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The Next Story: Life and Faith After the Digital Explosion (Hardback)
$14.26 - Save $5.73 28% off - RRP $19.99 Free shipping worldwide (to United States and
all these other countries) Usually dispatched within 24 hours | |Short Description for The Next StoryAcknowledging that technology is everywhere, Challies provides guidance and direction for readers who struggle with the changes brought about by the digital revolution. He helps readers understand how a Christian can use new technologies with biblical discernment.
Full description- Publisher: ZONDERVAN
- Published: 12 April 2011
- Format: Hardback 208 pages
- See: Full bibliographic data
- Categories: Christian Life & Practice | Christian Social Thought & Activity
- ISBN 13: 9780310329039 ISBN 10: 0310329035
- Sales rank: 69,159
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Reviews for The Next Story
A must-read for those serious about faith and technology
Are you concerned that you are becoming a slave to technology? Do you worry that you check your email / twitter / facebook too often? Do you feel that your mobile phone is often too intrusive? Are you lost without it? Are you interested in how to best utilise technology and digital media and to see how it fits into God's creation? If you answer any of these positively, then this is a book for you.
One might simply describe this book as a theology of technology. The author, Tim Challies, aims to find the 'sweet spot' where "our use of technology is not just thoughtful and informed, but it is informed by the Bible, by an understanding of God's purpose for technology".
Challies looks at how technology fits into a Christian view of creation, noting both the God-ordained creativity and potential for blessing that technology brings, but also recognising that in a fallen world this blessing can be distorted. The benefits of technology, he notes, are often obvious, while the pitfalls and costs it may bring are not, and thus we need to think carefully about these issues when introducing a new technology into our lives. Often we mistake technology for being additive, adding a certain functionality to our lives, when it reality it is ecological, actually changing the way we live.
He looks at how technology and information can become addictive. He points out that we too often begin to see ourselves the way we evaluate technology, thinking faster and greater capacity is best, and warning that we are beginning to lose the ability to read and think deeply, often outsourcing what our brains ought to be doing, to pieces of hardware and software.
This book also looks at issues of authority and perception of truth and the way sites like Google and Wikipedia have changed our understanding in this area, both helpfully and unhelpfully, looking in particular at the danger of truth by consensus.
Challies is certainly not arguing for any kind of anti-progress, anti-technology Ludditism, but rather calls for us to be more discerning and thoughtful in the technologies we use and how we use them. Putting this in the context of faithful Christian living, he helpfully raises issues of accountability and idolatory. He is arguing for a view of technology that sees it as a good gift from God, to be used as our tools, not for us to become enslaved to it. After each chapter he ends with a few questions which help the reader formulate their own ideas and see how these issues might play out in their own life.
I found this book very enjoyable but also very challenging. I recognised many of the pitfalls and related to some the struggles he writes about. I appreciated some of the suggestions he gives and have begun to try and implement some of the disciplines which I was challenged about. It is a very timely book, and in my experience, a unique one which deserves to be widely read (and re-read). by Andrew Finden
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