Worth Reading - 9/6/24

Here are a few links worth following this week:

1. Brad Littlejohn wrote an excellent essay on the seemingly overwhelming power of technology:

“‘Ideas have consequences,’ conservatives admonish one another, pouring more money into think tanks and great-books conferences. Sometimes, however, consequences also have ideas; our behaviors determine how we think. If Marshall McLuhan is right, and ‘the medium is the message,’ what is the message of the smartphone era? It is one that has rendered many basic conservative instincts simply nonsensical, especially concerns about family, morality, and sexuality. In the age of TikTok, the Judeo-Christian tradition is not just becoming discredited, but altogether inaccessible.

The social acid of the smartphone era is dissolving six fundamental pillars of conservatism: Limits, Tradition, Patience, Dependence, Embeddedness, and Embodiment. In stressing these themes for centuries, conservatives have sought to tether human action to the limits of human nature, insisting that individuals and polities alike cultivate the virtues of self-restraint.”

2. I wrote an article for the L. Russ Bush Center for Faith & Culture on the possibility of using Sunday School to help combat our epistemological crisis:

“Equipping disciples to make disciples in the West requires addressing the contemporary epistemological challenges of media and technology. The prevailing culture continues to adopt technologies unquestioningly and adapt their epistemology to fit them. Therefore, our congregations may have to step into the gap to educate our people and our neighbors on the way that media technologies are distorting their perception of reality.

There are many ways that discipleship can be accomplished. Some congregations have shifted from a Sunday School model to small groups, home fellowships, or a variety of other options. The setting we use to shape the epistemology of our congregations may vary. Yet it is important that we take concrete, overt steps to raise people’s awareness of the effects of technology on their worldview. That’s part of effective contextualization.”

3. H. B. Charles honored a pastor—his father in the ministry—who served faithfully at the same church for 61 years. This tribute is worth your time.

“Reed was baptized in Fairview. He preached there at the age of 19. After being asked to assist the pastor, he served that one congregation from the time he was 24 years old until his final days. Reed announced his retirement from Fairview’s pulpit on Father’s Day 2024—more than 61 years after his ministry there began.

Though it’s not every pastor’s calling, there’s something special about a man who plants his flag for the gospel in a congregation and stays there serving Christ and the church for a lifetime.”

4. Michael Kruger wrote on the way the loss of intellectual curiosity is harming the church.

“For years now, Christian theologians have rightly lamented how genuine intellectual debate is increasingly rare in our postmodern (or post-postmodern) world. Indeed, one might argue that, in certain quarters, it is not even allowed. Arguments have been replaced with declarations—usually statements about the goodness or badness of the other side. And these declarations are often laced with moral accusations that the other side is bigoted, or narrow-minded, or discriminatory, or what have you.

While evangelicals have typically been at the forefront of resisting such a trend, I wonder if in some ways we are now participating in it. One might argue that now it’s evangelicals that sometimes seem uninterested in intellectual engagement and are quick to make declarations about the goodness or badness of the other side. If a person disagrees with us, then that person is just a compromiser, or a liberal, or a fundamentalist, or what have you.”

5. Mary Harrington writes a (somewhat crabby) plea to consider what “post-liberalism” really means. As someone who also sees the cracks in the liberal order, I resonate with her concerns about the voices calling for stronger bureaucracies with more power and a longer reach. In this case, the presenting problem is nosy neighbors reporting someone for being a grandparent.

“A 78-year-old farmer in South Wales has been fined £3,500 by officials, after a neighbour filmed him taking his preteen grandson with him in the tractor cab while he fed the cattle. It’s illegal in the UK to let a child under 13 ride in farm machinery.

There are lots of things one could say about this story. But what stuck out to me was the calculated, mean-spirited busybodying required to turn a heart-warming moment between an old man and his grandson into a weapon. It captures a curious duality of British culture: one I often think about in the context of debates in ‘post-liberal’ quarters about a lost communitarianism.”

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Hope for God's Creation: Stewardship in an Age of Futility

By Spencer, Andrew J.

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