Notes
Introduction
1James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 140. See also Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 37-45.
1 The Barrier of Endless Distraction
1The following three paragraphs were adapted from a 2012 column and served as the inspiration for this book. See Alan Noble, “Penetrating the Electronic Buzz of the 21st Century for Evangelism,” Christ and Pop Culture (blog), November 8, 2012, https://christandpopculture.com/citizenship-confusion-penetrating-the-electronic-buzz-of-the-21st-century-for-evangelism.
2Thomas de Zengotita, Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It (New York: Bloomsbury, 2005).
3These examples are my own. Mediated was written five years before the launch of Instagram.
4Emma Barnett, “Mindfulness: The Saddest Trend of 2015,” Telegraph, January 8, 2015, www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/11331034/Mindfulness-the-saddest-trend-of-2015.html.
5One good place to start is Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2017).
6Daniel J. Levitin, The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload (New York: Penguin, 2015), 96-97.
7Ibid., 97-98.
8Ibid., 100.
9James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009).
2 The Barrier of the Buffered Self
1Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007), 3.
2Ibid., 556.
3Ibid., 304.
4Ibid., 299.
5Ibid., 25.
6Ibid., 25-27.
7James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 48.
8Taylor’s understanding of the move from a premodern world of shared faith to a modern world of endlessly contested faith naturally raises the question of whether the premodern world was the better world. There are no scales by which we could weigh the relative goodness of two massive epochs of Western civilization. How does one weigh liberty and human rights against order and community? Do the abuses of the medieval church outweigh the holistic vision of life it presented people? Do the scientific advances of modernity outweigh the dehumanization of technology? To my mind, the better question is, what can we do to mitigate the ills of modernity today? There is no returning to a premodern world, only a choosing to improve this one.
9I chose the example of uncritically supporting refugees, but my point here is not political at all. The example could just as well have been about someone uncritically adopting a radical antirefugee position.
10Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 48.
11James K. A. Smith has done an excellent job identifying how incomplete this account of belief is. See his Desiring the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 63-71.
12Please note the qualifier “popular understanding of worldview...
