Christopher Nolan’s 2010 film Inception is a brilliant, often uncomfortable portrayal of a future world where sophisticated technology has unlocked the ability for people to escape reality. Through a fictional “dream-sharing” device, the characters in Inception can create, manipulate, and even invade people’s dreams. At one point in the movie, the heroes visit a scientist with the skill to make a sedative that allows for even more powerful and vivid dream-sharing. Upon seeing dozens of people in the scientist’s basement sleeping on beds, connected to the dream-sharing devices, one character asks, “These people come here to fall asleep?” The scientist answers, “They come here to wake up. The dream has become their reality.”

The writers of Inception used a science-fiction context to make a profound observation about human nature. If we can, we humans will tend to use our technology to put the world God has given us at a distance, and flee into an alternative reality that suits us. Although dream-sharing is the stuff of fantasy, there are indeed sophisticated technologies that bestow a godlike ability to create and inhabit our own universe. In fact, one of these technologies is probably in your hands or your pocket right now.

The Web, the smartphone, and social media together make up nothing less than a cultural revolution. For hundreds of millions of people, they represent the primary point of interaction with the world. We now work, learn, listen, debate, recreate, and even worship through the Internet. Given the radical novelty and enormous imprint of this technology on nearly every facet of our lives, shouldn’t we regularly be asking questions like, What kind of medium is this? Is there something here that may be influencing me at a near-undetectable level?

In fact, the answers to these questions may distress us.

Our Digital Dreamworld

The same year that Christopher Nolan fictionalized a world of escape into dreams, cultural critic Nicholas Carr published his manifesto The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Carr’s thesis is simply articulated but breathtaking in its implications: the Internet is an intellectual technology that is radically altering how we think, read, and communicate. Carr suggests that, whereas much technology (such as the plow or microscope) “extends our physical strength” into the outside world, intellectual technology — such as a clock, a map, or the Internet — directly reshapes how we think. Because of this, intellectual technologies make deeper and more permanent changes in what we believe and value. Carr writes,

Every intellectual technology . . . embodies an intellectual ethic, a set of assumptions about how the human mind works or should work. . . . The intellectual ethic is the message that a medium or other tool transmits into the minds and culture of its users. (The Shallows, 45–46)

As Carr goes on to show, the Web expresses its intellectual ethic in definite ways. Reading a physical book trains the human brain in the skills of quiet and focus, but the Web’s use of hypertext and distraction trains us in the behaviors of skimming, superficial comprehension, and flimsy, impressionistic interpretation. Online, it is very difficult to follow one train of thought deeply or be present for one particular experience or moment, because the Web’s structure emphasizes relentless novelty and diverse input (creating what Carr refers to as “the juggler’s brain”).

Carr’s analysis makes sense of a problem that many of us have. We feel that our phones, our apps, and our browsing are somehow hijacking our ability to read a book for more than few minutes at a time. We sense a diminished capacity to lose ourselves even in moments of true joy. We can detect an angrier, more defensive edge to many conversations even within the church, as people increasingly seem to talk past one another and retreat into competing enclaves that reinforce their opinions. Yet we are often unable to name this problem, and as a result, we’re too frequently left in a muddle of guilt and frustration.

Unfortunately, Christian approaches to this dilemma often settle for generalities. Like the teenage couple that just wants to know how far is too far, believers immersed in the world of the Internet often just want the bare minimum that can appear to “balance” screen time with private devotions or the weekly Sunday service. But this isn’t enough. The challenge before us isn’t to figure out how to inject a little bit of Jesus into our digital dreamworlds. It’s to wake up.

Wisdom’s Wake-Up Call

The book of Proverbs offers an especially compelling wake-up call:

Does not wisdom call?         Does not understanding raise her voice?On the heights beside the way,         at the crossroads she takes her stand;beside the gates in front of the town,         at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud:“To you, O men, I call,         and my cry is to the children of man.O simple ones, learn prudence;         O fools, learn sense.” (Proverbs 8:1–5)

“Every wise word or action has one thing in common: a deep resonance with God-centered reality.”

While it may be tempting to think that the intellectual ethic of the Internet is so far removed from the experience of the biblical authors that they offer nothing to guide us, this would be a profound mistake. Lady Wisdom calls out to digital sleepers, inviting them to feast at her house. This is an invitation we need, because it’s precisely wisdom that our screen-addled age lacks. Wisdom, after all, is nothing less than the habit of living in accordance with what’s real. The God who really exists and the world he really made require us, as some theologians have put it, to “live with the grain of reality” rather than against it. While living wisely has many different facets, every wise word or action has this in common: a deep resonance with God-centered reality.

The connection between wisdom and the real physical world is clear in Proverbs 3:19–20:

The Lord by wisdom founded the earth;         by understanding he established the heavens;by his knowledge the deeps broke open,         and the clouds drop down the dew. (Proverbs 3:19–20)

And in Proverbs 8:27–31, Lady Wisdom beautifully sings of how her handiwork is permanently engraved on the creation:

When he established the heavens, I was there;         when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,when he made firm the skies above,         when he established the fountains of the deep,when he assigned to the sea its limit,         so that the waters might not transgress his command,when he marked out the foundations of the earth,         then I was beside him, like a master workman,and I was daily his delight,         rejoicing before him always,rejoicing in his inhabited world         and delighting in the children of man. (Proverbs 8:27–31)

Wisdom is no mere grab bag of helpful quotes or memorable witticisms. Wisdom is the “master workman” through whom the whole (real!) universe was brought forth. Wisdom finds delight in the Creator’s inhabited word and in the humans who reflect the Creator’s glory throughout the cosmos. Wisdom, in other words, is deeply awake to the sheer wonder of the world and the people God has made.

“Wisdom is deeply awake to the sheer wonder of the world and the people God has made.”

In applying Carr’s insights about “the intellectual ethic” of the Internet to the biblical teaching of wisdom, I’ve come to refer to the disembodied character of the Web as a set of “digital liturgies.” Like a church service, the Web is a spiritual habitat that works on our minds and hearts to incline us to think, feel, and believe in certain ways. Why is it so hard to think well? Because the digital liturgies of distraction and novelty are crippling our capacity to grasp big, non-Instagrammable truth. Why is it so easy to feel more unified with online personalities than with the people in our actual home or church? Because the digital liturgies of custom-made identities and curated timelines tell us we should be able to be only what we choose to be. Immersed in these technological narratives, our default is to make the dream our reality.

Paths of Resistance

How can we, through wisdom, resist this?

First, we can structure our lives deliberately to give weight to the people, experiences, and things that are physically real. The habit of morning devotions may seem quaint, but it’s a habit passed down by saints who have experienced its power. In a world of unending ephemera, God has given us permanent words to anchor, convict, and comfort us.

We can also deliberately break our relationships out of the digital prison. A phone call or lunch date connects us to each other much more than a direct message or a “Like.” A good book or hands-on hobby will refresh us after a day in front of a screen much more than hours of streaming or scrolling. Getting outside, with no intention of leveraging the experience for social media applause later, puts us in the path of wisdom by reminding us that God’s world is much bigger than our heads.

Second, we can actively cultivate the habits of deep thinking and winsome speech that the Web erodes. Before the latest news headline or theological controversy drives you to Google, looking for quick reads you can use to jump in the fray, consider taking a few weeks to work through a book or meaty essay that will genuinely enlighten you. Resist the temptation to seek admiration by being the fastest, smartest, or most sarcastic online critic, and redirect that effort toward the kind of comprehension that John’s high Christology or Paul’s precise theology demands.

Finally, we can consider practical measures that keep the world of the Internet playing second fiddle in the daily rhythms of our lives. In his book The Tech-Wise Family, Andy Crouch commends regular tech-free stretches: one hour per day, one day per week, and one week per month of deliberate withdrawal from the most immersive and addictive online activities. Cal Newport outlines a more rigorous “digital detox” in his book Digital Minimalism that can help us rediscover which technologies actually serve our values, and which ones simply keep us hooked. Find an approach that works in your and your family’s season of life and that will help to incline you toward God’s wisdom rather than the un-reality of the Web.

As many begin a new year of Bible reading, we would do well to remember one of the chief dangers: searching the Scriptures, and missing the Savior. Recall Jesus’s words to the Jewish leaders of John 5, those most devoted of Bible readers:

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. (John 5:39–40)

Amazingly, it is possible to know your Bible and not know your God. It is possible to study the word and neglect the Word. It is possible to search the Scriptures and miss the Savior.

How can we guard ourselves from such a deadly yet subtle danger? Ultimately, we need the Holy Spirit to breathe Christ into the dry bones of our devotions. We need him to come, morning by morning, and turn our living room or desk into a Mount of Transfiguration. And so, we pray.

But alongside prayer, we can also resolve to keep one goal of Bible reading high above the rest: Catch as much of Jesus as you can. Know and enjoy him. See and savor him. Study and love him.

And to that end, let me offer a modest proposal for your consideration: as you read the Bible this year, plant your soul especially in the Gospels.

I am not proposing that you read only the Gospels this year, but that you consider finding some special way to plant (and keep) your soul in them. You could, for example, use the one-year Discipleship Journal Bible Reading Plan, which includes a Gospel reading for every day. Or you could memorize an extended portion of the Gospels, like the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5–7) or the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17). Or you could read and reread one of the Gospels, perhaps with journal and commentary in hand.

This proposal will not fit every reader. Some, perhaps, have spent most of their Christian life in the Gospels, and this may be the year to wander with Moses in the wilderness, or hear what Ezekiel has to say, or trace the logic of Romans.

But I suspect many, like myself, would benefit from the counsel of J.I. Packer and J.C. Ryle. First, hear Packer:

We could . . . correct woolliness of view as to what Christian commitment involves, by stressing the need for constant meditation on the four Gospels, over and above the rest of our Bible reading; for Gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him.

“We should never let ourselves forget,” Packer continues, “that the four Gospels are, as has often and rightly been said, the most wonderful books on earth” (Keep in Step with the Spirit, 61).

Now listen to Ryle:

It would be well if professing Christians in modern days studied the four Gospels more than they do. No doubt all Scripture is profitable. It is not wise to exalt one part of the Bible at the expense of another. But I think it should be good for some who are very familiar with the Epistles, if they knew a little more about Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. (Holiness, 247)

Neither Packer nor Ryle sought to create red-letter Christians, who treat the words of Jesus as more inspired than the rest of Scripture. All the Bible is God-breathed, and the Son of God speaks as fully in the black syllables as he does in the red.

Why then would whole-Bible lovers like these two men counsel Christians to give themselves to the Gospels? Consider four reasons.

The Gospels give glory a texture.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John could have given us a summary of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection in their own words. Instead, the Gospels take us among the twelve, where we see and hear Jesus for ourselves. Why?

John tells us: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). For John and the other disciples, the glory of Christ was not a vague or summarized or paraphrased glory; it was a particular glory, a textured glory, a glory they had “seen and heard” (1 John 1:3) in the specific words, deeds, joys, heartaches, and sufferings of the Word made flesh. And by Gospel’s end, they want us to join them in saying, “We have seen his glory” (John 20:30–31).

“Sinners and strugglers like us need more than general notions of Jesus in our most desperate moments.”

Sinners and strugglers like us need more than general notions of Jesus in our most desperate moments; we need his particular glories. The fearful soul needs more than to remember that Jesus gives peace — it needs to hear him say in the upper room, “Let not your hearts be troubled” (John 14:1). The oppressed mind needs more than a vague idea of Jesus’s power over darkness — it needs to watch him send demons fleeing (Mark 1:25–26). The guilty heart needs more than to say, “Jesus forgives” — it needs to feel Calvary shake under the force of “It is finished” (John 19:30).

Sin is not vague. Sorrow is not vague. Satan is not vague. Therefore, we cannot allow Christ to be.

The Gospels shatter false Christs.

Ever since the real Jesus ascended, we have been in danger of embracing “another Jesus” (2 Corinthians 11:4) — or at least a distorted Jesus. Some do so deliberately, in search of a more convenient Messiah. Many, however, just struggle to faithfully uphold what Jonathan Edwards calls the “diverse excellencies” of Jesus Christ, the lamblike Lion and lionlike Lamb (Seeing and Savoring Jesus Christ, 29). We understand lions, and we understand lambs, but what do we make of a Lion-Lamb?

Imagine yourself in Peter’s shoes. Just when you think you’ve discovered Jesus’s tenderness, he goes and calls someone a dog (Matthew 15:25–26). Just when you imagine you’ve grasped his toughness, he takes the children in his arms (Mark 10:16). Just when you pride yourself for seeing him clearly, he turns and says, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:33). And just when you’re sure you’ve failed beyond forgiveness, he meets you with threefold mercy (John 21:15–19).

“We need our vision of Jesus regularly shattered — or at least refined — by the real, unexpected Jesus of the Gospels.”

“My idea of God is not a divine idea,” C.S. Lewis writes. “It has to be shattered time after time” (A Grief Observed, 66). So too with every one of us. We tend to remake the full, surprising, perfect humanity of Jesus in the image of our partial, predictable, distorted humanity. So, like Peter, we need our vision of Jesus regularly shattered — or at least refined — by the real, unexpected Jesus of the Gospels.

The Gospels make Bible reading Personal.

When we talk of “personal Bible study,” we may say more than we mean. The best Bible study is indeed Personal — centered on the Person of Jesus Christ. His presence rustles through every page of Scripture, Old Testament or New. All the prophets foretell him; all the apostles preach him. And the Gospel writers in particular display him.

Yet how easily Bible reading becomes an abstract, impersonal affair — even, at times, when we are reading about Christ. To know Christ doctrinally and theologically is not necessarily to know him personally. To follow old-covenant shadows to their substance is not necessarily to follow him. To grasp the logic of redemption is not necessarily to grasp his love. To be sure, we cannot commune with Christ without knowing something about him. But we can certainly know much about Christ without communing with him.

“It is well to be acquainted with the doctrines and principles of Christianity. It is better to be acquainted with Christ himself,” Ryle writes (Holiness, 247). And nowhere does the Bible acquaint us with Christ the Person better than in the Gospels. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John especially are written for those who, like the visitors in John 12, come to Scripture saying, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (John 12:21).

The Gospels are bigger than they look.

The four Gospels are relatively small compared to most of the books on our shelves. If we wanted, we could read through each in a single sitting. But like the Narnian stable in The Last Battle, the inside of the Gospels is bigger than the outside. Between their covers lies an infinite glory — a Jesus whose riches are not metaphorically but literally “unsearchable” (Ephesians 3:8).

We will never catch all there is to know and love about Jesus, but we can catch something more next year. So come again and walk with him on the waters. Come and watch a few loaves feed five thousand. Come and sing with Zechariah, rise with Lazarus, and walk with the women to the empty tomb. Come and remember why the Gospels are indeed “the most wonderful books on earth” — because they give us the most wonderful Person.

“Well, Doctor, what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?”

So asked a curious lady on the streets of Philadelphia in September 1787, giving voice to the question of her fellow citizens. The “Doctor” to whom she directed her query was none other than the aging Benjamin Franklin, who was emerging from the Constitutional Convention. Delegates from across the colonies had met all summer in their city. Beyond Pennsylvania, twelve other colonies waited to hear from the Franklins, Washingtons, Madisons, and Hamiltons, What is it?

“A Republic,” Franklin replied, and then, with his typical wit, added, “if you can keep it.”

For almost 240 years, the collective American psyche has often suspected — sometimes mildly, other times more acutely — that the republic was fragile, and someday soon, an ascendant Caesar would take it away, as happened with Rome’s republic. Frequently, left- and right-leaning parties have suspected the other side. Franklin’s memorable condition “if you can keep it” has been explained against an array of looming threats.

No Christian Founding

Such suspicions played out ferociously in the 1790s, the Constitution’s first full decade. Some suspected Washington; more suspected Hamilton, his de facto prime minister. By 1800, the Federalists suspected Jefferson. Long had Jefferson and Hamilton suspected each other, and now both suspected Aaron Burr. Hamilton and Burr would soon suspect each other — even after both had fallen from power — and take it to the dueling grounds.

Those early administrations in the new republic were not idyllic, peaceful, and pristine, like we might presume from elementary history lessons. Nor were the 1790s as culturally Christian as many today might assume. An early form of what we might now call “secularism” was on the rise, and it was widespread, particularly in the halls of influence. (Conservative evangelicals at the time would have called it “infidelity,” their watchword for Deism and progressive, Enlightenment Christianity.)

The Declaration of July 4, 1776, had mentioned “Nature’s God” and “Creator,” but that is a far cry from any distinctively Christian notion. A decade later, in 1787, the drafters of the Constitution found no need to mention the divine at all. Jefferson, of course, made his own Bible of what he was willing to accept (and not) in the Gospels, and Washington, despite his public mentions of Providence, was conspicuously reticent to say the name of Jesus. Formally, the founding of the United States was not distinctively Christian. In fact, at the time, perhaps as few as 10 percent of Americans were church members.

That is strikingly low compared to almost 40 percent in 1860, on the cusp of the Civil War, and more than 60 percent in the post-WWII era of the 1950s and 1960s. So, what happened that made America feel so culturally Christian from the Civil War until Civil Rights?

God’s Surprising Work

Given the acute sense of decline that U.S. Christians today have lived through — from the heights of church membership and attendance in the 50s and 60s, to the subsequent dip in the 70s and 80s, the small uptick in the early 90s, and now the rapid decline of the last two decades — we should not be surprised that many alive today assume a simple declension narrative. That is, they observe the decline of the last twenty years, or the decline of the last seventy years, and project that trajectory back onto the full 250 years of the nation, presuming the founding to be the height from which we’ve fallen. But such is fiction.

For many, the present sense of alarm stems from a recency bias, comparing their own sense of the state of our union to what’s been mediated to them in their own lifetime — whether in school, in conversation, through television, or now through social media. But the 1950s proves to be a very different standard of comparison than the 1790s.

As for Christianity and the church, American history has been far less a smooth downward trajectory and far more a story punctuated by the surprising work of God. Some historians talk of third and fourth “great awakenings” in the late nineteenth century and in the 1960s and 70s. But most fundamentally, the Second Great Awakening significantly altered the landscape of American life in the early 1800s and produced a nation that felt different, more Christian, than the founding.

How was it that this Second Great Awakening made America feel more Christian? The answer isn’t government power. Neither the Apostles’ Creed nor even God was added to the Constitution. Governments at the national, state, and local levels did not newly mandate Christian professions or church membership, or censor free speech by those deemed heretical.

What changed the social landscape was widespread revival and Christian mission. It was the growing and bearing fruit of the Christian gospel — the power of God, not government, through the movement of his Spirit, making much of his crucified and risen Son. From around 1810 to 1840, the tenor of American life changed, in a way Franklin and Jefferson never would have foreseen, through a Second Great Awakening that lasted far longer and had a far greater impact than the First of the 1730s and 40s.

Religion Indispensable?

Whatever lay behind Franklin’s sly “if you can keep it,” Washington, through the pen of Hamilton, expressed his concerns for the republic in his 1797 farewell address. Framed as “the disinterested warnings of a parting friend,” he warned first of the destructive forces of partisanship, and he praised “religion and morality” as “indispensable” to the prosperity of the republic. And note again that the “religion and morality” in view is not expressly Christian.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” he wrote, “religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Moreover, “let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

Now, on the one hand, from a Christian point of view, these are surprisingly measured commendations of “religion and morality.” Our Scriptures, from beginning to end, aren’t the least bit affirming of paganism so long as it’s religious and moral. So too, Washington’s frame honors and appreciates religion not as true and valuable in itself, but in terms of its usefulness for the life and prosperity of the republic.

But on the other hand, in our increasingly secular climate, with immorality or amorality seemingly on the rise, Washington’s affirmation of “religion and morality” is met with enthusiasm by many Christians. Oh, for a return to virtue and order, for more men and women of principle, for a moral citizenry — the kind that Washington and Franklin believed would be necessary to keep a republic.

‘We Need to Work’

In a recent interview with Kevin DeYoung, Allen Guelzo (who, according to George F. Will, is “today’s most profound interpreter of this nation’s history and significance”) calls American Christians to remember the heart, and hands, of that Second Great Awakening that so transformed the nation’s life. When DeYoung asks, What can we do if it seems like interest in virtue, and the Christian foundations for that societal virtue, have almost disappeared? Guelzo answers, “We need to work.” He explains,

When I hear people say today, “Oh, if we could only get back to a Christian America,” my response is, Then we need to work as hard as the people who created the Second Great Awakening. We need to dedicate ourselves that way, rather than sitting on our hands complaining about it, whining about the situation we find ourselves in, and then imagining, as I’m afraid some of our friends do, that all we need to do is to put some kind of authoritarian regime in place that will enforce the Ten Commandments.

No, that’s the lazy way. If you really want to transform the culture, then you have to take on the culture itself, and you have to meet it on its own terms, and you’re going to have to arm wrestle with it. And my recommendation is that we take a serious leaf out of the book of the Second Great Awakening. If what we want are the recovery of those mores, then my recommendation is that this is a signal that some very hard work has to get done, and we are not going to accomplish it simply by waving our hands and introducing some kind of authoritarian solution.

To the degree that we would like American life to feel more Christian, or at least less anti-Christian, the lesson to take away — both from the New Testament and from our own history — is that of the Second Great Awakening and the power of God through conversion to Christ and spiritual revival and renewal. American life was first transformed not through any seizure of political power nor through the ballot box. Rather, it was transformed through Christian awakening, through the constant preaching of the gospel, through Christian disciple-making, through the widespread movement of the Holy Spirit to grant new birth and spiritual growth, and through Christian initiative and energy and hard work to plant new churches, and build Christian institutions, and establish gospel witness and vibrancy in new places.

Hands to Prayer and the Plough

Here on this 248th Fourth of July, we remember not only the nation’s markedly unevangelical founding, but also the remarkable societal changes brought about by Christian revival — and the prodigious evangelistic efforts and Spirit-blessed industry that served as kindling for that awakening.

On this anniversary of the Declaration, American Christians concerned for the state of the republic will do well not to settle for wish-dreams about seizing power but, like the evangelists and missionaries of the early nineteenth century, put their faith and hands to the plough, believing, in the Spirit, we need to work.

Revival and its lasting ripples has changed the social feel of this nation before. It remains to be seen how long we might “keep” this republic. I don’t presume it will endure until Christ’s return. But being real, rather than nostalgic, about our history, and God’s surprising work, might feed fresh hope that he could work the same remarkable changes in the days ahead, beginning in us.