I, Smartphone and the Common Good (Video)

This is a creative way to communicate a very important truth if we care about serving and loving our neighbors (locally and globally).

“There are five primary lessons that we can learn from this video…

  • Markets bring people together without any one person in charge.
  • No one person has enough knowledge to create the things we use every day.
  • Markets allow people to use their gifts to serve others.
  • Each one of us has a role in serving the common good.
  • The innovations which markets bring can benefit all society.

We believe that how and why we work is directly connected to overall stewardship. God has gifted us with scarce resources in our mental capacities, our skills and talents, and our physical resources. Understanding how markets help us to best harness those scare resources for the common good is critical.

There are two other important implications from this video:

  1. Markets are the best form of global poverty alleviation known to date. Allowing markets to operate across the globe in the 20th and 21st centuries has lifted millions if not billions out of poverty. According to the World Bank, embracing market reforms has helped lift 400 million people out of abject poverty in China alone, because people were allowed to work. For most of us, our work takes place within the market setting, so markets are critical for allowing people to use their talents.
  2. Markets embrace the dignity inherent in our creation by allowing us to unleash our creativity. Markets allow us to be innovators, to take risks on ideas, to be entrepreneurial. Markets have made it possible for us to have electricity, air travel, indoor plumbing and even the smartphone. Those creative innovations, through the market, can make our lives easier, more efficient and less costly.”

For more see this excellent website. (IFWE)

To read my interview with Institute for Faith, Work & Economics fellow Dr. Jay Richards on economics and Christianity see my book Think Christianly: Looking at the Intersection of Faith and Culture.

Only Science Can Save Us?

“Beloved for his Narnian tales for children and his books of Christian apologetics for adults, best-selling British writer C.S. Lewis also was a perceptive critic of the growing power of scientism in modern society, the misguided effort to apply science to areas outside its proper bounds.

In a new book, The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society edited by CSC Senior Fellow John West, contemporary writers probe Lewis’s prophetic warnings about the dehumanizing impact of scientism. The CSC has also produced a short documentary film, The Magician’s Twin: C.S. Lewis and the Challenge of Scientism, which highlights some of the themes developed in the book.”

Coming this fall…

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C’mon…it’s just the internet right?

Information is not neutral and neither is the technology used to convey it. Please don’t be a passive consumer. (Romans 12:1-2)

“The brains of Internet addicts, it turns out, look like the brains of drug and alcohol addicts. In a study published in January, Chinese researchers found ‘abnormal white matter’—essentially extra nerve cells built for speed—in the areas charged with attention, control, and executive function. A parallel study found similar changes in the brains of videogame addicts. And both studies come on the heels of other Chinese results that link Internet addiction to ‘structural abnormalities in gray matter,’ namely shrinkage of 10 to 20 percent in the area of the brain responsible for processing of speech, memory, motor control, emotion, sensory, and other information. And worse, the shrinkage never stopped: the more time online, the more the brain showed signs of ‘atrophy.’ … And don’t kid yourself: the gap between an ‘Internet addict’ and John Q. Public is thin to nonexistent.” – Read the rest at Newsweek

H/T – Plugged in Online

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How do you thoughtfully analyze culture from a Christian perspective?

John Stonestreet’s video this week is a GREAT example. As Christians we must engage this area of brokenness.

Did you miss last week’s video? Watch it here.

Please consider sharing this post with friends using the share buttons below to Twitter and Facebook. We need to get the word out about this so we can engage well.

I develop a biblical theology of sexuality here.