Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Technology's Threat to Spiritual Formation

Image may contain: ocean, sky, outdoor and nature
View from our room, in Cancun

Linda and I are away for a break in Cancun. We are birds of a feather, in that we both love just sitting on the beach, reading, talking, and snacking.

I brought Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society along. I am researching technology and culture, and writing a book I am now calling Technology and Spiritual Formation. 

Ellul's book is not a diatribe against technology, but rather a sociology of technique. It is not about individuals, but society and culture, the technological world we live in, and how it affects and influences everyone.

This affects spiritual formation, a subject I teach in various venues. 

In 1964 Ellul write that the technological world poses a threat "to man's personal and spiritual freedom." Now, fifty-four years later, this threat has been actualized.

That's what I am writing about in my next book. Will we "determine to assert [our] freedom and upset the course of this evolution." (Ellul, xxx) 


***
My first two books are...

Praying: Reflection on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God (May 2016)

Leading the Presence-Driven Church (January 2018)

I am now writing...

Technology and Spiritual Formation

How God Changes the Human Heart: A Phenomenology of Spiritual Transformation)