Questions for Restless Minds

How Do We Live in a Digital World?

C. Ben Mitchell

D. A. Carson,

Series Editor

lexham press

How Do We Live in a Digital World?

Questions for Restless Minds, edited by D. A. Carson

Copyright 2021 Christ on Campus Initiative

Lexham Press, 1313 Commercial St., Bellingham, WA 98225

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You may use brief quotations from this resource in presentations, articles, and books. For all other uses, please write Lexham Press for permission. Email us at permissions@lexhampress.com.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

Print ISBN 9781683595311

Digital ISBN 9781683595328

Library of Congress Control Number 2021937698

Lexham Editorial: Todd Hains, Abigail Stocker, Mandi Newell

Cover Design: Brittany Schrock

Contents

Series Preface

1. Introduction

2. The Opportunities of Digital Technologies

3. The Challenges of Digital Media

4. Ways Forward for Thoughtful Christians

5. Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Study Guide Questions

For Further Reading

Bibliography

Series Preface

D. A. CARSON, Series Editor

The origin of this series of books lies with a group of faculty from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), under the leadership of Scott Manetsch. We wanted to address topics faced by today’s undergraduates, especially those from Christian homes and churches.

If you are one such student, you already know what we have in mind. You know that most churches, however encouraging they may be, are not equipped to prepare you for what you will face when you enroll at university.

It’s not as if you’ve never known any winsome atheists before going to college; it’s not as if you’ve never thought about Islam, or the credibility of the New Testament documents, or the nature of friendship, or gender identity, or how the claims of Jesus sound too exclusive and rather narrow, or the nature of evil. But up until now you’ve probably thought about such things within the shielding cocoon of a community of faith.

Now you are at college, and the communities in which you are embedded often find Christian perspectives to be at best oddly quaint and old-fashioned, if not repulsive. To use the current jargon, it’s easy to become socialized into a new community, a new world.

How shall you respond? You could, of course, withdraw a little: just buckle down and study computer science or Roman history (or whatever your subject is) and refuse to engage with others. Or you could throw over your Christian heritage as something that belongs to your immature years and buy into the cultural package that surrounds you. Or—and this is what we hope you will do—you could become better informed.

But how shall you go about this? On any disputed topic, you do not have the time, and probably not the interest, to bury yourself in a couple of dozen volumes written by experts for experts. And if you did, that ...