73. #RU Hooked: An Interview w/ Jonathan Smith

Welcome back everybody to the 4 Freedom Podcast. It is John and my co-host James. How's it going, James? The Sons of Thunder are back from our couple of weeks off in the summer. I'm doing well. A couple of weeks. I think some people thought we were gone for good. No, we are not going for good. We are back, baby, back in the saddle and looking forward to a great episode today. Hey, in a couple of weeks, John, we'll be face-to-face and we're going to be at the sake of, for the sake of the Gospel Conference in Danville, Virginia. If you have not gotten your tickets yet, go to the Recovering Fundamentals Podcast.com and get your tickets, $50. It's going to be a great time. I've already registered. John, have you registered? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Yeah, I'm registered. We're registered. I had to think about that for a second. I was like, wait a second, did I? Yeah. Yeah. We are going to be there. Hey, one of my favorite things, John, that we did, and I would love to do it again, when we were at the meetup in Bourbon, Missouri, was we recorded some short tidbits of testimonies from people that we had met while we were there. And I would love to do that again, bring our recording stuff and record some live testimonies, live interviews. They're on the spot at some lunches and dinners and piece them all together. And so if you're going to be there, we would love to do that and get some short stories from you. And I think that those, I think we did three or four last time. Those all did well and still keep in contact with a couple of those. And so if you're going to be there, we would love to jump in and interview you for the podcast. What's your thoughts on that, John? Sounds like a great idea. And it's a good way to talk to people. You know, this is about, you know, helping people. So, you know, it's about people also being able to tell their stories. And a lot of times it's through someone's story that someone has helped. So I think that's, you know, that's definitely something we want to do. We're looking forward to worshiping and just, you know, being edified through the message preached at this conference. And I think it's going to be a good time, a wonderful time, and looking forward to that. If you guys do not listen to the Recovering Fundamentalist podcast, the mothership, as they say, then James and I were able to co-host that. And they took a summer break. And then while we were on our summer break, we filled in for them with our friends at the Young Baptist podcast, Josh Johnson and Clay Maynard. And so that episode is up on theirs. We may link that episode to this episode. If you don't already listen to the RFP, you know, you may want to go check that one out. I think it was good. And there's also some really other good ones by the other podcast hosts that filled in. And some really good stuff that was done there. So, you know, we're back in the saddle. Back at it, James. And all the network's going to be there. We're all going to be able to be at that meetup and the gathering that we've got. So hopefully you'll be able to come and see some of your friends, see some of your family, and have a good time. John, today we've got an interview with Jonathan Smith. He's a great author. He's at a Faith Lafayette Ministries up in the Northeast. Lafayette, Indiana. Indiana. That's right. I always think of Lafayette, Louisiana. Indiana. And so he's going to be here. We're going to jump on with him in just a minute. And we're going to talk through a book that he wrote. So I'm super excited about this interview and about what he's going to be able to offer our listeners. If you know someone that struggles with technology or struggles with social media, this will be a great, helpful interview. So hopefully you can jump on with us. If you don't think you struggle with social media, everybody needs to listen to this because it's just good. It's like, I don't know. I mean, I think that people that think that they're okay may need to listen to this. Yeah. So, well, without further ado, let's roll our intro and get started with the interview. I do not mean to be mean. I do mean to be mad. Those that criticize this kind of preaching, they don't like authority. If you ain't got the King James, you ain't got, hey, you don't have a King James. You don't have a Bible. And it'd be surprised. Son, don't go to sleep while I'm talking. Hey, hey, hey. Don't, don't, don't you lay your head back. I'm, I'm important. I'm somebody. I love you. You know I love you. Have I convinced you I love you? Yeah. You better, you better nod your head. Yes. All right. Come on. Put it right there. All right. You stay awake and you listen to me. I still believe if you have cold day and healthy pride, get my family to a woman. I'm a preacher. When you got dressed today, you dressed deity. This is the For Freedom podcast, a podcast that is part of the RFP network that seeks to bring freedom in Christ from the spiritual abuse of legalism. Now here are your hosts, John Hollifield and James Saferit. And so fundamentalism is designed to unpack the idea of authority from scripture. The problem with that is that that's not the defining principle in scripture. It is a part of scripture. But the defining principle in scripture is love. And now I'm not saying that all men who sit under that teaching will become abusive. But what I'm saying is the ones who are abusive will be drawn to that sort of teaching. I don't want to give people just a list of things they can start doing differently until they have a heart out of which they're going to be doing those things differently. But I think bitterness is different from hurt. I would say that hurt or even abuse does not have to result in bitterness. Well, it's an honor to have with us today an interview with Jonathan Smith out of Faith Lafayette Ministries. And we're going to be talking through a book that he wrote. And we are honored to have him on. As we get started, I'm going to read his biography. Just to give you a heads up of who he is, he's been the Director of Technology for Faith Ministries since 2001. He's a national conference speaker and author. As we'll be talking through his book today, he leads and oversees the technology departments at multiple of the faith's campuses and facilities. In these roles, Jonathan has had the opportunity to use his passion for things, technology, things of technology to honor Christ and to help others do the same. He has provided input and expertise for two engagements at the White House during the Obama administration. He's used social media to build connections with NASA, to help promote space exploration, and to fuel his hobby of chasing rockets. He's a frequent presenter of biblical counseling, church technology, and leadership conferences, and speaks at parenting workshops across the country. From 2003 to 2015, Jonathan also served as a deacon at Faith Church. Prior to joining the team, he worked at IT and media-related fields. His career in radio began as a weekend board op and news editor. And then he moved into live radio and on-air personalities and commercial voiceover artist. Following his time in radio, Jonathan worked as a Star Trek TV franchise and promotions and continues to be a devoted Trekkie today. Jonathan attended Purdue University and has a bachelor's degree from the University of Phoenix in management and information. It's an honor having Jonathan here with us today. Jonathan, welcome to the podcast. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. And I appreciate you reading all of that boring information, some of that I've even forgotten about. Yeah, most of that was true. That's great. I love it. Well, Jonathan, give us sort of an update. Some of our listeners may know what's happened at Faith Lafayette. There was an ordinance that was drawn up by the county to limit some of the biblical counseling that you guys do. And I think it's been withdrawn now. Sort of give us an update on what's happened there and help our listeners out a little bit. Sure. The ordinance in – you have to kind of understand our geography a little bit. There are two towns divided by the Wabash River, Lafayette and West Lafayette. Faith has campuses in both. The ordinance was drawn up by the city council of West Lafayette. So it would have impacted just our operations on that side of the river. But, yeah, the goal of the ordinance was basically to ban any form of conversion therapy. And Faith has never practiced that. But the ordinance came out basically saying if you do that or you do that even in a private fashion, there were going to be fines. And it was going to be a fairly big step of interrupting in terms of what we do and just getting in the way of what parents and families were to do just in terms of, hey, I've got questions about what the Bible says about this. And if you approach the topic from a biblical perspective, it could be viewed in a negative light in terms of what the government was thinking of this conversion therapy. So, unfortunately, it came up. The biblical counseling movement rallied behind it. The West Lafayette City Council folks got just a barrage of communication from all over the country, even all over the world. People just stepping up and expressing the right for us to practice and to teach what we believe the Bible says. And as a result, I mean, it did make a bit of a dust-up, but it eventually got with the drawn. I think it's a, you've won the battle, we haven't won the war kind of a thing. I don't think it's over. But it was very interesting to watch that just kind of explode so fast. And then eventually the Lord was good. He blessed the efforts of the church and of others, and it was stopped for now. Yeah. And I had heard it on multiple platforms that I listened to before John had shared it with me, what was going on. I think Al Mohler had talked about it a little bit, and some other organizations had mentioned what was going on, which is great for publicity that people still stand up for the Bible, still stand up for biblical counseling, which is what we are here for. And so I'm glad to hear that. Have you all had any talks as far as do you think they're going to try to redo this after the midterms? Yeah. I mean, who knows? The elections obviously change things. You just have to take it a day at a time. So you don't really know what's going to happen in the city of West Lafayette. You know what's going to happen in the city of Lafayette or the state of Indiana or wherever you may be. I think what I got out of a lot of that was the people of the Lord came together. It wasn't so much about stepping on face toes. It was you're stepping on the freedom of religion and the practice of what we believe the Bible says about specific topics. And if you think it's only going to happen here, the bigger picture is it's going to continue happening. The devil is still doing his thing. We still have an enemy. And so it's are the people is the church ready to fight that battle as it comes because it's going to move across the country and the election is going to change the direction it takes or if it gets put on hold or if it gets ramped up. It does matter. You know, one of the encouraging things that we took away from that was, you know, it does matter. You people should be voting. People should be participating in the process because this is the kind of stuff that can come out years after or years before an election. John? That's good stuff. And I think that the one of the things that was that you said was, you know, conversion therapy is not it's not what we do. In fact, biblical counselors would be like very much adamantly against conversion therapy. And so what was going on there is it was sort of like a underhanded sort of sleight of hand going in there saying conversion therapy, but then all encompassing everything that would do to try to, you know, go after a biblical based religious model and that kind of thing. And so those are things that I think people need to keep an eye out on. And so we appreciate Faith's Church is sort of being point on that and Pastor Vyers is leadership there. And we definitely were people that were praying for the ministry and praying for you guys. And but today we are excited because Jonathan wrote a book and this is a book that we think is timely and a book that is a very interesting conversation. She probably wouldn't hear a lot of conversation like discussions about. But I think that is something as Christians we really need to to to take some account of and to take some some take seriously. And that is about social media and our our interaction with social media. And the book is called Are You Hooked? And it came out two years ago, Jonathan. It's been out for a while. I think it actually came out in 2017. It amazes me how it continues to get. You mentioned more timely, you know. The social issue, you can't turn the news on without seeing and reading about social media. So it has been very timely, even though it was written in technology terms eons ago. It does seem to still have a very unique niche to fill. Yeah. That's good. And, you know, from and we share as we talked before we got on there, we're on there with a lot of history, similar history. And social media growing up was this everything's anti. You can't be on social media. I can remember kids getting demerits in college for having a Facebook account. And I think John at the school, the Christian school he went to, I can remember kids that were there that got in trouble for having social media. And I flip onto social media now and it's like, hey, follow this same college that has social media and come watch us and come be a part of what we've got going on online. And so how the tides have turned in so many areas where kids were getting almost kicked out of college in these Christian universities, where now these Christian universities are using this technology for their advantage. And so we'll just jump start trying to jump right into it. Why did you feel led to even write this book even back in 2017? And sort of give us your thoughts there. You guys are making me feel old. When I was in college, social media was the farthest thing from anybody's mind. No, the genesis for me was in the early 2010s, I had noticed social media start to, you know, social media is young. I mean, Facebook, Twitter, all that stuff started in 2006, 2007. So this is not something that's been around for a very long time. And I got involved early because I'm a tech guy. I'm a geek. You know, I have an account on every platform. I don't use them all, but I like to experiment with them all. So as new stuff evolves, I get out there and play around. I realized, once I realized I could use social media for extortion to get what I wanted out of it, I realized there was going to be a need for young people, my own children and other people, to learn how to use this thing responsibly. And then I realized it was going to grow beyond just young people. Adults were struggling here, too. I used social media back in 2010 to get exclusive access to a space shuttle launch at the NASA Kennedy Space Center. And I got it strictly because of connections through Twitter and how NASA was trying to use Twitter to promote space exploration, to promote what NASA does. Which I thought that's a fascinating way to use social media. And it was young. So we're trying to see how it was going to play out. But when I got involved and I got to experience some of the benefits of that and going to places that no one else got to go and standing so close to rocket launches, you could feel the heat kind of a thing coming off of the flame. I thought, I wonder if social media can be better used, not just within our families and within Christian circles, but within our ministries. You know, NASA is hanging a carrot out there to get us to promote space exploration. And the carrot being, come join us, we'll give you exclusive access. The church has a lot more to promote than exclusive access to a rocket launch. You know, we have a thing we like to talk about called eternal life. So how can the church use social media? So that was kind of the starting point in my own mind. And then as time went on, I realized that young people were struggling here. And then I watched their parents struggle. You know, how do you let somebody go loose on this thing and not go crazy? How do you, how does it turn into an addiction so fast? What is the addicting aspect of this? I've never felt addicted to it. I mean, I can let it go pretty fast. You watch young people today and they can't turn it off. They can't set it down. And then as time went on, it became, you know, the Bible does have answers here. You know, biblical counseling doesn't teach us that you go somewhere else because the Bible can't solve your problems. You know, the Bible wasn't surprised by Twitter. The Trinity wasn't sitting in heaven going, oh no, they invented Facebook. The Bible has the answer. So how do we connect what the Bible says with the current technology of the day? So folks are living their lives both online and offline in a fashion that honors Christ. That's awesome. And, you know, so often how, you know, as a youth pastor, I see teenagers who struggle with their, we, when I did this study and I use your material on some things, I did a, I just did a quick poll with our teenagers. And I've shared this with our church and I had them all get out. We had just gotten to camp. We were up in Gatlinburg and had them take their phone out. And I said, what is your screen time average for last week? And I had one teenage girl, her average for the week, every day was 14 hours a day. That was her average. And I said, you've got to be kidding me. 14 hours a day. I said, there's only 24 hours a day. You're spending over half of your time in front of a screen. And she said, yeah, you know, she started talking to us about some other things, but they are so hooked. They are so drawn to it. They talk about the, you know, how the dopamine levels in our brain, how when there's a like or a share, our minds just go crazy. And that's what they are drawn to. And they're drawn to just continually scrolling and continually watching this device. And so I thought it was so helpful as I was reading through this book. And I encourage all of our listeners, if you haven't got this book, go and get it. We're going to talk through some ideas as well. Yeah, I think, James, you know, my time working with teens, too. I think we both sort of like one of the things that you, if you ever work with young people, one of the things I think that just sort of hits you is you recognize there's a problem there. But I think the thing that Jonathan has pointed out is that after you sort of get past the initial problem with teenagers, and you work with adults, I think you see that there's a problem with adults and social media as well. I mean, it's not just isolated to young people. You know, adults are struggling navigating this technology. And, you know, just the same issues that you see with young people with relationships and then with addiction, with, you know, likes and shares and posts. I think adults are right there in the middle of it as well. And today's teens are tomorrow's adults. And this problem will perpetuate if the church doesn't figure out a way to teach today's teens and today's adults for the next generation, because it's not going to get better. You know, I can't predict anymore. If I could predict this, I'd have a lot of money. But I can't predict what the next big social media thing is going to be. No one really can. But the technology is going to continue to evolve. We have to be ready to teach and to put the foundation in for young people and adults to be able to handle it in a way that honors Christ, because it's going to be a long term. No matter what happens in the election, no matter what happens with the big tech regulation, no matter what happens there, social media is here to stay. And we're going to have to be willing to deal with it in a Christ honoring fashion for the long haul. And that's why the book was positioned to be for teens and those who care about them. We want parents to go through this. We want them to go through it with the young person. And I love it when I hear churches and youth groups going through it. We want to do both because it's a two-sided street right now because a lot of it is mom and dad aren't aware. And I think that James had pointed out that in the book, you provide some great evaluation questions. So you may be listening so far at this point and think, okay, well, my heart's beating a little bit fast. I'm a little bit concerned. Okay. But let's get a little bit more specific because James, because Jonathan has provided in the book, like some great sort of evaluation questions for that. James, did you, were you going to go there? Yeah. Let me go ahead and read this. And it says, I like how you said, before you say you don't have a problem, let's begin asking ourselves some questions to see if we have a problem or not. And so the first question is this, do you ever walk and post from your device at the same time? And interrupt me at any time if you want to say something. Well, that's one of my favorite ones because I travel a lot. I'm in an airport every week almost. And yes, I mean, the answer to that one is always yes because I watch adults do that. You know, you're trying to walk down a crowded airport hallway and then you're running into people because whatever is on the screen. And rarely is it their next flight. It's, you know, oh, they're FaceTiming live their airport experience or, you know, they're, you know, they're on Facebook live or they're, they're, they're eye messaging somebody. I mean, there's, yeah, you watch people. That one's one of my favorites, especially as I people watch because you just see it. I live near Purdue University. And every time there's footage on TV of students on campus, you know, the vast majority of them are not walking, watching where they're going. They're looking down at a device. Very much so. Second question. Do you use your device while driving without using their hands-free connection? I would say every person in America that's got a device would probably say yes to this question. And the challenge with this one is it's illegal now in almost all 50 states to touch your phone while you're driving. Yeah. Yeah. I just recently got a ticket. Not for this. Not for this. But I got a traffic violation ticket and had to go to a traffic school. So the police sergeant that is like teaching the traffic school was going through these types of things. And I sort of got bent out of shape because of the whole seatbelt law, because I'm like, that should be my decision. And then he talked about the device law for the state of Tennessee. And I said, how much is the fine for the device law? Sixty dollars. I said, does it go on your record? No. And I said, that is more dangerous than somebody just deciding, you know, on their own personal decision not to wear their seatbelt. I think that's more dangerous because that puts other people on the road at risk whenever you have the device in your hand. And his response was, it's just hard to enforce. It is very hard to enforce. I mean, we see it at stoplights. You can look at the car next to you or, you know, you pass a car that seems to be going rather slowly. And you can tell the person is looking down at a device or something. The walking and the driving, though, are connected because I watch people that are walking and not paying attention to where they go. The damage you can do there, the amount of force of your body moving or going into something is limited versus when you're in charge of a vehicle that's got a lot of mass and moving at a high rate of speed and you're not paying attention to the control. But your point is really valid. Why is it legally? Why is it not that big of a pain point? Yeah. This number three I've seen more with teenagers over the last 10 years in ministry than any other thing. Does your anxiety raise when you are separated from your device? Does all of a sudden you begin to have these panic attacks of what's going to happen? Why am I away from my phone? Why don't I have this with me? Someone's texting me, whatever it could be. And all of a sudden your anxiety begins to raise when that phone's not around you. And the social networks have admitted that this is an issue, that this is where it's fascinating to follow the trend. You know, Instagram saying we're going to hide the number of likes so that you can't actually see how many dopamine hits you're getting, if you want to use the terminology, from those likes. So the social networks, they admit that, but they don't come out and say it in that fashion. They're just trying to modify the way their platforms work to make it less addictive to hide that still there, but to hide that information and to prevent you from liking something because you can see that 4 million other people already also like that same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I remember watching that documentary on the social dilemma. And I remember one of the guys that were being interviewed said that he was on the development team at Facebook whenever they were discussing trying to come up with the like button. And his quote was, when we were developing that, we were thinking of a way that we could create more positivity in the world. He said, we had no idea we were going to create a monster that 13 year old girls were going to, their self-esteem was going to be created by the base of how many likes they got on their selfie. Oh, yeah. And that's where, you know, I don't believe that any of these platforms started out to be a source of evil or to be a negative influence in our lives. And you look at the development of Facebook and college worlds and you look at how Twitter came out. They were just not aware of how powerful the curse of sin is and how the masses were going to take anything that comes out in society today, whether it's made by a social media company, big tech, or even by a church, and how it's going to be perverted because of the curse of sin. Yeah. Number four, do you get nervous wondering what others are posting about you? I don't. I just always assume it's negative. Number five, do you get concerned that there are activities taking place without you there? That's the whole Monday morning. Yeah, it's FOMO. It's the whole Monday morning in school. Back when I was in school, we had none of this. So we just talked really loudly about the stuff we left people out of. Yeah. Well, now that FOMO is 24-7, 365 because it's living in real time when you are missing out. Yeah. Yeah. Number six and seven, I think that they go so hand in hand. And I think we see it, I guess I'm seeing it more now than I ever have on social media with some of the various platforms that I'm on and some of the groups that I'm in. But do you ever argue with people online and have those arguments ever spilled out into the real world? You know, how many times are we just, to coin the phrase, I don't know who ever said it first, keyboard warriors, where we're just constantly, we're picking a fight online, but we would never say those things in front of someone's face. And I think these two things, and even the arguments that spill over into the real world, I don't, I'm not seeing those arguments into the real world as much as I used to. Man, we used to, that used to be part of, in high school, man, college, we had those debates face-to-face where those face-to-face debates have now ceased and they're all online. And we don't have to worry about someone's reaction to our face. Well, you can hide behind the anonymity, or not even the anonymity, you can hide behind your screen. People know who you are, but they're physically not able to get to you. It does spill out when you have, you know, the fights and the brawls happening because of a dispute over social media. And that's more of a young person thing versus a, you know, adults are going to argue about politics. And rarely does that turn into fisticuffs in the mall like it can for a young person arguing over a romantic interest. However, it has, you know, ratcheted up the whole, you can find somebody online to believe what you believe, no matter what it is you believe. You can have a movement for just about anything. And so when you're creating a hostile environment or you're arguing within that movement, that can spill out, even in the adult realm, into the real world. And that's where, and this is not a conspiracy theory statement, but that's where, you know, the whole Russian influence on elections, what's true news, what's fake news, all of this stuff that spills into social media. You know, it takes the wisdom of Solomon to get on Facebook anymore and know what you can trust. Any of these platforms, you know, you scroll through Instagram feeds and you see these photographs of these great products. Is that real? Is that not real? But those what's real and what's not real can make that arguing ramp up because you'll see people talking about, did you see this on Instagram? Did you see this on Facebook? Did you see this online? And then the argument starts right there. Well, I think it's true. I think it's wrong. And all that's based on, well, let's go back to the source of truth. Do you even know if what you're arguing over is real or not? Or is that just a Photoshopped picture of, or did that person really lose 400 pounds? Or, you know, did that hair restoration product really work? That's hilarious that you said this. There was, I think, two or three years ago, there was a story that would pop up on a Facebook feed because we're here in Tennessee. And it would say, like, I think the one that I remember seeing was, had Jim Carrey's face on it. It said, Jim Carrey says that he just loves the people of Murfreesboro, Tennessee. And then you click on it, and it has this story about how he was, he was driving through, and he had a flat tire. And two or three people from the area stopped and helped him change the flat tire. And I saw so many people that I knew coming in. I knew I just loved this guy. I knew this. And then two days later, I see the exact same story attached to another celebrity's face. It was totally fake. But people were like. And that's, you know, somewhat innocent. Where that gets ratcheted up is when you're talking about a political issue or you're talking about a religious issue or you're talking about a moral issue. The whole Roe v. Wade thing happening blew up social media because people started, you know, venting their perspectives online. And then it's amazing to people you know, you go online and you read what they're writing or what they're reposting. And it can really, it just makes your head spin when you think about you're espousing what you believe in a very public fashion. And in a very fashion that doesn't help you get along well with others or would not be able to help you lead anybody else to Christ. Well, that's a great point there at the end. That is a fantastic point. Because I think so many times the idea of getting my opinion across becomes the paramount thing and not your witness for or testimony for Christ. Not thinking through the ramifications of how someone's going to see the attitude in that. And Jonathan, I think that James and I have been talking about this privately about how it seems like some sins that are in like normal interaction with people are easy to identify. Like maybe gossip. But it seems like now with the institution of social media, people will think that they can do things like that. And it never enters their mind they are committing that same sin. Oh, you're exactly right. There's a compartmentalization between the physical world and the virtual world. Unfortunately, the Bible doesn't have that split. You know, the Bible is sufficient and God is sovereign and all powerful over all worlds. The two we have now and any more we may invent in the future. And there is no gossip online is just as heinous as sin is gossip in front of somebody's face. There's no gossip behind their back. And there is no differentiation. It's the same thing with arguing and getting angry with somebody because they don't share your viewpoint. Whether you do that online or in person, it's what's going on in your heart that's still the sin issue. And it applies in the metaverse and wherever else you may be. That's a great sort of segue into the next question, James. Yeah. Next question. And this one, really, parents, if you're listening and you've got young kids on social media and are hooked to their advice, this question really needs to get your ears open because are you or are your kids slow to obeying when you have asked them to give up their device to go do something? If they're on their device, they're watching a TV show and you say, hey, I need you to go clean your room or go pack your clothes for school tomorrow. How quickly are they to give that up to go and do that? Reveals, again, this heart issue. And we're going to get to it in a minute of where are they at spiritually in their heart. It's just a great evaluation question to ask. And you're right. Parents ask this. I mean, I see adults that have that struggle when you have to put the device down for a period of time. But what is your reaction when you need to get away from it? I like to get away from mine. I mean, I throw it in the ocean and the waves bring the device back to me. You know, I try to separate it right to me. I mean, you've got to bury the thing and then you bury it and a turtle pushes it up because they don't want it. So, I mean, I have the opposite problem. I probably should spend more time on my device. But you see this a lot, especially when kids go to school or when there's a need to separate. Go to the theater. Go to a movie theater. Go to a musical and watch adults struggle. Can you put your device off for a couple of hours to pay attention to what's happening on a stage or on a screen somewhere else? Yeah. Number nine. Have you ever taken a compromising photo of someone or had a compromising photo taken of you? I like how you said in the book, and it's so true, nothing that you do on the web or on the internet can be taken down. It's forever. It's always there. Someone can find it. Someone can reach it. And how are we mentally being prepared for these things? And how are we just, you know, doing things flippantly because someone asks us to a young age and now it's out there for the whole world that someone could see one day? It's somewhat sad we have to talk about that. But, you know, everybody has a camera on them all the time now. You're always being filmed, whether it's, you know, security cameras in a store or somebody else filming something and you happen to be in the background. But everybody's taking pictures of things. And young people, they're 110% into their relationships without understanding the challenges of those relationships. And where this plays out is you're my current romantic interest. I want to do everything I can to keep it that way. So if you want a compromising photo or you want to ask me for one because you're trying to leverage the relationship against me, people get themselves in these situations. And this is an adult problem, too. Sextortion is a thing amongst adults. Adults that are my age, older, getting themselves into fake online relationships, giving away money and giving away pictures of themselves that they would never take otherwise. Otherwise, this one crosses all age groups. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Definitely. Would you rather spend time with your device instead of family and friends? And I think to our heart, we probably would say no. But then when we actually get to the heart of it and we say, OK, what are you spending most of your time with? Are you spending 14 hours with your mom and dad? Right. Or do you fly across the country for a family reunion and everybody's sitting in the room looking at their screen? I could have done that and stayed home and not comb my hair. Yeah. Why are we gathering in person and spending all of our time looking at our pieces of glass instead of looking at interacting with each other? Yeah. So good. That's good, Jonathan. Oh, my goodness. Number 11. Did you and two left. Did you check your device often when you should be? Do you check your device often when you should be paying attention to a movie, church service, concert, TV or even a classroom setting? So, again, asking ourselves these hard questions. And then number 12. And parents be aware of this as well. But students as well. Kids as well. Do you have fake accounts that you only show your parents or accounts that you don't show them at all? And I think this one has gotten so – this was five years ago when you wrote this. I think this now, that one right there is so huge nowadays that someone has accounts and accounts and accounts that no one even knows about. I saw it even at summer camp this year. I had a teenager show me a picture or something that she took. And I said, was that – I said, I didn't see that on your Snapchat. Because she said, oh, this is on a different – this is on a different one. This is on one that my parents can't see. And I said, what? And she said that out loud. Yeah. She didn't even care. And I'm like, well, you probably need to tell your parents you've got these. I don't know. They don't care. But all of a sudden, these are their reactions. These kids have things that their parents don't know about. And they're just withholding information. And so I think this trend has gotten so huge in our culture today that we need as parents. And I've got a nine-year-old who's going to be in this world quicker than I ever imagined that we need to be aware of, that we need to know what's going on. Jonathan, what would be a heart motivation for something like that, like creating a fake account? So I'm not a smart person. So I can barely handle one account. And if you follow me on any of these, I put the same thing everywhere because I'm just not creative or smart enough to curate a content for different audiences on different platforms, let alone curating different content for different audiences for different accounts within the same platform. So the heart issue, I think that in my – so I don't do it because I'm stupid. The heart issue for young people is that which angle is going to get me the most popularity? Which angle is going to get me the most likes, the most reactions? And part of that, that's why there's influencers online. These online influencers know how to generate traffic and content and likes based on their audience. That's what these young people are doing when they have multiple accounts. And then they have – because I want the attention. It's all about me. You get more to me. And if I can't do that with one account, I'm going to have 20 accounts. And then you become a slave to your audience. So it's not a matter of posting things to please the Lord. It's posting things to please your audience, to get those likes, to get those comments, to get that traffic flow. So – and they want to be popular. So you have that – this audience, I'm popular. Here's my Sunday audience. Here's my Monday audience. Here's my, you know, in-school audience. Here's my out-of-school audience. Here's the account my parents and all of their friends can see. And then here's all my private messaging groups. And the content within all those, again, you can't hide anything from the Lord. But sometimes we think we can. So we have a private message feed over here that's pure sin. And over here on this side, we're posting a Bible verse, a picture of the sunset. It's pushing the audience to get that like, to get that popularity. And they will – that's why you talked about the young lady with 14 hours. It takes a lot of time to do this. And to manage your personality, to manage your online personality across all these different audiences. Well, as we continue on and we'll sort of get more to the heart of this, the first thing that we must address in everything is our relationship with Jesus. If Jesus, as you said in the book, is the throne of our heart, then all other ways through the Holy Spirit we're going to be able to have the power to overcome these things. But you list four things that could potentially be the throne of our heart. Pride, popularity, rebellion, and acceptance. And so let's just talk through these one-by-one pride. As pride begins to seep in, as pride begins to – you want to be noticed, you want to be seen, you want to be heard by these things. How can pride take over the throne of our heart and make us do things that we never would have thought we would have done? Well, you know, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. And you can turn that around. You know, the abundance of the heart, our fingers type. The abundance of the heart, we post on platforms. So when pride sneaks in there, it goes back to the why I have five accounts. Well, I want to master each one of those, and I want to get as many likes and comments as I can. So I'm going to feed my desire to be satisfied. I'm going to use, you know, satisfaction here on this earth. And so my pride drives me to say I'm going to have these accounts. I'm going to hide stuff from different people. There's also the element of I'm going to be the next big thing. Every young person wants to be the next pick your online star. My daughter doesn't like it when I tell this story, but we were at a restaurant in Newport Beach, California, and we were sitting there eating with some friends, and she just starts getting all giddy. And I said, what's going on? What are you? Is there somebody here we should know? And there was some guy she knew on in from YouTube sitting at a table across the way. So I said, well, let's go meet him. He's got all these followers. You know who he is. I've never heard of him. I mean, I know what she watches on YouTube, but that doesn't mean I know the names of every person she watched the video from. So we went and met him. She was as giddy as I was when I met Captain Kirk. I mean, it was just that kind of experience. And that's the goal. They want to be that next big star. They want to be the next big influencer. So that drives them to create content and to do things that don't focus on pleasing the Lord, but focus on how do I become famous? And our fame is not in and of ourselves. Our fame should be given to us from above. And young people don't see it that way. It's I'm going to make myself a big deal. Yeah. I think you hit hit a chord right there because I think that that whole idea of being an influencer has become the biggest thing in culture right now. Everybody is I mean, there's it's no talent involved. Maybe sometimes there is some talent involved, but it's all about being an influencer and then getting ad deals and that kind of thing and trying to grow up. And it's it's it's it's just sometimes a junior hire what they want to be when they grow up. When I was a kid, we all wanted to be policemen or firemen or, you know, pilots or something like that. You ask kids what they want to be. I want to be an influencer. Yeah, I want to be a mystery. You have a sixth grader that wants to grow up and be an influencer. OK, but what are you influencing people for? That goes back to the heart. Are you influencing people for good? Are you influencing people for evil? Or do you even know what you're going to influence them for? Well, I just want to make a lot of money. OK, well, we're back to the heart again. What do you what are you trying to accomplish? Yeah. And ultimately, as you've alluded to many times in that right there, pride leads to popularity because you want to be the person. It's not just on the street. You want to be the person that some stranger you've never met before comes up to you and begins to worship you for how well you've presented yourself online, how well you've made deals and the money you've made and the things that you can give away and how you can benefit them. And you want that feeling of popularity. It goes back to even as a kid in five, six, seven years old when you're playing dodgeball and you want to be that first kid picked. OK, because you're you're man, you're puffed up, man. I'm the best out here. I'm the first one. No one wants to be the last person picked in our heart. You may. Well, it's OK. You know, they say the best for last. You can make excuses. But that popularity that that leads to next begins to rule every aspect of our life. We begin to make compromising photos. We begin to say things online that we wouldn't say because how popular can I get? And this begins to drive us to this next thought of popularity. And it's 24-7 now. So it used to be, you know, before 2007, which wasn't that long ago, you know, you could kind of control this because you only had to be good when you were with other people. You only had to focus on putting on your your airs or pretending to be something you weren't when you're around other people. Now it's 24-7, 365. Your popularity online. You make one bad post. You can't delete it. That's the funny thing. As adults, we all talk about a now deleted tweet, you know, or somebody posted something they shouldn't have and it got screen grabbed, but the celebrity deleted it. You know, the young kids, they don't even connect with that. But your popularity lives with you all the time. There is no separation from it. And when you have that persona and your pride is driving it to be popular, you're going to spend 14 hours a day because you don't want to risk being left out. You don't want to risk something moving on without you because you want to keep that going all the time. It doesn't ever stop. I remember watching this happen to someone who would make social media videos about the gospel. And they'd make social media videos about, you know, bringing a scriptural truth to someone hurting. And then they'd make a rant video about some kind of political situation. And you watched it. Which one ended up getting more views, more likes, more shares was the rants. And so eventually what happened was all of these other things ended. They stopped happening. And everything about the platform, platform became the rant videos to where that's what they're known for now. And now you can see clear as day everything that is done is used to grow and get more popular and to just feed that base. And the social media companies, because of some recent lawsuits and government intervention, have had to kind of peel back the curtain, if you will, and explain how below the layers it works. And what you just said is how it works. Their algorithms rate the negative higher than the positive because that's where people are going. And so when they assign value to that anger icon on Facebook versus the like icon, the anger ones get higher values. And because what you said organically happens in the sin, curse, human nature, that's how the social companies are balancing the traffic. Because the negative is what keeps it going. The conspiracy theory is what keeps it going. That kind of stuff is the value of the platform anymore because that's where everybody goes. Because if your business model is based on people clicking a reaction button of some kind, then you're going to push that forward regardless of whether the reaction is positive or negative. Very much so. So pride, popularity, and then we get to this term rebellion. How does rebellion play a part in this? I like the definition that you gave. It's simply to resist authority, to resist someone that is in control over you. Our goal is to be under Christ and to be in subjection to him and what he would have for us. But all of a sudden we begin to rebel against him. We begin to rebel against our authority, our parents. How does this popularity then evolve into rebellion? Well, the idol of our heart is what drives a lot of what we do. And so when you want to be popular and you want to spend 14 hours a day online and your parents say, why don't you put the phone down and eat some real food and communicate with people in 3D instead of in 2D? And you say no. The no response is when you've just rebelled. And this happens all the time. I mean, when the government or the law says don't hold your phone while driving, I have a choice to make in my car when I need to pick up the phone and I don't have CarPlay set up or something like that. At that moment, I'm going to either rebel or submit. And with devices, because it's with us all the time and around us all the time, the rebellion comes out pretty clear pretty fast. Hey, we're going to have a family dinner and the family rule is we don't have devices at the table. You're going to learn pretty fast if there's rebellion. And when I speak on this topic, I show a commercial of a family. The commercial is selling lasagna. And the point of the commercial is our lasagna is so good, your child will put their device down and come to the dinner table. That's a commercial selling lasagna. Why do we need good lasagna to help kids put their devices down and obey their parents? The Bible helps us with that far greater than any kind of lasagna ever could help us out with that. And so the rebellion is just the natural in the sin curse world, the natural end flow of I want to be popular. I want to be accepted. I want that my pride is driving a lot of this. And so as a result of that, we have to constantly be submitting ourselves and humbling ourselves and asking the Lord for help because this side of heaven, the rebellion comes easy. And even in a lot of popular culture, rebellion is a positive thing. You know, I like Star Wars. The good guys in Star Wars are the rebellion. But rebelling against authority, rebelling is not a biblical concept that's called out in the Bible as sin is something that we have to be constantly on guard against. Yeah. And let's talk for a moment as we're thinking through this. And you said in the book about an echo chamber. Why does it? What is the appeal of an echo chamber on social media? Well, in part, it's self-validation because as it bounces around and what you throw out there, it comes back. As it gets louder and louder, all of a sudden, you're one view you perceive as being the view of millions. If I believe that the grass is black and the native color of grass is black, I'm convinced I could go online and start a movement that could be pretty strong that says, I believe that grass is black. The wavelength of the light reflecting off the grass is black. Well, all of a sudden, anything you believe, somebody out there is going to validate for you. And it's going to come back louder. And it gets louder and louder and louder and louder. And so I think that's happened. I mean, the grass analogy is somewhat stupid. When you go out and start throwing out your conspiracy theories, when you go out there and start throwing out your political views, based in the Bible or not, all of a sudden, you believe you're somehow right because everybody signs on and says, I agree with you. For the young girls, it's fashion. I'm going to post a picture of what I'm wearing. And somehow what I'm wearing has validity if a lot of people think it's good. No, your validity doesn't come from anybody on this planet. That's right. That's good. And then we lead into this acceptance matter, which is what you just hit on, the desire to be accepted through this rebellion, which ultimately leads us to this echo chamber, which leads us to trying to stay ahead of, I don't even know how many social media platforms there are. Every time I turn around, I hear of a new one that just came out. But wanting to be on these platforms so that someone new can accept me, someone new will like something I've done. And it drives us to how many people can accept us in our life when really it's us accepting that one person, Jesus, and trusting in him and everything that we do. But so often this acceptance drives us to rebel against our parents, rebel against our authority, rebel against everything because we want to be accepted. And this is in every day of life. This is I'm helping coach football for my nine-year-old this year, which is if you've never coached nine and ten-year-old football. We'll pray for you. Heart, thank you. Hurting cats is more likely what it should be called. But just this past week, there was a kid whose mom said that he was getting bullied, and they blamed my daughter. And she was like, at every practice. And the kid just wanted to be accepted. I'm like, hey, ma'am, my daughter hadn't even been here at any practice. This is the first practice she's been to. But we talked through it, and I helped him out. My daughter apologized if she said anything. But later come to find out, it wasn't my daughter at all. But this kid just wanted to be accepted until he came and lied so that his mom would take his side so that he could be accepted and these other kids would get in trouble. I mean, this is five-year-old, six-year-old stuff that's going on. But when it's elevated into a form of a social media platform where millions of people are interacting and accepting you, this is where we get this transgender movement where people are accepted in the things that they say and do. And when they're accepted here, they follow there because they're accepted over there, and they've been rejected somewhere else. And so they follow the form of acceptance. And what I don't think, if a five-year-old is figuring that out in the analog world, you can bet a 50-year-old has figured out how to manipulate or how to put a viewpoint out there that gets them some attention. And that's the challenge for adults online is you don't even understand what's happening with what you're reading. And the acceptance desire goes to the level of people committing suicide based on perceived online bullying. So young people that kill themselves because they're being bullied online, those things are still moving through the courts. But it's fascinating to watch. Are you legally liable if you are accused of and convicted of bullying somebody online because they kill themselves? Are we teaching that? Are we teaching our young people that actions have consequences? And are we teaching our young people to put things through a biblical worldview and a biblical filter? Because otherwise, you're just going online and you're getting pulled down whatever rabbit hole is the hole of the day. Yeah. That's good. John, what's your thoughts there? You've sort of zoned out a little bit on us and making sure you're still alive and awake over there. Come on, man. Come on. No, I mean, I honestly feel like I got to repent after this is over. I mean, Jonathan's killing me over here. But no, this is great stuff. I think this is stuff that, like I said earlier, I think there's so many things that we've gotten used to, especially let's just talk to church culture. I think we've gotten so used to certain things with the church culture as in the physical idea of interaction, sin, behavior. And I think that we haven't made the cognitive connection of these things in the digital one, in the social media realm. And I think that Christians need to come to terms on, yeah, just because this is on social media and this is happening is still sin. And it's still something that you have to be on guard for because your heart, as I'm going to throw Calvin, you know, quote here, your heart is an idol factory. And if there's anything wanting to come after your heart to create more idols in it, it is social media. Yeah. And if I could stir the pot just a little bit more, are we, as parents and as Christians, at the church level, at the corporate level, and at the family level, are we teaching biblical principles in a way that matters? You mentioned transgender. Are we teaching about what that is? Or are we letting social media teach our kids? Well, let me really stir the pot. What do your kids believe about abortion? And I'm intentionally not going to answer the question, but what are you teaching your kids about abortion? What do you believe the Bible says about abortion? Or is social media teaching your young people, pick the current event of the day. You know, right now, abortion is fairly a hot topic. What do your kids believe about abortion? More hot topics are going to come up between now and the election. That's what happens with political ads. So what are you teaching your kids about what the Bible says? You know, we used to talk about, is the world teaching your kids or is the church teaching our kids? Social media puts the world in our kids' hands 24-7, 365. There is no split from the world view. The world is shouting. Christians are whispering. Where this gets even more complicated is when you talk about matters of intimacy and sex. You know, if you're not teaching about abortion, are you teaching about what the Bible says about sex? The Internet certainly is. Social media is full of teaching an improper view, not just of sex and intimacy, but of body image, of whose image are we created in. You know, are we willing to have awkward discussions and teach our kids? And you can't do this unless you have a foundation with your young people of, I want to invest in you and teach you what the Bible has to say. So you have that foundation for whatever the next hot topic on social media that you're going to come across is. Because they're seeing a lot of the same, they scroll the same way we scroll. And if you're scrolling by something and thinking, wow, I wonder if my kids are seeing it. The answer is probably yes. But do you have the foundation with your children? Do you have that opportunity to sit down and say, hey, let's talk about what you're seeing online. Let's talk about what the Bible has to say. And let's make that application because the application will lead them into their adult life. The restrictions you place on them now will not. And the restrictions are necessary. You need to be restricting. You need to be providing some teaching opportunities because of those restrictions. But it's what you teach that lasts into adulthood. It's not the fact that right now you only allow them to be on Facebook for a certain number of hours a day. Yeah. Or Instagram or Snapchat or pick your thing. You mentioned this and we'll go ahead and for the sake of time, we need to wrap this up a little bit. It's been a great conversation. But what are some practical advice that you'd give to parents and the teens on how to use your book title, Unhooked from the Grip of Technology? For teenagers, you need to be able to have somebody you can ask that you can trust and you're willing to talk to. So if that's not your parents, I hope there's a church group or some sort of a Christian person in your environment that you could talk to and say, hey, I need help with this. And get help talking to them and get help talking to your parents. And be willing to submit to yourself and say, I want to live in a way that's God honoring. If you can't get to that point, there's not a lot we can do for you because you don't want to. If your heart isn't bent towards pleasing the Lord or bent towards constantly renewing itself to please the Lord, there's not a lot of things that are going to force you to do that, especially once you become an adult and you're not under your parents' authority anymore. For parents, first, make sure you have a relationship where your kids will talk to you. I want my kids to ask me about anything they see. I don't want them to feel the need to go anywhere else but to me and to my wife. We've had some great awkward discussions, but I want to have the opportunity to do that. I don't want anybody else doing that before I do because I don't want to unprogram. I want to be on the front end doing the programming, doing the teaching, if you will. The second thing is, are you modeling any of this? Are you doing this in your life? Do your kids see you addicted to your phone? It's hard to tell a kid who spends 14 hours on their phone to put it down when they say, but mom uses hers, 15 hours. Are you modeling? Are you willing to separate? Are you willing to teach there's a time for it and there's a time not for it? And then are you constantly renewing your life? Are you constantly saying, I need to renew my life before the Lord? I'm constantly trying to grow to become more like him. So that means I'm going to be learning. I'm going to go to my church. I'm going to go to my mentors. I'm going to go to folks in my small group and get help constantly renewing my life so that whatever I'm consuming, I'm getting a biblical worldview on so I can help pass that down to my kids. I'm not just waiting for it to all be over or hoping at some point they'll move out and I don't have to deal with it anymore. You want to invest in them and helping them lead the next generation, the next generation to become more like Christ. Yeah, that's good. So good. John? Yeah, I think maybe a good evaluation thing. I like what you said about the parents. I was going to say, you know, parents, maybe ask your kids, do you think I'm on the phone a lot? You know, that was something that hit a while back, like just out of nowhere. I think my oldest daughter said, well, you know, we were doing something like so we what we were doing is family worship every now and again. We'll say, all right, let's play family charades. And what we do is like each person gets a chance to do charades, but they have to act out another family member. And so my daughter got up there in a totally silly mode and said, who am I? And she started walking around like her phone. And everybody was like, uh, and then I put it up to her ear and started doing this number. And we were like, daddy. And she's like, no, mommy. And my wife was like, she felt so convicted. She felt awful afterwards. I was like, well, honey, I mean, maybe we work on something. And then, you know, there's been other times where they've gotten me that way. But, uh, you know, ask your kids, what do they think? And I think another good evaluation question would be this. If the only thing that anyone could know you by is your social media wall, what kind of opinion of you would they come away with? Would they see a gospel centered life or would they see your rants or would they see that you're overly focused on this one thing? I don't know. I think that the, the, the conversation today, Jonathan, thank you for the book and thank you for just the time. That's it's been awesome. Yeah. It's been great. I appreciate you having me. I appreciate what you guys are doing. And, you know, I've not heard that I'm going to use your story about your charade game. That's priceless. Um, but another way for families to learn that if you don't want to play charades, um, is just to sit down and have your kids show you what they're doing online. I'm just family time doesn't have to be overly complicated. Hey, let's just sit down and you show me some of the best time with my kids have been watching makeup videos with my daughter and playing games. I'd never heard of with my son, just letting them show me what they do online. And that's a fantastic way to learn. And then for me to invest back in them. But if that doesn't work, try the charades thing. I think that's brilliant. That's good. Well, Jonathan, if you ever get a chance to bring a friend to NASA, you look me up and I'll. I will do that. The security is kind of high, but I will definitely. That list is a mile long, just so you know. I will slot you in there. Thanks for coming on today. And thanks for this conversation. I know it's going to help many. I know that if you, like I said, if you haven't picked up his book, go and get that. You can find it probably at Amazon. We'll link it in the show notes. Yeah. John will link it in that. And so I want to be a help. And so with that being said, John. The God. Not the pastor. Be the glory. Thanks for listening to the For Freedom podcast. To find more content like this, please visit RFPNetwork.org. To find more podcasts like this one, resources and meetups. To encourage you on your journey. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

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