives (Millennials and GenZers – th...

When I wrote " Our Heads on Straight " in 2020 and " Beyond Outrage " in 2023, I was deeply concerned with the way all aspects of news and social media were shaping us to be manic, anxious, and angry. Since then I have found a wide spectrum of folks, even people who are not Christians, like Jonathan Haidt , concerned as well. So I was interested when I stumbled across "Digital Liturgies: Rediscovering Christian Wisdom in an Online Age," a 208-page paperback written by Samuel D. James, associate acquisitions editor at Crossway and one-time communications specialist for the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. The author's aim in the book is to show that social media and the internet technologies are not neutral tools but "an epistemological environment - a spiritual and intellectual habitat - that creates in it's members particular ways of thinking, feeling, and believing" (9). The author does an expert job hitting his target! James ma...

  The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness Jonathan Haidt Penguin Press ISBN: 9780593655030; March 2024; $30   There is this creeping feeling that things are amiss, which keeps snagging our perceptions and catching on our minds. Some people shift the blame to this or that political party to explain the trouble or fault the stupidity and lameness of “those younger folk”. Most of the time much of the blame and assertions are prejudicial anecdotes with very little research or factual analysis. That’s where Jonathan Haidt comes in. Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He is also the author of several valuable works and papers, such as “ The Righteous Mind ” and “ The Coddling of the American Mind ” and other compositions. In March of 2024 he published “ The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Me...

  (You can purchase the book here ) We’ve seen it more times than we care to count. Someone puts out their opinion (sometimes stating it as fact) on social media, then within minutes snarky replies show up in the comments. The snarky begins to devolve into snide, then spiteful, and finally an outright extreme verbal cage fight. The saddest part is that maybe some of the combatants claim to be Christians or are people we know. This scene has become so endemic that social media and verbal fisticuffs  have become synonymous. Therefore, Douglas S. Bursch, copastor of Evergreen Foursquare Church in Auburn, Washington, former newspaper columnist and talk radio host, has presented a timely work addressing this exact phenomenon. “Posting Peace: Why Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do About It” is a 208-page paperback that delves into the way we are online, its consequences, and how to approach our internet presence with a whole new set of methods. The author’s pr...