[00:00:00] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] If you're a parent, then tonight is going to be very relevant. If you're a grandparent, tonight is going to be very relevant. If you live in the digital age, I believe tonight will be very relevant because you probably work with someone in some capacity that's younger than you, that communicates a little differently than you do, that may have a different relationship with their technology and their devices than you do. Tonight is about communication.
[00:01:01] It's about trying to speak in a way in which people hear. I think it was John Wooden that wrote a book. You haven't taught until they've learned. It's a great concept.
[00:01:11] We can have the right material, but oftentimes if we don't find the right way to communicate, to speak in a way to calibrate the language for the next generation, then they're going to live with the deception that the Bible is irrelevant. And, and we know that that is not the case. So tonight we're talking about how to cultivate good conversations about technology.
[00:01:32] This first point is really specifically if you're a parent. I have found it's something I struggle with. I'm really good at being the guy that says, hey, you stepped out of line here. That was the wrong move. If we're playing baseball and they turn their head, you turned your head, but they hit three balls right in a row. It's like, good job. And I move on to the next. I don't always bring the same level of praise as I do. Correction.
[00:01:55] Someone somewhere along the way said that I think if you have one negative comment, it takes like five or six times the amount of positive comments to offset the impact. I don't know how true that is, but it feels kind of true. In my life, the negative sticks with me a lot longer than the positive. Even if we won the game in Junior high. Well, I still missed that shot or I didn't make that pass. That's the part that kind of circulates in my mind.
[00:02:18] So one thing we have to be very aware of is when our children or when people that we're around exercise good, good judgment in an analog situation, that we praise them for that and then we draw a line to how that is going to translate into the digital age, into the digital space. I'll give you an example, a little bit of what I'm talking about.
[00:02:36] Several months ago now, sometime last year, I think it was, I came downstairs in our office and my daughter was sitting there on the computer. And the rule in our house is that no one gets on the computer without permission from mom or dad. And then you, you know, we know what you're, what you're doing, what you're playing, that kind of thing. They've got some class dojo games they love.
[00:02:54] My daughter was on Amazon and what she was doing when I turned the corner, I looked in the cart and There were about 30 items related to cat products.
[00:03:06] That time we did not own a cat.
[00:03:10] I could make a pretty good case that actually buying cat items, the existence of cats, there's evil there. And I feel strongly in that conviction.
[00:03:19] But I love my daughter and I love my wife.
[00:03:22] Now we also own a cat. In that moment, what she did was not inherently evil.
[00:03:29] Ish. Right. What she was doing had, had pure motives from her standpoint. I also taught her how to create a list as opposed to just putting directly in the cart, because that is dangerous.
[00:03:40] And I said, listen, what you did here was good natured from your standpoint. You, you want a cat. And I get that loud and clear every day. I understand that, but what's the rule? Well, the rule is you don't get on the computer without mom or dad. Yes, I know. That's the rule. Okay, so you knew the rule and you chose to break the rule. Yes, I'm sorry. I know you are. I want you to understand I'm not angry with you. But what I want to do is I want to explain to you why you're going to get a phone or a tablet or a device later, probably than most of your friends because of situations like this. Doesn't mean that you're a terrible person. But mom and daddy have put some guardrails in that are very simple for you to abide by.
[00:04:24] And in this moment, your desire, your curiosity for whatever you wanted was greater than your willingness to submit to our rules.
[00:04:34] Once we see a Pattern of wise judgment, of good decision making, then we will give you incremental freedom.
[00:04:43] I don't know if it took with her, but in the moment, I was like, I may have got this right. I don't know. There's plenty that I have not gotten right.
[00:04:51] But that made me acutely aware of I got to do this more.
[00:04:57] Because what I sometimes didn't understand as a kid, from my parents or just any authority, was the why.
[00:05:04] And what I know I don't generally do in the moment when I'm. When I'm getting onto my kids for something is take the time, in an unemotional way, to explain the why.
[00:05:16] We have to get better at that. And by we, I mean me. I got to be able to see above the fit, right, that they're. That they're pitching a fit or above the moment of their frustration.
[00:05:26] I've got to be the one to steer the boat, even where they're the ones causing the choppy water, because they don't get it yet. And that's okay. Developmentally, they won't get it until probably their mid-20s, when that prefrontal cortex fully develops.
[00:05:40] So until then, I'm going to keep telling them what they need to know, even if they don't fully understand it.
[00:05:46] In the moments that we can call out good judgment, we need to do that. We need to celebrate the wise judgment that they implement so that it's not all negative. When we talked about technology, we want to give some validation to the good, good choices that they make when it comes to the idea of permanency. Things that are permanent now more than ever.
[00:06:08] Sticks and stones break my bones Words will never hurt me It's a clever rhyme scheme, but it's just inherently false. And I think we've seen that with a lot of lawsuits over the last 20 years. It feels like we've become very sensitive to our words.
[00:06:20] Well, not just that.
[00:06:22] Now more than ever, whatever you say, whatever you do, it's out there forever.
[00:06:27] In high school in the late 1900s, you could trip and fall down the stairs, and all of your friends would make fun of you, probably for a long time. But everybody else in that school, after about a week, probably forgot about it.
[00:06:38] Today, it lives on. It lives on forever.
[00:06:41] No matter where you go to school, it follows you. We live in a surveillance generation, which means that everything that you say and do is out there, and it's some kind of a server somewhere until it's very convenient for someone to use it against you.
[00:06:55] So a really good way Especially with young children that I have found to communicate. The idea of what you put out there stays out there is toothpaste tube or even a ketchup and mustard bottle. I love doing this. Like in youth group days, you would get the, like the sweetest, daintest little seventh grade girl, and then you get the biggest, burliest, meathead football player dude, and you give one of them a ketchup bottle, one of them a mustard bottle, and you give them 10 seconds to squirt as much as they can out of the bottle onto a plate.
[00:07:24] At the end, you kind of make it a big deal, and you say, all right, now here's the real challenge. The winner of this wins it all.
[00:07:30] You got 10 seconds to put it back in the bottle.
[00:07:34] And they struggle and they start sweating stuff, and neither of them can do it.
[00:07:39] The point is, once the toothpaste is out of the tube, it can't go back in.
[00:07:43] Once you squirt the ketchup out, it's just a lost cause, right? It's out there. Once we speak our words, you can't put them back in.
[00:07:52] Now more than ever, if you post something online or you send a text message or a picture of yourself to someone, you can't bring it back.
[00:08:02] Last night I mentioned the website fighthenewdrug.org one of the podcasts that they have. They've interviewed people who have been involved in sex trafficking and have had videos of them participating in sexual acts. Oftentimes drugged and not by their own volition.
[00:08:18] They've been put out there on the Internet, and some of them have been successful at getting them removed from some of the bigger websites.
[00:08:26] But all of the websites have this little button that says, download that now for the rest of their life, it's whack. A mole.
[00:08:34] They get it pulled from this site, it pops up on 30 more.
[00:08:37] They get it pulled from this side, it pops up on 20 more.
[00:08:40] And to hear these largely these kids in their late twenties talk about the exhaustion trying to get a job and keep a job. You get a job, you finally kind of start over, and then all of a sudden, somebody did a Google search on you and they find it for the rest of their life. And oftentimes, through no fault of their own, it lives on in perpetuity now more than ever.
[00:09:03] You can't put the toothpaste back in the back in the tube.
[00:09:06] Permanency is a really big concept that's hard for young minds to understand. So we've got to put it in a way that they can. That's accessible to them in a way that they can come back to that conversation and want to ask more questions. So that's a good visual that I found that several parents have done this in a variety of ways. But however you choose to illustrate to me, this is a really good starting place. And starting when they're young again. We talked last night that having the talk is really a poor approach. It's inadequate for the questions that come about over the lifetime of an adolescent.
[00:09:39] So maybe revisit this. Revisit the illustration. Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 29 we read. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up as fits the occasion that it may give grace to those who hear.
[00:09:53] I'm of the age now where I have all these Facebook memories from 15 and 20 years ago, which is that's just said out loud from a long time ago of things that I posted when I was in college. I got Facebook when I was a sophomore. I was a weird kid and I know you all knew that, but now it's becoming very clear to me because not even like bad stuff, just weird. Today Jason is feeling like wearing a cup of coffee on his head. Like, I don't why that's humiliating now. Like, why would I post that? I have no idea. I don't know what I was thinking.
[00:10:24] So what actually makes for a good post that will pop up as a memory 10 and 15 years down the road? Something encouraging, something scriptural, something that has other people in mind in a positive way?
[00:10:38] Asking our kids now to think in terms of what do you want to see pop up on your feed 10 years down the road? It's a good way to get them thinking about in the future at a time in life where they're probably not.
[00:10:50] That sophomore year was very interesting.
[00:10:52] I resisted the sauce Facebook for a long time.
[00:10:56] By a long time, I mean like two weeks. When it hit our campus, everybody. That time you had to have a edu email address to have a Facebook account. We call that the good old days.
[00:11:06] The computer lab. Nobody was ever in it. And then all of a sudden, in a two week period, you could never find a laptop, find a computer available.
[00:11:13] But during that time, I watched a divorce happen over Facebook status.
[00:11:18] These two people had gotten married very young. They went to school with us.
[00:11:22] And then you would watch his post like, oh, that seems like kind of passive aggressive and targeted. And then a few minutes later, you would see her status and you're like, oh, okay, so that's happening. And then about a month later, it was official, they were divorced. And that was the first time. Several of us were like, whoa, we got to watch that in real time.
[00:11:42] That's weird.
[00:11:43] We were a part of an intimate relationship almost.
[00:11:48] Those are not the things that you want to pop up in your memories. Those are not things that you need to share publicly. You need to confide in. Wise counsel, maybe, but not post for the whole world to see. All right, stick to the water skiing squirrel. That's a good place. That'll pop up. That'll make you smile down the road. A great example of this comes from an Instagram account, an organization called wait until 8th. You may or may not be very popular over the last few years. They're a great follow on Instagram. They every now and then they'll post a story from a celebrity or two and kind of share their approach to social media.
[00:12:22] This is the king and Queen of the late 90s, early 2000s, Freddie Prinze Jr. And Sarah Michelle Geller. All the guys loved her, all the girls loved him. They were beautiful people. Still are.
[00:12:32] They have some kids together.
[00:12:34] And in an interview, Sarah was asked, what is your approach to social media? Do you let your kids have social. And I don't remember exactly how old her children were at the time, but somewhere in there like five or six years old range. And she said, well, I explained to my daughter this way, if I let you have social media today, I know that you're going to use it in a way that you're going to regret. It would be like me letting you have a Paw Patrol face tattoo, which we have a two, almost three year old anything, Paw Patrol is the right choice in his mind.
[00:13:03] But in just a few years when he gets to middle school and he's walking down the hallway with chases on the case on his face, he's going to be stuffed inside a locker. And I know that's going to happen, right? If he's going to middle school, you're going to get beat up for a Paw Patrol face tattoo. You're going to live to regret that. Why would I let him do that?
[00:13:23] Finding an analogy, finding something that connects with them, something that they loved as a child, that they no longer a toy that they don't play with anymore. Get them to think in terms of how this scales up. Get them thinking in terms of what you love now is not always what you're going to love down the road and until you get old enough and I think share with them how Their body works until they can actually think and process. As someone who considers down the road, we're going to try to limit the amount of damage that can be done. And that's why we limit their access to devices when it comes to getting a driver's license.
[00:13:56] When I was growing up, you turned 15, you could get a permit, which means you had to take the written test, which I did a few times.
[00:14:04] And then when you turn 16, you take the driving test, which I only had to do once.
[00:14:10] You had to read literature and then you had to take a test.
[00:14:14] I think that's kind of reasonable. The government established a certain age where they think cognitively and it's relatively safe for these people to be on the road with the rest of humanity. But they're jump through to show that they have not just the cognitive development, but they have the instincts and understanding of the laws of the road.
[00:14:32] Well, when we think about giving our kids freedom and giving them something that is really powerful, I think a car is a very similar analogy. I would recommend that we have them read some books a time where they show judgment. We referenced this two nights ago.
[00:14:50] Two summers ago in 2023, US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy said that children are exposed to harmful content on social media ranging from violent and sexual content to bullying and harassment. And for too many, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in person time with family and friends. They don't just get access to this stuff. They don't have. It's not a right, it's a privilege.
[00:15:12] The same way that when I was growing up, getting a car wasn't a right. Or excuse me, it wasn't a right, it was a privilege. Right. It was something that I had. I had to pay for part of it, had to pay for all of my gas. And again, I showed you the other night. 76 Datsun B210. There was a limit to the amount of cool and damage I could do in my life because of the vehicle itself. With these phones, there's no limit.
[00:15:31] There's no limit at all. So these are four books. There are several at the end. I'll have a QR code with a full Amazon list. These are four books that I think are reasonable for you as a parent or a grandparent or as a concerned citizen and the young person in your life that you care about that they could read.
[00:15:50] Let them read it. You read it and you guys talk about it.
[00:15:54] You have to read the manual to get a driver's license. And I'm sure you talk to your kid at some point about that as you're driving around and then they show some time, chaperone time behind the wheel.
[00:16:04] So give them incremental freedom. Start with something they can text with maybe.
[00:16:08] Bark Us is a great website. It's a company that again, our oldest is 10, so we're not fully into this stage yet. But based off of my research and others that I've spoken with, Bark seems to be one of the most robust technologies out there that allows parents to have as much or as little control as they want over their kids devices.
[00:16:29] What that does is it allows you to give incremental freedom as they show responsibility. They do all their chores. Great. You get this amount of time on your phone or on your device.
[00:16:38] You can find creative ways to reward their good decision making while putting in guardrails. Have them read some of these books and say, well, what did you think about that?
[00:16:48] Screens in Teens is a good one. It's very practical. Connecting with our kids in a wireless world. There's a lot of good stats in that one. Especially glow kids.
[00:16:57] Ask them about some of those statistics like do you find that to be true? Do you see that among your friends or among your peer group?
[00:17:04] What were your thoughts when you read this?
[00:17:06] Use this as an opportunity. It's a stipulation for them to get the freedom they want. But you're cultivating a relationship of conversation.
[00:17:14] And what we all want is when our kids grow up and leave the house is for them to want to come back to that house and to talk to us.
[00:17:22] Mike Winkley used to say there's this period of time, and I forget the time that he meant about the numbers of it, but he said our kids go and they go to the dark side of the moon.
[00:17:33] Somewhere around teenagers and then their early mid 20s, maybe they start coming back on the other side of the moon and they want to talk, they want to learn. We're not just like, we're not just parent to child anymore. There's a little bit more of a mentoring dynamic at play. Well, if we have cultivated a relationship that is based in conversation, where they feel comfortable coming to us and asking questions, then this will help with that while also pointing them in the direction of what they want. But in a wise way, we're teaching them to be stewards, not to be consumers and not to be consumed.
[00:18:06] When it comes to talking about screen time. This is one of the best visuals that I think I have come across. It comes from a TED Talk and there's A QR code at the end of this that I'll show you as well, where that's listed in a YouTube playlist.
[00:18:19] This visual represents an 18 year old's lifespan, assuming they live to about 90 years old. Each row is roughly three years of life.
[00:18:29] And the guy that put this together did the math, so I assume he's right. I have to take off my socks and shoes to count past 10. But the way he broke it down is you've got roughly 288 months that you're going to sleep in this life, which sounds delightful. You've got 126 months work in school.
[00:18:49] You've got about 18 months you're going to spend in your car driving. That's a year and a half straight that you're going to spend driving. You'll be eating for 36 months. That seems undervalued to me.
[00:19:00] Bathroom and hygiene, 27 months.
[00:19:02] Probably a joke there too. We'll keep moving chores and errands. 33 straight years of doing chores and errands. So that leaves you with 334 months of free time to figure out what you're going to do with this. TED Talk was given, I believe it was close to two or three years ago at that time. I think the average amount of screen time was somewhere between five and six hours a day. It's more than that today, depending on what you read. I actually did, did a class for some teenagers in Somerville, Alabama just a couple of weeks ago and I asked what is your average screen time? And one of the fellows said 15 hours a day.
[00:19:38] Yep, that's what I said. Like I am old.
[00:19:42] My five and a half ain't looking too bad. All right, 15 hours, that's a, that's a really full time job.
[00:19:50] That's if he just immediately fell asleep at the end of that and immediately wrote back up when he got back on.
[00:19:56] That's just not a lot of time to sleep or eat or go to school, which is about seven or eight hours. Right like that. That's unbelievable. And this was in a community that's pretty rural.
[00:20:09] I don't think that that really matters these days.
[00:20:12] I don't think where you live has as much of an impact because the access is the same. So we've got 334 months of free time based off of the average screen time in like 2022, you're looking at 312 months. Looking at a screen, 312 months, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 30, 31 days a month.
[00:20:37] Even if you were looking at your Bible app for all that amount of time, that's a long time to give your attention to something or someone.
[00:20:49] The struggle I have with using my phone exclusively as my Bible reading platform is that it's never just my Bible app.
[00:20:57] There's always a notification. There's always this or that that pops up. There's always someone that someone else that wants my attention. I use it often, but I don't use it exclusively anymore. I also realize that when I come to church on Sunday morning and I sit down and I'm scrolling through on my phone, my kids don't necessarily have the critical thinking skills to go and look to see if I'm looking at the original Greek or if I'm looking at Facebook.
[00:21:19] Because at home, oftentimes it's Facebook or Bleacher Report.
[00:21:23] But what they see is the same pose, the same device, the same face.
[00:21:30] I want them to see me reading my Bible because I'm afraid that they're going to do what I did.
[00:21:39] I used to think, man, I just wish my kids would do what I say. But then I started seeing that they are doing a lot of what I say and how I say it. And that's the part that scares me.
[00:21:49] I want them to see me read a Bible. There's no mistaking what this is.
[00:21:54] And I think there's a lot of value to paper. One big tree guy here. But two, they see that I've got notes in here from college. I've got questions that I've answered in here that's not connected to that. And when I'm reading this, I'm not looking at that. We can't multitask. I know we like to think that we can, but cognitively, science agrees it can't really be done. You focus on one thing at a time. By design.
[00:22:21] By design. This is a very sobering chart here that I think is something that would be very helpful to share with your kids. When I share this in high school settings, they kind of have the same reaction, like, oh, remember what we said two nights ago? What has your attention, has your hearts.
[00:22:36] Jesus says, if your eye is full of light, your whole body will be full of light. If your eye is full of darkness, your whole body will be full of darkness. So what we give our attention to matters. James 4:14 says, you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life for? You are a mist that appears for a little, a little time and then vanishes.
[00:22:54] A year ago, New Year's Eve, I went to lunch like we normally do. We alternate with my in laws and my parents for Sunday lunch. And I was walking up to my parents house, kids and family were behind me. My brother met me at the door. And my brother's not an overly emotional person. That's me. He's the mature one basically in the family. And he had this look on his face that was just really different.
[00:23:20] And he said, aunt Laurie just died.
[00:23:24] And it took a second.
[00:23:26] You mean like a car accident? He said, no, it wasn't a car accident. We're not real sure.
[00:23:30] Well, that definitely didn't register.
[00:23:32] So we sit and we have lunch and over time we get a little bit more information.
[00:23:38] My aunt and uncle, they have a house in Roswell and they have a farm in North Carolina. And she had left the house in Roswell. He was staying there because he had some work to take care of. And she went up to the farm and she made it to the farm. She laid down on the couch and she never woke up.
[00:23:54] She had some underlying health conditions that we weren't fully aware of the extent as it turns out. And her heart stops beating.
[00:24:03] It still makes no sense to me.
[00:24:07] But this verse is very clear.
[00:24:11] How we spend our time is really important.
[00:24:16] There's science now that says the amount of eye contact you have with a child, with a baby in particular with an infant as it's growing, even though it can't always make out all of the shapes and things, eye contact actually impacts brain development, emotional development.
[00:24:30] I think that's by design as well.
[00:24:33] When God talks to his people and they're. They're dedicating the temple in Second Chronicles, I believe it is says when my people who are called by my name, when they come here and they pray, I will hear their prayer. Attention matters.
[00:24:49] God says he sees us because he sent his son to look us eye to eye in the flesh.
[00:24:56] Attention matters. And when we allow our devices, our television, our computer or whatever, and I know we got to have it for work, do we have to have that job? Ultimately?
[00:25:08] Sometimes we find out that the hard way, right, well, we got to have this house. Do we have to have that house? Do we have to have that car? These are fundamental questions that we have to have ask ourselves anytime we make a decision that impacts the trajectory of our life.
[00:25:22] What are the most important things and are those the things that we give our attention to?
[00:25:30] My children are the most important thing. And too often I give my attention to this tiny little rectangle more so than I give to the things that are truly Most precious to me.
[00:25:41] Our actions have to fall in line with our words and with our desires.
[00:25:48] What is your purpose for technology? That is a fundamental question that we all have to answer as adults. It's a great question. And if a kid wants a device, you start right here. Well, what's your purpose? What are you going to do with that? Why do you want that? Most recently our 6 year old's response to that for a Nintendo DS is so that when we're in car line, mommy won't get mad at me and I'll be occupied.
[00:26:11] Buddy, that's actually a really strong argument. You should go with that with her, but with me it ain't going to work.
[00:26:18] The last part there, you said that you want to be occupied, you just want to, you want to be entertained. There's nothing wrong with that. You're six years old, that's all you want. Your job is to play.
[00:26:29] But you also can't keep things in constraint, right? You struggle with the guardrails of playing on the, you know, the Xbox set at a grandparents house, or a computer at this place, or video games at a neighbor's house.
[00:26:42] You struggle to submit to our guard rules, our guardrails and our rules.
[00:26:48] So if you want any hope of that coming here, we need to see a consistent pattern. And I know you're six and I know these. This sounds unfair. It might be, but we believe it's right. And our job is to do what we believe is best for you, to teach you how to think like a man, like a grown man, even when you're not grown yet. So that when you get there, some of those things start to click.
[00:27:11] Just basically means that we're okay being the bad guy.
[00:27:14] We mentioned these I think two nights ago as well. How do we cultivate contentment? It's a very useful list of questions. It's a really good way to teach the next generation how to think about technology. You will not be successful keeping up with every app or every new innovation. It's just impossible. Technology is moving at an exponential rate.
[00:27:32] That's a fruitless endeavor. Teaching them how to think about technology and stuff is the approach I think that we need to take. How does it cultivate the fruit of the spirit in my life? If your kid says, what's the fruit of the spirit? Congratulations. You have your family Bible study for that night. Open up to Galatians and let's talk about it. How does this make you more peaceful, more loving, more kind?
[00:27:53] How does this make me more effective in the kingdom of God? How does this make us more effective at helping people? If you go through Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, I don't think you'll find one single time where God blesses an individual for the sole benefit of that individual. We are blessed to be a blessing to others.
[00:28:10] So how do we use our car in a way that blesses other people? How do we use our house in a way that blesses other people? We put a big focus this year on hospitality and fellowship to get us thinking in terms of stewardship.
[00:28:23] How do we steward the things that we've been given? Not how do we become better consumers of those things? We're not consumers of pleasure. We're not just consumers of entertainment.
[00:28:32] We're stewards of this life. And everything that we have in it comes from God. So it should be used for God. How can I use it to share with others? How does it make me more like Christ? And ultimately, is this a need?
[00:28:44] We read several passages two nights ago that we're very clear that if it's something we need, God will take care of us. He takes care of the birds of the air. They don't worry about what they're going to eat or drink or what their clothes look like.
[00:28:55] But we spend so much time being consumed with thoughts about things that ultimately they don't have any spiritual value in our life.
[00:29:05] How do we identify spiritual value? And then how do we help the next generation identify spiritual value? We go back to that word that we've talked about a lot. Discernment.
[00:29:15] Discernment is what we're trying to cultivate.
[00:29:17] This is another good illustration that kind of blew my mind. And spoiler alert, if you come back for this class in the fall, we're going to use it again. Just act surprised.
[00:29:26] If you look at this, this image, you've got the cylinder, and you've got, like, a nice little cutting board here, a little checkerboard.
[00:29:34] And if you were to look at these squares, this is A, this is B.
[00:29:39] If you're like me, A would be the choice. When I said which square is darker, raise your hand if you agree that A is darker.
[00:29:48] Don't assume it's a trick question just at first glance.
[00:29:51] All right, thank you for playing along.
[00:29:54] It is. No, I'm just kidding. It's actually the exact same color value. And I didn't believe this. Like, I was a super skeptic guy. I actually took that image, put it in Photoshop, did a color picker, put it in Illustrator, did the color picker. Like, I was. I was convinced that this is.
[00:30:10] Something's wrong with me.
[00:30:12] Nothing's wrong with me. I just have brain wiring just like you. Our brain is really good at processing information very quickly, and our brain oftentimes wants to make some assumptions.
[00:30:23] So it assumes because there's a shadow being cast here and because of the pattern we see there, that these are different color values, but they're the same.
[00:30:33] Our brains are wired very intricately, and there are people that go to school for a long time to learn how to use that wiring and manipulate that wiring.
[00:30:42] So if my perspective can be manipulated based off a little simple picture like that, Imagine a company who employs thousands of people to think about the user experience of a device or a platform.
[00:30:54] They're not neutral.
[00:30:56] Our kids don't always think in those terms. We have to think in those terms, and then we have to speak in those terms so that they learn to be wise without purpose. They. You move from being a user to being used.
[00:31:08] What is your purpose for having a Facebook account? What is your purpose for being online? What is your purpose for having the smartphone that you have?
[00:31:17] There are a lot of options out there now.
[00:31:20] What is the purpose for the next generation to use these items? What purpose have we given them to use?
[00:31:26] In what ways? Have we shown them how to glorify God with them? The church is online. We have a website.
[00:31:32] We're on Facebook, YouTube and Instagram. We're not on Snapchat because I don't see any value for us to be there.
[00:31:39] We get better reach with our post on Facebook. More engagement. We get more engagement on Facebook. We get better reach on YouTube. More views on YouTube. On any given live stream, YouTube is going to have three or four times the amount of views, partially because during COVID we all had smart TVs and we could watch the YouTube app on our TV. And it's more pleasant to watch a video on TV than it is on your phone.
[00:32:01] But more people engage with our content, like and share and comment on Facebook, so we see value in both of those.
[00:32:08] We're not on TikTok for a lot of reasons, and I'd be happy to have lunch with you and explain some of those one day.
[00:32:15] But this is an interesting quote that I ran across in Tony Rinke's book, 12 Ways your Phone is changing you. He said, we are not who we think we are, and we are not even who others think we are.
[00:32:26] But particularly online and social media, we are who we think others think we are.
[00:32:34] Put another way, especially for emerging generations, you see everybody's highlight reel but you live out your own behind the scenes and that's the way it feels. And that's why those charts we saw two nights ago go straight up. When it comes to anxiety, depression for guys, video games and lust are the two major holds on the male attention when it comes to online.
[00:33:00] For females, it's comparison, body image, self image, self esteem.
[00:33:08] It's because we aren't really putting our experiences out there, we're curating the experiences that we want people to see.
[00:33:15] We don't generally put our worst look online. We generally put the picture that we think is the best.
[00:33:22] And then when you get this validation loop of people really like this picture of you with your family, but they didn't like this one of just you by yourself, why is that?
[00:33:32] And we put that dilemma in the hands of a 13 and a 14 year old who's already walking out the door every day going, I don't like the way I look. I don't look like that person. I'm not developing in the same ways as those people are. I don't sound the same as those people.
[00:33:48] I have discovered that so many of our middle school insecurities, we just learned to navigate with them as adults.
[00:33:56] So many adults still have a lot at their core, those same challenges.
[00:34:00] We all cope.
[00:34:02] We don't all cope in a healthy way. If you keep pushing stuff under the rug, eventually you start tripping over that rug because that mountain gets really high.
[00:34:11] If we put technology that amplifies everything out there in the hands of those middle schoolers that are struggling with the same things that we struggle with in middle school, it just amplifies everything that's not always good.
[00:34:26] So this is important for us to think about so that when we talk to them, we understand where they're coming. What is your purpose for technology? That is the main question here. And another thing to do is to teach them about their brain.
[00:34:38] Brain plasticity, or neuroplasticity, is the ability of your brain to change through growth and reorganization. It's when the brain is rewired to function in some way that differs from how it previously functioned. It's how you learn things. Right?
[00:34:51] When it comes to brain plasticity, our kids don't know about this. In particular prefrontal cortex at the front of your brain. It's the last part of your brain that develops. It's the part of your brain that develops last, usually around your mid-20s.
[00:35:04] But it's also really important because it's responsible for planning, decision making, working memory, personality expression, moderating social Behavior controlling certain aspects of speech and language. This is what's learning how to learn. When we give them phones without instruction, middle schoolers are oftentimes really smelly and super awkward.
[00:35:25] When we give them a giant magnifying glass and megaphone in the midst of that developmental stage, it's a really fragile time.
[00:35:35] It's okay to tell them that it's a really fragile time for them. It's okay to tell them what's going on in their brains.
[00:35:41] The problem I have found is that I didn't know a lot of this stuff until relatively recently as an adult. So I think we need to learn how our bodies work so we can let our kids know and we can direct that curiosity. As I mentioned before, your brain is a lot like walking through the woods. The first time you have an experience, you see some content or something that it's almost like there's no evidence that it's been there. But you walk that path over and over again, and then you see a well defined path. That's how the neurotransmitters work in your brain. They create these neural pathways based off of experience and instruction, not just one or the other. So again, a visual explanation for them of what's going on. We spent a lot of time yesterday talking about oxytocin and vasopressin. Let them know what happens in their brains when they engage in intimate behavior. Behavior.
[00:36:27] Because our bodies are designed to bond and connect. That's by design.
[00:36:31] So if you don't want to bond and connect with this person for the rest of your life, then you probably don't need to get intimately involved with them in a sexual way.
[00:36:39] But if we just tell them, remember, don't. Don't get the cookies. We never tell them why? Because those cookies were baked with a purpose for the neighbor who's grieving.
[00:36:49] Don't have sex outside of marriage. Why? Well, because God said so. That's not enough. That's not adequate. It's more than that. God did say so. But he also told us why. Because our bodies intimacy was designed to build a lot of trust.
[00:37:02] It's designed to build a willingness to be vulnerable. It's designed to build a robust, strong, resilient relationship with one person.
[00:37:14] That's why.
[00:37:16] Don't be afraid of the answer. Don't be afraid of the conversation.
[00:37:19] Answer the questions they ask. And if they shut down, end the conversation.
[00:37:25] But be available for it to come back up over and over again. Oftentimes, conversations are awkward because we make them awkward or we let them Be awkward.
[00:37:34] This is something that God designed.
[00:37:37] That's not awkward. That's glorious. That's wonderful. We should talk about it with that same kind of approach, with that same kind of true joy.
[00:37:45] First of all, they're curious. That's a good thing. And as a parent, I've really struggled over the years of this conversation because I didn't want to be the one that took away their innocence. Right. I wanted them. Their children. I want them to be innocent.
[00:37:59] But I also send them to school, and I was sent to school. And I know that you lose some innocence when you're around other people.
[00:38:06] So I don't want to be the one to take their innocence, but I want them to be prepared for that.
[00:38:11] So I don't have conversations which seems like I'm operating from a place of fear. What I've realized is that my job as a parent is not so much to take their innocence, it's to guide their curiosity.
[00:38:21] And I do that by answering the questions truthfully and honestly. The way we've tried to start doing this in our house is when they're very young, we call body parts by their names. That was my wife's thought. And I really like all of the clever names that I came up with as a kid, as a young boy.
[00:38:39] So I'm preparing my boys for middle school. Hey, there's this whole nother glossary of terms, bruh, let me tell you.
[00:38:45] But we have also identified what those things are. We have a daughter and we have three boys.
[00:38:50] They understand that our daughter. We've also had more of those conversations of, you know, the parts of you that are different from them. Well, that's by design. And one day when you grow up, Lord willing, we've been praying that you will find someone that you fall in love with, that you will become your husband. And when a husband and a wife love each other, then God has created this special part of that relationship where those pieces fit together to. Her response was ew. Like, yes, yes, till you're 45 years old, you know, hopefully not. I guess, I don't know who. Whatever.
[00:39:26] That's when Mom. You take over baseball or something with the boys. My point here is that there is a gradual comprehension that will come about. And she's 10, so we're getting close to that. As her body changes, we're going to try to tell her about those changes before they happen, so that when they do happen, they know that we're a valid source of information and a source of truth. Don't be afraid of the conversation guide their curiosity. I think that's what God does for us. He points us godward. He didn't shut Job down after the very first question, right? He let him ask questions and then he had his mic drop moments.
[00:40:01] I want to close by talking about something that has become more and more important and more and more prevalent. Two years ago we did this class.
[00:40:09] Half the class it was like, that's really interesting. The other class was like, why are we talking AI in a Bible class?
[00:40:14] I hope you realize today why we talk about AI in a Bible class, because it's all around us. AI is a big term, it's a marketing term, basically that is a part of a branch of computer science that uses large language models, a bunch of information that it can process at a high rate. It's a high powered processor. In some ways, something like a chatgpt is like a supersonic Google.
[00:40:38] That's a very simplistic approach. But for our purposes tonight, that's where we'll begin.
[00:40:45] AI is sort of a reflection of human intelligence because it takes all of this data from the Internet and from other sources, inputs it into this big math equation algorithm and it spits out these answers. Something like ChatGPT is very conversational in its interface. So when you say, hey, chatgpt, how are you today? It'll come back and say, well, I'm doing quite fine. How was your day today? And it's like having a friend. And as we talked about two nights ago, there's a real danger in an interface like that because vulnerable folks, emotionally in particular, and that could be any age, will begin to cultivate a relationship with technology.
[00:41:23] Technology is not a relationship for us to cultivate. It's a tool for us to steward and to use purposefully.
[00:41:30] I see the two greatest dangers of emerging generations being right, which technically has been the greatest challenge of every generation. But particularly in an age where if an event happens somewhere in the past, we can use our eyes, our ears, our noses, our psych, we can see our use our senses to confirm, to verify what happened.
[00:41:51] But now all of those senses can be manipulated because videos and audio and images can be completely transformed.
[00:42:02] There was a news article a couple of years ago, this is the positive side, where a mother had taken her son, I think to 17, 17 different doctors over a three year period. And they couldn't figure out what was wrong with them. I had chronic severe pain.
[00:42:16] She eventually, in a desperate just, okay, whatever, she took a lot of his information and she plugged it into CHAT GPT and this is early era chatgpt and it spit out a handful of options and she took one of those options that she had not heard before. She found a specialist in the area. He diagnosed it immediately. That's what it was. ChatGPT has some big redemptive value.
[00:42:37] I have friends in the medical field community that have used it and others in the medical side of things. We're going to diagnose. We're already diagnosing cancer remarkably faster than we have in the past. Because if you can take everybody's chart, plug it into this machine and they can compare your chart with those charts and see where there's commonalities, man, that's super helpful.
[00:42:57] A couple of years ago, about a year and a half ago now, we made trading cards for kings and judges sermon series that Brandon Andrew, Sorry, we're preaching.
[00:43:07] It was a great thing. This week, your kids, they're receiving trading cards that give them a little glimpse of the story or the life of Gideon. That's cool. Growing up, you and I probably had flannel graph, I call it Felt Bore Jesus, where you had the flannel graph and you had the little paper that you pull up and here's Jesus in his blue sash, flowing brown hair, white toga. Like he was always perfectly like head out of a head and shoulders commercial. There were always all these other people. It was a visual way to teach, right? We would show these scenes, take them down. Well, this is a visual way for us to teach our kids. I think that's a good use. I think that's cool. I think at some point you're going to walk into a Bible class, you're going to put a VR headset on and we're going to go and we're going to walk up to Mars Hill and we're going to see what Paul saw. We're going to walk through the streets of Rome, we're going to go on a journey and we're going to experience that cognitively. Our brain is going to think that we're on a boat in the midst of the shipwreck that he experienced and we're going to get to feel that. Or we're going to look over in the corner and we're going to see off in the side there a man praying in midnight in a first century jail. There's some really cool experiences. Things that are dangerous, things that are impossible, like time travel, things that are really expensive, like traveling to the Middle east. We could do through a VR headset and still get a touch of that experience.
[00:44:18] During COVID we didn't meet in the same place at the same time.
[00:44:22] But if you were like me and you were sitting in your living room worshiping at home and watching the live stream that we had put out there on YouTube and you turn the volume up loud enough, it. It almost felt like you were in the auditorium. Right.
[00:44:33] Turning the volume up. No, everybody disagrees. Come on, man, stay with me.
[00:44:39] To me, that helped a little bit because I couldn't just hear myself singing. But that was one step towards an immersive experience. Putting a headset on is another step towards that. And it's not always a bad thing.
[00:44:52] But these are the things that our kids are going to be growing up with as they become more and more prevalent. More and more homes now have VR headsets in the same way that in the early 30s and 40s and 50s, more and more homes had TVs.
[00:45:06] And there was a moral panic when. When Gutenberg came out with the printing press. Now that we can write everything down, nobody's going to remember anything.
[00:45:15] There was some validation to that when we started writing things down even before the printing press. That goes back to the time of Socrates, where he criticizes people who write things down. He. Cause they don't remember.
[00:45:27] Well, he was actually right.
[00:45:29] When the radio came into existence, there was a moral panic because all of the terrible things are going to be put out there on the radio. And there were some terrible things put on the radio, just like the tv, just like the Internet, just like AI.
[00:45:42] I think all of those moral panics were valid and in at least some capacity. True and right.
[00:45:50] But in another capacity, humanity adapted, and we will continue to adapt to the future innovation.
[00:45:56] So where there's valid usage of these technologies, I think we need to learn how to leverage them in a powerful way. Now, the downside is stuff like this.
[00:46:07] It's just weird now. I know, but it's hard. At first glance, this looks like a real thing. And I actually wouldn't be that surprised if it really did happen at some point. But my point here is that we can mimic all kinds of things.
[00:46:24] We can make believe all kinds of things. But this is the danger.
[00:46:28] What's not real seems real. And so we. Our perspective then is manipulated, just like the illustration with the A and the B squares.
[00:46:38] There was one guy that I cannot remember his name now, but he wrote it in a paper a couple decades ago where he said, we have.
[00:46:45] We have godlike technology and like Paleolithic brains, basically, and we have. What was it? Medieval institutions.
[00:46:55] Well, I Don't necessarily go with them on all of that. You get the point. We have this massive technology, and we have an infrastructure that's a lot like the road system in Madison, inadequate for the people who inhabit it. Right.
[00:47:07] We have laws that are always at least a generation behind the emerging technology.
[00:47:15] And then we think, and we train our thinking sometimes based off of old ways of doing things.
[00:47:23] My default setting is to parent exactly the way I was parented.
[00:47:27] When it comes to screen time, it's a different ball game. So there are some things that I have to calibrate, I have to do differently than my parents did. Some things overlap, some things do not. And we have to develop the wisdom to. To know the difference between those things.
[00:47:40] This is, again, this is a place that we have to be very loud, have to be very clear.
[00:47:46] Technology is not a relationship worth investing in. It is a tool for us to steward. My phone is not.
[00:47:53] My relationship's not with my phone. It shouldn't be with my phone. My relationship is with the people that are on the other end, the people that I connect with that I call when I'm not right there with them.
[00:48:03] We can't assume that they get that. We can't assume that that's their fault setting, because it's usually not.
[00:48:09] The other thing when it comes to artificial intelligence is we've got to rightly identify truth. And first, Thessalonians 5, 21, we read test all. Excuse me, Test all. Everything. I don't think that they wrote it that way. Test all things or test everything. And to hold fast what is good today, it's dangerous to test all things, particularly when emerging generations don't have the cognitive abilities to reason well when they haven't yet developed wisdom.
[00:48:41] You are not irrelevant in their life. Whether they want you there or not is irrelevant. Your presence.
[00:48:48] And I'm not just talking parents, I'm not just talking grandparents. I'm talking every person in this building.
[00:48:53] There are members of emerging generations that need your voice in their life. They need to know about your experience. And those of us that the adults in the room have, we have to figure out how to calibrate the language so they understand that it is relevant to their life.
[00:49:08] And at a very minimum, we have to try.
[00:49:12] We absolutely have to try.
[00:49:15] There's no excuse for it. In John, chapter 14.
[00:49:19] This is ultimately where we live, right? This is our identity. If we are in Christ, and then we understand who Christ is and we understand what Christ is. So In John, chapter 14, in verse 5, we read Thomas said, To him, lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? And Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on, you do not know him and have seen him.
[00:49:51] You do know him and have seen him.
[00:49:54] We have to help them see Jesus.
[00:49:56] We have to help them understand the Gospel and we have to understand, help them understand how the Gospel stands in contrast with this life that they can live if they so choose. I think the most important verse in the Bible today comes from First John, chapter two. It says, do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
[00:50:19] I think we would all agree with that. The part that we struggle with sometimes is rightly identifying what is of this world.
[00:50:28] The most dangerous untruth is the one that is just adjacent to the truth. It looks like and sounds like the truth, but at its core it's not.
[00:50:37] In an age of deception, in an age of artificial intelligence, true intelligence, human intelligence, more than that relationship, authentic connection, and the true gospel becomes that city set upon a hill. It can't be hidden, right?
[00:50:53] The more we cultivate a place here where people find encouragement and accountability, where people are willing to confess sin, where people are received well when they confess sin, that's going to stand in stark contrast to what they find anywhere else.
[00:51:10] When we speak truth, when we're willing to be challenged in our convictions and we answer, we take the time to answer the why and we study the Bible with them, we will find ourselves being more successful. I believe in this new age there's a lot of cause for concern, but there's also a lot of cause for excitement. As I mentioned the first night, there's a new stat that just came out of England and Wales where Gen Z men, boys and Gen Z are leading the way. There's a big increase in, in their church attendance. They are searching for the truth.
[00:51:41] We gotta make sure that we're communicating in a way that they get it, that they understand.
[00:51:47] This is a QR code. If you're interested for an Amazon book list, my disclaimer on both of these QR codes is that if I recommend the burger at a restaurant, I'm not necessarily endorsing the whole menu or everything on the walls, but there's something of value. So these books, some of them are written from a Christian perspective. Many of them are not just from a scientific Perspective, Perspective. So use your own discernment on how to apply those. But I have found a good bit of value in those. And then certainly for this playlist, most of these are not Christian or spiritual at all. Most of these are TED Talks from people in different industries. I wanted to learn how the brain worked. I wanted to learn more how, how these tech companies operate. And some of these were very enlightening and helpful to me.
[00:52:32] Center for humane technology. It's Humanetech.org is their website that's a great resource. They have really interesting toolkits for families, for parents, and for teenagers that struggle with technology addiction. They also have toolkits for people that are actually in the industry, for those that are building platforms and that are coding and creating this world in which we live. They have toolkits for those that help make laws in our country. The founder, one of the founders of humanetech is Tristan Harris, and he was a former Google ethicist. He helped craft ethics at Google. Got to a point where he felt like he wasn't able to make a difference. His voice didn't matter there. So he created his own nonprofit. He has a podcast called you'd Undivided Attention. His co host is Aza Raskin. Aza was the programmer that came up with the Infinite Scroll. He originally crafted that to help companies like O'Reilly Auto Parts, where they would have a constant flow of their inventory. It would help you as the consumer find the things you need as seamlessly. It would help them sell more product. Of course, it has been taken and used, misused and abused. So they have really interesting insight into the industry and a really interesting podcast there.
[00:53:43] This is grossly inadequate to address everything that comes with these topics, but I do hope that there's been some encouragement. I hope that you now have maybe some entry points for some of these conversations with people in your life or even with yourself.
[00:53:57] I come back to what we talked a lot about at the end of last night. Especially for those of you that are our guests tonight.
[00:54:03] This is a place where we desire to have a culture of prayer and a culture of confession. Not to humiliate people, but to make things right with God and with each other. We want to reconcile with one another and we want to reconcile with God. This is a place where I pray that you find accountability and you find encouragement. Most of all, at the center of everything we do is the gospel of Christ. And so if that's something that you're not familiar with, if that's something that you've possibly heard about but you don't have clarity. Please, let's talk. Let's study it together. Because what I have found in my life is irreplaceable.
[00:54:37] It has quite literally changed the trajectory of every decision I've made.
[00:54:41] And it's that powerful. It's more powerful than any AI algorithm out there. And that's what we want to share with you. So we thank you. And truly, you have been our honored guest. So for parents that have allowed us to spend time with your kids this week, I hope that they have have learned about Gideon. They have learned specifically about the armor of God and how he gives us what we need to be faithful to him and to make it through these really challenging times in life.
[00:55:04] In Jeremiah 29, God sends His people into Babylon, a place that is set up, that is opposed to God and his people, but he sends them for a purpose.
[00:55:13] He wants them to create culture. And I believe that that's why we're here in this, in 2025 as well, is to create the culture that God has designed. And if you want to be a part of that, then this is a place where I pray that you will find opportunities to do that and to do that alongside us. Again. Thank you so much for being with us. And if this is interesting to you, beginning in August, the first Wednesday in August, we'll do a deeper dive into some of these topics. Bow with me and we'll be dismissed.
[00:55:39] Father, we thank you again for the opportunity all week to gather in your name to think critically about the time in which we live.
[00:55:47] Thank you for giving us your wisdom, for giving us insight into who you are and the life that you have designed for us through your scriptures. Thank you for giving us your spirit, who comforts us and leads us into the wisdom that you offer. Thank you for Christ, in whom we have salvation and fellowship with you. Thank you for every person that is here tonight. Thank you for those that have joined us online and will join us online. We pray that your gospel will take root in the hearts of everyone who is a part of the study and that you will give the increase. We love you, and we thank you in advance for hearing and answering our prayer in Christ's name. Amen.
