How to Use Our Digital Devices
Wise Christians are running the wrong way with digital devices. Like children with scissors, some sprint without care and others freeze in fear. Dread tells us never to move with scissors. Wisdom teaches us how to move with them.
We need to know how to use our digital devices.
While I certainly understand, and sometimes applaud, a reasoned retreat or season of disconnecting from the digital world, I also feel a sense of remorse when wise Christians check out of the digital sphere. It’s one less light in a very dark space. One less missionary on a very lost field. We need their voice not their vacancy.
I get the misgivings Christians have. I too am weary of the digital world. Yet the answer to our weariness is not abandonment, but dominion.
Dominion will help us control our devices instead of being controlled by our devices. Our digital world influences us with each notification, app, and upgrade. We are swimming in a digital culture which calls for digital wisdom. And like our inflatable floaties, wisdom is only good if we use it. We need control in our digital lives. That’s what dominion is: wisdom applied.
Christians apply biblical wisdom to their digital practices. Biblical wisdom is a lamp unto our digital feet and a light unto our digital path. This light exposes the realities of our digital habits. It provides wisdom for those willing to apply it.
Missionary Lesslie Newbigin returned to England after serving for decades on a foreign mission field. Reflecting on his homeland after an extended time away, Newbigin observed, “It is only as the fruit of sustained exposure to the Bible that one begins to see familiar things in a new light.” Our digital devices are now familiar things. They require sustained exposure to the Bible. Failing to shine the light of Scripture on our digital devices will have dramatic consequences. As our digital devices shape us, we need wisdom to exercise dominion over them.
There is little doubt that you are digitally engaged. Take a look around. How many digital devices are within eyesight in this moment, or when you’re sitting in your living room? Next time you’re at a stoplight, notice how many people are looking at their phones. When you’re grabbing coffee with your friend, notice whether or not your phones are on the table. Are they face up? How many times are you distracted from your friend by a notification?
This is our world. And this is us.
Perhaps I should clarify. This is not only “us.” More precisely, “this is me.” I’m not writing this book for you, but for myself. I’m not only disheartened and concerned over your digital habits. I’m far more concerned and far more disheartened over my own. Too often I find myself mindlessly scrolling while loved ones sit nearby. Too often I find myself with a day that reflects more time on social media than in communion with God. I think about who I am becoming, and I don’t always like the answer. I belong to Jesus and I have so much joy to discover in a life lived in obedience to him. I do not want to waste it staring at a screen that fits into the palm of my hands.
Our dependence on digital technology is not going anywhere anytime soon. Arguably, it will increase. As people responded to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, they shifted even more of their lives online. After telling students that they needed to detox from screen time, schools moved to digital learning and required students to spend untold hours in front of their devices. Employees moved to remote working. Churches shifted to streaming their services. The cause of social justice pulled advocates and those interested even further into their digital devices as they watched videos, read articles, and engaged in digital debates. These factors led Collin Hansen to recognize the digital dilemma as one of his top ten theology stories in 2020.
For many Christians, failing to exercise digital dominion has gone hand in hand with neglecting our spiritual health. New apps and episodes fill our hearts more than new mercies. By regaining control we both reorient our hearts to Christ and repurpose our digital devices to make much of Christ.
My hope is that we can shine the light of the gospel onto our digital habits. Blogger Tim Challies explains, “Media ecologists like to remind us that our technologies are extensions of ourselves and our abilities, so that the hammer is an extension of the arm and the bicycle is an extension of the feet.” Our digital devices are extensions of our hands and, further still, our hearts. The gospel explains that our hearts, our very selves, are made in the image of a holy God who is our Creator. In his kindness, he has given us good rules by which to live and enjoy his kingship. Since the time of Adam and Eve, however, we have turned our hearts in other directions, all in disobedience to him. As a result of this rebellion, we have lost the original enjoyment of our heavenly Father. We are now enemies of the God who made us and are bent on living out this enmity in every arena of our lives. And so we would remain, outside of the reconciling work of Christ, but for Jesus. Sent by God, Christ lived the obedient life that we failed to live. Commissioned by God, Christ died on the cross—bearing the punishment that each of us rightly deserved as God’s enemies. On the cross, God poured his righteous wrath on his Son in our place. Buried, Jesus proved his authority over sin and death through his resurrection three days later. And God now reconciles us to himself by faith in this crucified and risen King.
For those of us who are in Christ, this gospel changes everything. At a basic level, it changes ownership. We are no longer our own. We have been bought with a price. Therefore, we are to glorify God in our bodies and with every extension of those bodies, including our digital devices.
Excerpted with permission from Digital Dominion: Five Questions Christians Should Ask to Take Control of Their Digital Devices by Jeff Mingee and 10Publishing, 2022.
Jeff Mingee (DMin, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is the Regional Strategist for the SBC of Virginia serving the southeast region. He is the author of several books including Called to Cooperate: A Survey and Application of Teamwork and Digital Dominion: Five Questions Christians Should Ask to Take Control of their Digital Devices (forthcoming). He and his wife, Lauren, live in Newport News with their two boys, Aiden and Carter.