Guidelines for Discernment in a Digital World

Host: Hon. Sam Rohrer

Guest: Dr. James Spencer

Note: This transcript is taken from a Stand in the Gap Today program aired on 1/15/26. To listen to the podcast, click HERE.

Disclaimer: While reasonable efforts have been made to provide an accurate transcription, the following is a representation of a mechanical transcription and as such, may not be a word for word transcript. Please listen to the audio version for any questions concerning the following dialogue.

Sam Rohrer:

Hello and welcome to this Thursday edition of Stand in the Gap Today, and it’s also our monthly focus that I really began a year ago. And I’m putting in this category of technology, biblical worldview, and applied Christian living. A lot of things fall into this, but my returning guest today is Dr. James Spencer. He’s president of the Useful to God Ministry, has a website at usefultogod.com. And he also is the president of the DL Moody Center. Now, if there’s one characteristic that, in my opinion, is unique to our present age, it’s what we would call our information and communications technology, and specifically internet and computer-based technology. Communications is not new, but this approach to it, we know certainly is. This development, this internet-based digital communication, we’ll call it, has become global, and that makes it different too. And frankly, no matter where I’ve gone, you can go anywhere in the world.

In the middle of the most obscure nation, you’re going to find somebody with cell phones and internet access, and it’s become a part of their daily life too. It’s pretty an amazing thing. And this technology has become, I would say, addictive, controlling, and literally mind shaping. It has become so invasive that it’s being merged with the human mind and the human body via implants and through artificial intelligence, which my guest and I have talked about before, and we have another programs. It’s literally turning humans, human beings into trans humans, having entered, in my opinion, the off limits zone by tampering with the very essence of what it means to be human. And again, we’ve spent time on all of that before, but that’s worth focusing on today because there are challenges that arise from this and the challenges are great, not just to humanity generally, but in specific ways to Christians, the church.

And all of those who know from scripture that though we are in this world, we are not to be part of this world and the world’s system. Because of the incremental, but life changing impacts being made by technology, Dr. Spencer, who’s really in this space a lot, has been doing a lot of thinking as well in depth about the questions to ask, warnings to give and guidelines and advice to share so that particularly those who fear God will not get caught unprepared. Now, the title I’ve chosen to frame our conversation today is simply this, guidelines for discernment in a digital world. And with that, Dr. James Spencer, thanks for being back with me today. It’s a subject that’s right in your wheelhouse, but it’s a very practical one. And thank you for being willing to undertake it with me.

James Spencer:

Absolutely. Always a pleasure to be here.

Sam Rohrer:

In order to make sure that we’re on the same page, I like to start out with definitional commonality, make sure we’re correct and that we’re on the same page. Would you define technology, digital world? I used those words before, and where are the challenges being presented are significant enough for which we need to be alert and watchful and warned about?

James Spencer:

Sure. So I would say broadly, technology is really just the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. And that can be in the … An example of that can be as simple as a hammer, right? A forged metal hammer that we’re using to do various things with, hammer nails in, what have you, to complex systems like the internet or AI. Those are all technologies. When we think about digital, we’re really referring to information that’s represented in a binary code, zeros and ones behind. If your audience is familiar with the matrix, those green zeros and ones that flow up and down, that’s really digital. That’s a binary code. And I think when we put together the digital and the technology so that we end up in a digital world or a digital age, what happens is we’re creating these capacities that operate beyond the old limits of space and time.

And so you can start to feel a difference with the media. If you think about just our radio segment that we’re doing here, there’s a finite amount of time and you have to manage that time. You’re going to take a commercial break at some point. But if this were a podcast that we were streaming, we could go 20 minutes over and it wouldn’t matter. And so when we think about those old limits of space and time, this digital world really expands on those. It goes beyond the old boundaries. But I think the strengths of this age start to fold back on themselves. So if we look at the technologies that are supposed to make us more efficient or give us more instant access to information, they can really become something that overloads and fragments us, fragments the way that we’re understanding information. And so I think we face the pressures of an attention economy where our attention is really a product that people are trying to sell.

It’s certainly something that companies are trying to capture. And then I think we have to deal with the outsourcing and the sifting and sorting of aspects of our discernment via algorithms. So people have created these algorithms and then sort of they let them run and the information often that we’re getting is produced by an algorithm. It’s a step away from a human eye. I think those are the real challenges within the digital age that we’re looking

Sam Rohrer:

At. And of course, all of those, they either go in our eye gate, they go in our ear gate or whatever, but all of those go right into our minds. And that’s part of the challenge I know you’re thinking about. And let me just go further at this point. Recently you wrote this, and I’m just going to quote it. You say this, “We live in a world that has become increasingly proficient at fragmenting,” you just used that word, fragmenting our thinking so that it becomes more challenging to develop a cohesive sense of what it means to be Christian and what it means to be Christian together. Now, what I identified quickly with this statement is your recognition that our thinking as Christians is being challenged into fragments for the most basic things such as what it means to be Christian and what it means to be Christian altogether.

And that’s why this is a practical day as we talk about it. So if you could start us out here by identifying what you’d say the greatest challenges to Christian thinking of being generated by technology and define what you mean by what it means to be Christian and Christian altogether. If we don’t get done here, we’ll carry you into the next segment.

James Spencer:

Okay. Yeah. I’d say this fragmentation that I sort of talk about is really a product of a high choice media environment. We have a lot of things that we can look at during the day. We have a lot of things we can listen to during the day, and it starts to pull our attention in a number of different ways, which lend themselves to fragmentation or compartmentalization. In other words, we can have a God box, we can have a business box, we can have an entertainment box, and those boxes don’t necessarily have to intersect that much. And that’s really not a Christian way to think about things. And so as we’re dealing with this high choice media environment, the picture of, the way I like to think of that is if we jump into water, there’s no way to avoid getting wet. If we immerse ourselves in water, we’re going to be wet when we come out.

That’s immersion. That’s what we want. We want to be immersed in the Christian life. When we’re fragmented and we have these different boxes for things, we don’t actually have to come out of anything that wet. We’re just because we’re not immersing ourselves in Christian life. So I think one of the biggest challenges is that technology just doesn’t simply deliver information. It delivers this shared narrative about what’s normal and true. And then that narrative is often pushed into our thinking and conditions the way we use logic and ration. All

Sam Rohrer:

Right. Well, thanks for that. And ladies and gentlemen, go deeper into that, but haven’t we all heard this? We have short attention spans, a mile wide and an inch deep. All of this kind of stuff factors into it, and how can we actually deal with the important things of life when we don’t actually think about them? Well, we’re going to come back and talk about this. Compartmentalization next. If you’re just joining us today, excuse me, had to clear my throat there. I had something come up, but if you’re just joining us, thanks for being on board today. Our theme is this. The title is this, Guidelines for Discernment in a Digital World. And my special guest, again, is Dr. James Spencer. He’s the president of the Useful to God Ministry, has a website at usefultogod.com. And he also is president of the DL Moody Center.

They have a website at moodycenter.org. Now, we’re talking about technology today, which we’re all surrounded most likely. I mean, I know there are some listening because we’ve heard from you who are not really into computers and all of that, but it’s hard to find someone today who doesn’t have some form of digital communication generator in their hand. That could be an iPhone, it could be a laptop, however it could be. And it goes all of the way from in the middle of the jungle, you’re going to find people with an iPhone. I’m telling you, in every continent you will. And some continents are even more into it almost than us. But through that is coming everything. Communications, military, education being taught that way, it’s business, banking, finance, you can’t get away from it and it’s impacting our lives and there’s a lot of information out there about that.

We’re talking about a couple of aspects of it here today. And Dr. James Spencer is doing some work. He’s working on a new book that’ll be coming out and it’s somewhat we’re talking about today as a part of that. Now, into that, as a part, James, of what you’ve been writing, you say this, I’m going to quote it and set it up for this next segment, but you said this, “As Christians, we have always had choices about what to consume. We aren’t simply subject to our environment, but we are influenced by it. ” That’s a great one. Now, in this context, you then proceed to divide the concept of choices about what to consume. You put them into three areas. We’re going to talk about them in just a little bit. You refer to them areas of content, activist content, ambulance chasing content, institutionalized content.

We’ll go there in just a minute. But before we get into those, I’d like for you, if you could, to prepare the way just a bit more, because you say this, “As we are shaped into women and men who understand the ways of the world, we become disciples of a way other than Jesus.” And then you gave some verses that refer to that. And you go on to say, “It’s not so much that we abandon our faith in Christ as much as we compartmentalize it as if other areas of life lay outside of God’s authority and we merge it in with incompatible views as if our theological convictions serve only to legitimize our own ideas rather than determining them.” Now that’s a fantastic comment and there’s so much into that. I’d like you to do this, if you don’t mind, expand upon this concept where we selectively choose what parts of the Christian life and biblical truth we will embrace and which ones we will not because you are describing exactly the type of things that we’ve talked about with Dr. George Barna on this program and the research that he has been developing for a long time.

You referred to it compartmentalization and syncretism. Would you define to describe these please?

James Spencer:

Yeah. So when I’m thinking about compartmentalization, I’m thinking that it involves applying Jesus’ authority selectively. And that may mean that we apply it ethically or morally in certain cases and then not at all in others, but we’re not really thinking about Jesus’ authority in a theological way because if we were, that theological application would demand that we recognize God as infinitely more relevant than any other actor or factor in any given situation. There is no realm in which God is not the most relevant person that we’re interacting with, but I think compartmentalization tends to leave it up to us to decide when God is or is not relevant and how. So that’s what I mean by compartmentalization. Syncretism is sort of an odd support for compartmentalization because that’s when we blend Christian language and ideas with other incompatible systems of thought. This is something that George Bono talks a lot about and he’s seeing it as sort of a syncretistic worldview that’s beginning to dominate the United States among US adults.

But I think it really does create a problem because we start to think that our faith is going to be able to serve something else as opposed to governing our lives as a whole. And I think the result is that we don’t really abandon Christ outright. We don’t stop proclaiming him as the Lord, though we functionally put Jesus underneath other things and ask him … I like to think of it as we treat him like a genie in a bottle, and if we rub him the right way, he’ll support what we want to do.

Sam Rohrer:

And of course, the impacts of that are extraordinary because as George has determined and worked in the research is that, and we do what we believe theologically. So if we come up with a theology that embraces a little bit of the Bible, but not all of it, we’ve come up with a new religion and that is a matter of faith. So it’s a big, big deal. Anyway, we could go further than that roadway won’t. But you then go from that aspect of we make ourselves comfortable in taking slices of what we like, a slice of scripture, a slice of new age, a slice of atheism, the syncretism idea. And we operate in compartments, which is anti-scripture. So then that comes up into what area you talked about content. Anyway, so define the first of these three content areas you defined as activist content. And how does that relate to the compartmentalization and the syncretism aspects of the fragmenting of the Christian life and Christian thought?

James Spencer:

Sure. What I would say is these three areas that we’ll go over, the first one being activistic content, I’m really not concerned about whether they’re true or false. I think they can be either true or false. My bigger concern is sort of the governing logic that they train us to adopt. And so when we think about activistic content, it’s a very ends driven. It calls Christians to commit to a cause and mobilize for an outcome. And so what we’re asked to do on activistic content specifically, there’s this concern that may be a very good concern, but doesn’t leave room for real out of Christian discernment. If it’s something that we should address, then here’s the way we should address it and this is what all Christians need to do. And if you’re not doing that, that’s a real problem. That way of logicing through that is really deeply problematic.

I think it would run against something like one Samuel 24 where Saul walks into the cave. This is sort of how I … A good biblical picture of the sort of activist content I have in mind. Saul walks into the cave to relieve himself. David and his men are hiding in there and his men say,” David, go kill Saul. God has obviously given him into your hands. “Now, David could easily have just said,” Yeah, I think you’re right. I’m going to go kill Saul, “but he doesn’t. He steps back, he recognizes that killing the Lord’s anointed is not giving due respect to the Lord, who anointed Saul. And so he cuts the corner off his robe and he even feels bad about that. And so what I think activistic content does is it puts us on a road to move without discernment. It puts us on a road that says,” This is the direction we know we should move and we don’t really need to wait for God to move in this direction.

“And so that activistic content has that sort of effect on where we end up going.

Sam Rohrer:

It sounds to me like you’re including into this perhaps the concept of maybe pragmatism or pragmatic thought. I covered this with Dr. Renton Rathbun on the program on Monday and how we are perceiving he is and I am as well that certainly you see it obvious in a political because that’s what is so much focused on in the media, but it’s really all around where we think the ends justify the means or we put together thought and practices not really what the Bible is. We can’t wait. Is that what you’re talking about?

James Spencer:

To some degree, I think there’s a substitution of the final end. So let’s use the example of politics. We’ve had a conversation about is voting a sacred duty or a civil right? And so if we put voting in the sacred duty category, what we end up doing is we end up saying,” I have to vote. It doesn’t really matter whether it glorifies God or not. I have to do it. “And I think that’s the way that activistic content works. It sort of distances us from our basic purpose, which is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And so our aim always in any situation is to glorify God and at some points, and we see this throughout scripture, we have to do some pretty odd things that don’t seem like they’re really going to work in order to glorify God and you could just list them off Abram not taking the spoils of war from the King of Sodom because he wants to make sure that the King of Sodom can’t come back later and say that he’s the one who made Abraham rich.

That’s in Genesis 14. It’s a fascinating narrative where Abram makes a choice, does something that he doesn’t really have to do in order that God would be the only one who gets the glory for his riches.

Sam Rohrer:

Okay. So it sounds to me, James, that you’re describing this in a context that an activist content or pursuing that direction would tend to put more emphasis on me doing something, us doing something to accomplish that which perhaps we should wait on God for him to accomplish. Like the example of David cutting off the corner of Saul’s coat, that the time was going to come when David was going to take over the kingship. He could have hastened it, but that would have been the wrong thing to do, but is that kind of fitting into what you’re talking about?

James Spencer:

I think that’s a fair way to put it. Yeah. I mean, I’ve always felt that Christians don’t have the responsibility to fix the broken world that we live in. We have a responsibility to live faithfully within a world that only God can fix. And so that faithfulness may end up prompting action. It may end up prompting lament. It may end up prompting waiting, but we’ve got to discern that and look at how each one of those would glorify God.

Sam Rohrer:

All right. So ladies and gentlemen, you get the idea. The world would shape us into cutting God out altogether, putting everything into our hands. No, no, no, no. The word of God is very clear about what to do. All right, so when we come back, these things that courage us to compartmentalize and synergistically frame what we think, we’ll talk about ambulance chasing. All right, Dr. Spencer, as we continue here again, going into these other areas, again, you’ve identified three areas of content that you’ve called us that contribute to the fragmenting, put it that way, of Christian thought, and that’s being augmented and encouraged by digital technology, the thing which we have in our hand that takes and puts images and words and all of that before us in such an overwhelming volume, that it’s impossible to be dependent upon that and without being shaped by it.

And that gets into all these things that you’re talking about. And so in the essence of considering that into this segment, again, just give an overview of this first one, this first area of content that you talked about, and then move into what sounds rather like flashing light type content, ambulance chasing, and then just move right into that third area of institutionalized content, compare contrast as you go through. If you can, give an example of each just to help people frame it.

James Spencer:

Okay. Yeah. Activist content, like I said, this is content that really substitutes the end of glorifying God with some other end. I gave the example of voting previously when we view voting or political participation as a sacred duty that we have to do. I think a lot of times what we end up seeing is that it begins to compete with the glorification of God. And so what I really am looking for in activistic content is I want the glorification of God to be ever present and I want to make sure that we leave enough room for Christians to discern what actions they might or might not take as they individually and collectively pursue that glorification. Activistic content tends to narrow that down, remove the way that Christians might be able to discern different actions and still remain faithful, even if they’re doing something slightly different than someone else.

So that’s activistic content. Ambulance chasing content is kind of what it sounds like. This is Christian content that really does center on scandals and emergencies and offenses. Sometimes those are real, sometimes they’re exaggerated and sometimes they’re just false. But either way, it treats these crises as the fuel for attention and influence. And it often presents itself as a vehicle for accountability or justice. And I think sometimes those concerns are legitimate, but the defining feature of it seems to me to be attention seeking. And so the next event that can produce an outrage, the next expose, the next controversy is really what keeps that machine running. And I’d say a clear example would be a content creator who builds their platform simply by repeatedly spotlighting a high profile church leader’s failure, maybe a real abuse case or a moral scandal, and then quickly sliding into speculation, sort of connecting dots that aren’t actually supported.

It’s almost like a conspiracy theory. They mix well-reported facts with innuendo, and then they frame stories in ways that invite suspicion and conspiracy rather than really carefully seeking the truth. And I think those scandals give them credibility, and then that credibility licenses them on a wider range of claims that they may go beyond an evidence. And so I think the real problem with ambulance chasing Christian conflict content is twofold. Number one, we are supposed to be a calm people. James warns us not to be quick to anger. And so intentionally producing content that is going to elicit anger and outrage just seems to me to be problematic on its face. But I think the second side of this is that as we are looking out at the body of Christ, we need to have a much more redemptive understanding of what we’re looking at. We need to recognize, of course, that people need accountability, that sin is happening, that there are problems all over the place, but we also need to recognize that for many of those problems, none of us have the individual influence to do much about it.

And so I think the ambulance chasing content pulls us into sort of a broader narrative away from our local congregations, away from things that we could actually affect, and it calls us to pay attention to things that we can really have very little influence over. So those are some of the problems with the ambulance chasing. And then the third form of content that I talk about is the institutionalized content. And this is what I’m kind of calling … It’s a Christian content whose governing instinct is just to survive. It really wants to retain a particular status quo, and it does that often by limiting the questions that can be asked. It creates social consequences for certain lines of inquiry and builds closure around particular issues. Some of these, obviously when we dig into doctrine, we want to have certain constraints. We want to have a fairly clear understanding of what counts as being Christian, not being Christian, so something like the Nicene Creed.

If we don’t agree with the Nicene Creed, it’s not exactly intelligible what you mean when you say,” Yeah, I’m a Christian. “And so we do have those sort of hard guardrails, but then I think there’s a lot in the middle that we need to be talking about. How is it that we deal with these areas that Paul seems to address in places like Romans 14 and 15, between the strong and the weak, things like eating meat sacrificed idols and first Corinthians, these sort of malleable choices that all of us can make, how are we allowed to move and breathe in that space and really think and discern well about what should and shouldn’t be done. Institutionalized content tends to shut down that aspect of discernment. And so I would say the commonality across all three is that they tend to shut down discernment. What they’re trying to do is give a very simple answer to a complex question and really distracting God’s people from glorifying God, being right with their conscience by the kind of content that they’re putting out there.

Sam Rohrer:

So as you’re explaining these things, I am envisioning there’s two parts. It’s the giver of the information. It’s the one who’s crafting this content, whether it’s activist or ambulance chasing or institutionalized, and it is all, everybody, all of us, who are on the receiving end. It seems to me there’s both responsibility and duty on two parts when you’re talking about the problems with the sensational information and we know it’s all out there and it’s very, very easy to be attracted to it. And it’s almost like, ” Wow, what’s this next thing? “All right, if I choose to do that, all right, now I’m choosing to become a part of that and it’s therefore shaping my mind, but the person who’s putting it together also is going to have to answer to God for what they do. And it makes me think of this passage in Philippians four: eight.

“Finally, brothers, whatsoever is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, excellent. If there’s any worthy, anything worthy of praise, think on these things.” So ultimately we have to choose what goes into our mind and our eyes and our ears. As you are looking at this, now let’s put it all together, how do you divvy up the responsibility and the duty, the giver, the producer of this, or the receiver, you and I?

James Spencer:

Yeah, it’s complex. So there’s an environmental aspect, which we kind of touched on, the technological and digital age sort of environment. How is that shaping the way that information can be put out there and how is it shaping the way that we access the information that’s out there? I think we have to really wrestle with that environmental aspect. Then there’s the folks who are producing in that space, producing content in that space. The passage that I always think through even when I’m doing my podcast or whatever is only some should wish to be teachers because we are held to a higher responsibility. And so I just think that a lot of times when we’re producing content, there is a pressure to put more and more out there. And I think that part of what Christian producers really need to do is think about even if I … My goal is to not make a living off this content, my goal is to put the best possible content I can out there.

And so, we can’t be slaves to the incessant need to put a regular podcast out or put another article out there or what have you. We’ve got to be well reasoned and thoughtful about what we put out. And then I think the third leg of that, Sam, is just the people who are consuming it. And that’s actually another chapter in the book. I offer a framework called the quad where I help people understand these four different layers of any sort of content and how they can reason through the content that they’re reading and try to understand it at deeper and deeper levels. And so that I think is a really crucial aspect because I do consume an awful lot. I mean, I’ve consumed ambulance chasing content, activistic content, and institutional content, but I think it’s less about consuming the content and it’s more about the how of consuming that content.

Sam Rohrer:

And that makes me think, James, as we approach the end here, that what you’re describing is discernment and scripture tells us very clearly. And James says, “If you lack wisdom, ask we are in days of distraction, what we’re talking about. ” Jesus describes it as days of deception, and we know that that is the case where truth is substituted with something that is not true. All of this is all about us. So if there is even in this program, what are we trying to do? Well, to elevate the idea that they’re in the Christian space is a lot of information coming from these areas, activists or ambulance chasing or the institutionalized that all do not contribute to more discernment. I mean, maybe a little bit may, but they’re in this area of distraction and deception that we are to be very, very careful about, right?

James Spencer:

Yeah. When we look out at what we’re dealing with right now, what we have isn’t a fundamental breakdown. It’s an amplification. Marshall McClune, if any of your listeners are familiar with Marshall McCloony has these four laws of media, but the first one talks about how media amplifies human capacity and our human capacity is unfortunately both for good and for ill. And so what we’re dealing with now is the application of good stuff and bad stuff that humans put out there. And it’s easy to get distracted from pointing to and chloramick.

Sam Rohrer:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, doesn’t it make sense? I mean, that which we put in will be affected in what comes out. So we have to be very careful about which we think and how we respond to that. We come back, we’re going to end up with some guidance now for those who fear God. Okay, Dr. James Spencer, as we go into this final segment in the material that you’re putting together, and I referred to it a couple times, about when we take and analyze an area such as we’re talking about today, technology, digital driven technology that is coming into our eye gates and coming into our ears enhanced, to put this way, by technology, that really almost everybody is almost become dependent upon, it’s shaping as a result, it’s shaping our minds. And that content, even that Christian content, the quote unquote Christian content that finds its way into that which people watch and listen to are having impacts.

And that’s what you’re talking about here in this idea of content, be it activist content or the sensational type ambulance chasing content or institutionalized content that finds its way in that if we’re not careful, it ends up shaping our minds so that we become more like the world, compartmentalized in how we approach the world, develop this new religion of syncretism that referred to the Dr. George Barnes I’ve talked about on this program that actually comprises the vast majority of all Americans. So it’s a pervasive thing and what it does is it moves us all away from a biblical worldview from acting obediently to God’s word. And instead of God’s wording, the authority of God’s word, having its way in all aspects of our life, we cut it out and use it here, but not there. And a little bit of this, what we like and we let off that which we don’t.

And that’s really where we’re going. It’s costly, it’s fatal and it’s shaping our nation and it shaped the church in America. So that concern driving what we’re talking about here is a fundamental part. Now that being the case, just leaving that which I’ve said there is kind of like an overall description, when we become as believers distracted, when we become deceived, when we become more focused on listening and getting our input from somebody else, rather than the word of God, we cannot be the light that we are supposed to be and we cannot give glory to God that we are supposed to be. So it’s a big deal. Now, all of that being said, add to that anything that you would like, and then I would like you to answer this question. In regard to that, what advice and counsel or guidance would you give to those who fear God, these things I’m talking about, if these things concern them, what can they do and how should they approach technology we’re talking about here where it is actually driving Christian thought away from true biblical worldview thought?

James Spencer:

Yeah. A couple of things I’d say just as preliminary marks. Number one, I’m always careful when I talk about these kind of things that we need to remember that we have agency here. These devices are not yet waking us up in the morning unless we let them. They’re not yet alerting us to new content unless we let them. When we let them in, when I use my phone as my alarm clock or when I am scrolling through Instagram reels or if I’m watching YouTube videos incessantly, that’s on me. It’s not on the technology. And so I just think we need to really remember that there are small things that we can do. Don’t look at your phone first thing in the morning. Plug it in somewhere else when you go to bed. Leave your Bible on the nightstand instead of your iPhone. Little things like that are going to have a bigger impact than I think we give them credit for because they gesture toward our desire to wake up with the Lord, begin meditating on his word in the morning and then move from there.

So just as a preliminary remark, I would say that. And really where I see all of this going, Sam, is that there’s a tendency for us to panic about the technology. My approach has been to say, don’t panic about the technology. Let’s recover discipleship as the church’s coordinating mechanism. I really believe that yes, the church could be an effective anti-technology regime if we wanted to, but I don’t think we’re called to that. I think we’re called the discipleship and to the extent that our discipleship growing in and living under the authority of Christ means that we resist certain of these aspects of technology, that’s great. But discipleship is what is going to give us the discernment. Discipleship is what is going to give us the community. Discipleship is what is going to give us the coordination to really stand against anything that is coming in between us and conformity to Christ.

Anything else we do, we’ve basically just surrendered Christ’s authority and picked up another one. And so discipleship has to be central here. We have to get back to basics. And yes, I think there are techniques to help people discern and think about content, and I think we need to nest those theologically, but ultimately this is stuff that’s going to come out of discipleship. Discipleship isn’t just a moral framework, it’s a logic. It’s a way of looking at the world that acknowledges God is active and present, that Christ is an authority, and that the Holy Spirit is empowering us to move. And so I think we have to get back to that very, very basic insight if we have any hope here. So my Clarion call would just be back to basics, back to discipleship, and do some of those little things that maybe you feel like, “Ah, that’s a waste of time, James.” But it’s not a waste of big time, and I almost guarantee it’ll have a bigger effect than you think.

Sam Rohrer:

And I think that, again, by emphasizing discipleship, that is what we are to do, but that is what the Bible says. Now, if we don’t go to read what the Bible says and we let somebody else tell us what they think is the thing we do, then we’re already off track. And I think the point that you just said there, James, is really, really important, and that is technology that we’re talking about with that phone in our hand or whatever. It is not throwing itself on us. We pick it up, we turn it on, we decide where to go with it, good or ill, and therefore that brings it all back. And I think I’m just looking here at Romans chapter 12 right now, and you talk about a practical thing. I’m just going to read it. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God.

That’s our mission. It’s your reasonable service that says, “Be not conformed to this world.” What we’re talking about is of this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind. That’s what we’re talking about, our thinking that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. And of course, that only comes through the word of God and the authority of God. It either speaks to all issues of life, ladies and gentlemen, or it does not. We either live by it, fear of God and keep his commandments or pick and choose. And then at that point, then we’re not fearing him. James, we have, let me see, about one minute here left. Any final words as we wrap up this program today? Any final guidance or thoughts?

James Spencer:

Yeah. My encouragement to people is, the verse that I’ve really clawed to throughout this whole project so far has been Hebrews 5:14. And so in Hebrews 5:14, you see this vital connection between our maturity and our ability to discern. And so we need to really be focused, not on all of these things that are coming against us, but we really need to sort of be able to set those things aside and say, “But am I doing the basic things that are going to drive me toward maturity in Christ?” Because if we’re not, if we’re not moving to that place of maturity, we really have no hope of discerning in this world. We’ve got to develop those deep mature roots. We’ve got to grow up, move away from childish things. I mean, the Bible talks about this in a number of different ways, but we have to develop that deep, deep maturity.

If we have any hope of determining and deciding what is good and what is bad, how it’s good and how it’s bad, and really navigating this world in a way that is going to offer a faithful testimony to Jesus Christ.

Sam Rohrer:

And Dr. James Spencer, what you just said is right off the pages of scripture. Ladies and gentlemen, we have it in our hands. Are we reading it? Are we memorizing it? Are we praying? Are we living holy lives? If we are, then these things that we’re talking about don’t become as much of an issue as they could be. Dr. James Spencer, thanks for being with us today. His website again, ladies and gentlemen, useful togod.com, and then of course our website here at standinthegapradio.com. Thanks for listening.