This book challenged me on so many levels and I would love to share all of those with you, but that post would be entirely too long to read - and I would rather you just read the book - so instead let me summarize Reinke's main points and then I will share a few quotes that challenged me specifically.
Here are Reinke's points in summary, the last being the most important.
Our phones amplify our addiction to distractions, which splinters our perception of our place in time.
Our phones push us to evade the limits of embodiment and thereby cause us to treat one another harshly.
Our phones feed our craving for immediate approval and promise to hedge against our fear of missing out.
Our phones undermine key literary skills and, because of our lack of discipline, make it increasingly difficult for us to identify ultimate meaning.
Our phones offer us a buffet of produced media and tempt us to indulge in visual vices.
Our phones overtake and distort out identity and tempt us toward unhealthy isolation and loneliness.
Here are a few of my favorite quotes,
"If you want to internalize a piece of knowledge, you've got to linger over it. But we have been trained to not linger over digital texts." (84)
"Point-and-shoot cameras may in fact be costing us our most vivid recollections." (98)
"Compulsive social-media habits are a bad trade: your present moment in exchange for an endless series of someone else's past moments." (101)
"...if people see us bored with God, absorbed with ourselves, and conformed to worldly celebrities, they will not see the image of Jesus reflected in us. If we fail to reflect Christ, we fail to be what God created us to be; we lose our purpose." (115)
"His omnipresence shatters the mirage of anonymity that drives so many people to turn to their phones and assume they can sin and indulge without consequence." (137)
"...our hearts delight in and relish a Christ we cannot yet see, a Christ we take by faith, a Christ who is so true and so real to us that we are filled in moments of this life with a periodic and expressive joy that is full of glory. Our imaginations must come alive to Christ so that we can 'see' that we live in him, so that we can turn away from the visual vices grabbing our eyes, and so that we can live by faith and share a present joy as we anticipate the unimaginable future joy of his presence." (142)
"When I grow bored with Christ, I become bored with life - and when that happens, I often turn to my phone for a new consumable digital thrill." (143)
"My appetite for diversions and new daily curiosities has been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer the old me that lives online, but Christ living in me, and the life I now live online I live by faith in Christ, who loved me so much that he shed his blood for me." (181)
"If I consider my phone only as a tool to 'instantly express' my life, then my phone use is vain. I must ask: Am I lazy and careless with souls, ignorant of the power of words, images, and links on others? Or am I using my digital chitchat as a way to build into someone (or some online community) with a larger relational goal of edification? These questions determine whether my texts, tweets, and images are thoughtless fragments or purposeful strategies to point others to find their joy, meaning, and purpose in God. This is digital chitchat with historical (and eternal!) purpose." (184)
"Aimlessly flicking through feeds and images for hours, we feel that we are in control of our devices, when we are really puppets being controlled by a lucrative industry." (193)
"Apps can help me stay focused on my Bible reading plans and help me organize my prayer life, but no app can breathe life into my communion with God." (194)
Get this book! Read it! Apply it!
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