In my previous article, I mentioned the link between phones and pornography. Today, I want to consider phones and discipleship.
Whether you are a parent, in ministry, or coming to grips with your own digital habits, you should be concerned about the formative power of continuous access to information and entertainment.
Many smart people are sounding the alarm about the always-online culture of phones, social media, short form video, generative AI, and all the rest. Some authors warn that we’re raising The Anxious Generation and others tell you How to Break Up with Your Phone. Op-eds and mommy blogs write about it, and entire podcasts, websites, and social forums exist to help warn you and wean you from your phone.
I’m sure you’re aware of this trend; no doubt you’ve come across it in your feeds. But we don’t need smart people to tell us what we already know: The digital age is destroying our ability to focus, think, function, and relate.
Pastors, parents, and counselors need to take this seriously because the next generation is fast becoming an entirely different culture. And we’re not too far behind them.
My Tech Story
My concern for these things began with my own use. In 2010, I went from a Bible college graduate starting seminary to working from home with online ecommerce. Like many at the time, I wasn’t very internet-savvy, but it was easy enough to pick up. (You just had to google things.)
I quickly found that working on a computer all day made me susceptible to wasting my time. Reading blogs, following the news, or checking Facebook became normalized. Thankfully, the Lord spared me from pornography, but other risqué temptations beckoned.
We subscribed to Netflix around that time as well, and it was fun—and so easy!—to watch an episode or two of Monk every night. My wife gave me a Kindle for my birthday, and I also got a smartphone (for business purposes, of course), stoked my ego playing Words with Friends, and began doing my morning devotions on the ESV Study Bible app.
It was the last one that got me. As smartphones had become ubiquitous, it felt completely normal to use my Bible app in church and at home. I enjoyed the easy navigation, and the study resources were incredible.
But it didn’t take long for me to get uncomfortable. Something about it just felt wrong. I was too distractible, and found things I read on Kindle or phone harder to retain. I wasn’t “making the best use of the time” (Ephesians 5:16). So I went back to paper, and began bringing my physical Bible to church again.
It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a start. I began noticing how the web of phones, social media, and always-onlineism affected myself and those around me.
Our two children were littles at that time. We weren’t opposed to TV or tech, and even got our children tablets (with time limits) for a year or two in the elementary years, but took them away when we saw how their attitudes were affected. Between parenting and meeting with other young men for accountability, it became clear to me that the web in all its forms—phones, tablets, computers, streaming—was powerfully formative.
When I finished biblical counseling certification and began discipling men, my kids were entering their teens and becoming more independent. I would counsel a young man about porn and then come home and talk to my daughter about how the restrictions on her babysitting phone were for her good. I read Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman along with scientific research and Christian theological reflection on tech, and my wife and I set boundaries for the family and would have regular conversations about these things.
With two high schoolers, our current boundaries include:
- Devotions and chores before any entertainment
- No devices in your room (up to a certain age)
- No charging phone in your room (for our working/driving teen who has a phone)
- No social media
- Daily or weekly screen time limits (adaptable for school/summer/vacation/parental discretion)
- Multi-task carefully (e.g., don’t play a game or actively text while watching a movie)
- Screen-free Lord’s Day (minimal phone use for adults)
- Wifi shuts off each night on a schedule
- Accountability software on each device
Still, our teens are surrounded by this stuff. And it worries me.
The Social Imaginary of Always-Onlineism
Though on one level my teenage kids could give you a lovely, biblical definition of maturity, on another level they wholeheartedly believe that maturity means having unlimited access to the internet.
That other level is what Charles Taylor calls the “social imaginary.”1 A social imaginary different from a worldview; me teaching my kids about maturity informs their worldview, but their yearning for uninhibited phone use is rooted in their social imaginary.
For years, nearly every friend of theirs has had a tablet, cell phone, or gaming console, and most have no limits whatsoever. The adults they see are always on their phones. “Work” means me on a computer in my home office. Everybody, everywhere—adult and child alike—texts and streams. Even sending them outside to the park this summer has provided no respite, because all the neighborhood kids have phones and, for them, “playing” means making videos to post online.
All of this forms their social imaginary. It’s not only the content—which the rise of “influencers” proves is plenty powerful—but the medium itself which is formative. Kids and teens don’t just jump into porn or social media addiction; by way of immersion, they grasp that the world works a certain way and then fall in love with an idea of what the good life looks like.
But that good life does not materialize. I regularly see desperate posts from parents in a Facebook group about how they can’t believe that, despite all the conversations and restrictions and house rules, they discovered that their child has been chatting with strangers, watching porn, sexting, or playing games all through the night.
Parents are no different. Regardless of whether the activity is responding to emails, leveling up in Royal Kingdom, sending an encouraging Scripture passage to a friend, or tweeting the latest political ragebait, everyone pulls out their phone in waiting rooms, break rooms, the breakfast table, even stop lights.
Practically, the fruit of this collective social imaginary is that every free moment is ruled by a device rather than the word of God. When we have the unexpected opportunity to choose, the way we finish the sentence, “Right now, I must…” is predetermined by digital habituation.
That is soul-shaping power. And in this cultural moment, disciplers and disciplees are immersed in it.
“But God…”
It would be easy to lose hope at the massive task before us. But God…
That’s why I gave this article the title I did. But God…
The Apostle Paul knew something about cultures with soul-shaping social imaginaries. As a Jew and a Roman, he was a cross breed of two of the most influential cultures in history. Yet he had a greater concern:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
Ephesians 2:1-3
As serious as we must take the formative power of the web, the Bible is clear that the more serious problem is our native state: We are dead in trespasses and sins. But God…
We follow the course of this world in a zombie-like existence, incapable of change because there’s no true revivification for the living dead. But God…
And that’s the glory of the gospel. God does what we cannot do for ourselves or for others: He brings the dead to life. He changes those who cannot change or be changed. He opens blind eyes, unstops deaf ears, causes the lame to leap and the mute to sing (Isaiah 35:5-6). But God…
So when we consider the pervasive, insidious “social imaginary” of always-onlineism in which we live, don’t tremble at its soul-shaping formative power. That power is no match for the gospel:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7
Nothing—not even the internet—is as powerful as death, yet Jesus Christ has destroyed this enemy in his death and resurrection. God, in his rich mercy and grace, unites us to Christ in his resurrection and makes us alive with him by faith.
This biblical reality is our only hope. Not just for screen time habits but for everything. Yes, the powers of this present darkness are strong (Ephesians 6:12), and we must face their challenges with wisdom. That’s why biblical counselors must use resources like 10 Proverbs to Slay Destructive Phone Habits, and why I will continue to study, write, and counsel about these things.
But the key to remember is that change does not happen by our guidelines, rules, habits, grit, pithy teachings, or wise counsel. Change happens when God raises the dead to life by faith in Jesus Christ.
And when God raises the dead, no weapon, web, tech, or “social imaginary” formed against us shall stand. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord (Isaiah 54:17).
- As quoted in Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, p. 37. ↩︎
