"Relating to Technology" (Proverbs 4:20-27, Mark 12:28-34)

Welcome to the Reformed University Fellowship at UNCW Podcast! Each week, we will post the messages from our RUF Large Group meetings at UNCW. This year, we're talking about how the gospel sets us free to live wisely and beautifully in God’s world, redeeming all of our relationships. In this week’s message, we examine our relationship to technology. Do digital tools and apps help or harm our ability to relate to each other? How are they forming and de-forming us? And what do we need to remember in order to learn to relate wisely in this digital world? We look at Proverbs 4 and Jesus’s teaching on the Great Commandment in Mark 12 to remind us that even though we are prone to distraction and deception, we are deeply loved by the God who made us. And resting fully in that love sets us free to love others wisely. Quotes: “Christian wisdom is about living a life that responds correctly to reality.”-- Samuel D. James, Digital Liturgies“A person is a heart, soul, mind, strength, complex designed for love. And one of the really damaging things about our technology is very little of our technology develops all four of those qualities.” – Andy Crouch, author of The Life You're Looking For “Most of the time when we talk about social media being bad for us we mean for our mental health. These platforms make us anxious, depressed, and insecure, and for many reasons: the constant social comparison; the superficiality and inauthenticity of it all; being ranked and rated by strangers. All this seems to make us miserable. But I don’t just think it makes us miserable .... over time I’m becoming convinced that our most pressing concern isn’t that social media makes us feel worse about ourselves. It’s that social media makes us worse people.” - Freya India, GIRLS*Thanks to Samuel D. James, Andy Crouch, Freya India, Jonathan Haidt, Alan Noble, and Jean Twenge for their writing on this topic. If you’re curious to learn more, check them out!Links: https://newsletter.oalannoble.com/p/violence-and-technologyhttps://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/whats-become-of-ushttps://journal.praxis.co/we-dont-need-superpowers-we-need-instruments-860459cfc165https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/