Mike Livermore - Class 1

Automatically transcribed. Accuracy is good but not perfect, and words are sometimes wrong. Trust the audio over the text.

1. 0:00

   Well, good morning, everyone, and it's really good to be here with you all. I'll just say at the outset that having done this study in preparation for the classes, it really caused me to re-examine some of the practices and things that I do in my life, and hopefully it has the same effect for all of you. Around 760 BC, in the reign of King Uzziah, also called Azariah, the nation of Judah lived prosperously.

2. 0:44

   Uzziah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, and he listened to the prophets. The people loved God at that point in time, and they fought against his enemies, the Philistines, for example. They built many things. The nation thrived and prospered. Despite the oncoming threat in the distance of the Assyrians, the nation of Judah increased.

3. 1:07

   But to these people, the prophet Amos wrote, Woe to you who are at ease in Zion, and trust in Mount Samaria, notable persons in the chief nation to whom the house of Israel comes. Woe to you who put far off the day of doom, who cause the seat of violence to come near, who lie on beds of ivory, stretch out your couches, eat lambs from the flock and calves from the stall, who sing idly to the sound of string instruments, and invent for yourselves musical instruments like David, who drink wine from bulls, and anoint yourselves with the best ointments, but are not grieved for the affliction of Joseph.

4. 1:51

   A prosperous, happy people did not see or did not care about the oncoming threats, because they were too busy living lives of luxury. They were too content to enjoy how good things were to see that there were problems headed their way. 150 years later, the returned exiles, having succeeded in their move from captivity to Jerusalem under Joshua and Zerubbabel, fell victim to discouragement from the nations around them, and complacency set in.

5. 2:25

   And so in the time before Nehemiah arrived, for 12 years, the nation of Israel did nothing in their ecclesia. They did not build on the foundation they had previously laid. Apathy took over and the ecclesia was neglected. They stopped concerning themselves with the ecclesia and just lived their lives. And to this people, the message of the prophet Haggai arrived, saying, Is it time for you to dwell on your paneled houses while this temple lie in ruins?

6. 2:57

   And the overall message of the prophet was to consider your ways. The people did not consider the state of the ecclesia. They cared for their homes, their possessions, their personal goals. And meanwhile, the ecclesia decayed. 600 years later, an ecclesia in New Testament times existed in a prosperous town with lovely hillsides and a rich history.

7. 3:23

   They thought things were going just fine. The ecclesia had been founded by the apostle Paul himself, and they were cruising along just fine without a need in the world. And to these people, Christ said, Then because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth. Because you say I am rich, I have become wealthy and have need of nothing, and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.

8. 3:52

   I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich with white garments, and that you may be clothed, that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and anoint your eyes with eye salve, that you may see. This ecclesia had everything they wanted, but despite its apparent success, they couldn't see the problems that were so blatantly right in front of them.

9. 4:17

   All three of these ecclesial scenarios were ecclesias that didn't seem to have any excessive wickedness or overall gross immorality. They weren't stooped in very clearly evil, wicked practices, but yet they all were stuck in spiritual apathy and could not see or chose not to see the problems that their lifestyle had brought upon them.

10. 4:43

    All three ecclesias, we'll lay it out here on our slides, they were at ease, enjoyed luxuries, but put off the coming warning signs. They focused on their homes, looked at the ecclesia, and did not consider where they were going. They were wealthy with need of nothing, but could not see their problems, and didn't see the challenges had arisen in their lifestyles.

11. 5:05

    All three, if I boil it down to this, they put off, did not consider, or could not see, and these ecclesias stand to us as a testament that is a classic scriptural lesson that we all should always be watching and looking out for problems that arise in our society around us and in our ecclesia.

12. 5:26

    We should never just assume that we're cruising, that we're doing okay. Because we're living prosperously and things are good, that that means our spiritual health is also good. These ecclesias stand as a testament to us of the words written for us in 1 Corinthians chapter 10. Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

13. 5:50

    And so now let's come to the year 2019, to our society, and we also live prosperously, and we're cruising along. And you could say of our ecclesia and of the Christadelphian body worldwide that we're not necessarily steeped in gross immorality. We're not cut off in excessive wickedness. We could say, what's the harm? We're doing okay.

14. 6:15

    But do we see that there really are challenges arising from how we live in 2019? And all the luxuries and great things of this life bring challenges that perhaps we just choose not to see or have ignored or not given the proper time to consider their harm or threat to our spiritual health.

15. 6:34

    And in the challenges we'll look at today, they all really stem from something that's developed uniquely in our time. Now, you probably can't really see this graphic all that well. It's a little chart of the growth and adaption and changes in web, internet, computer technology. How since the 80s, this chart sort of map for us, how things have grown and changed.

16. 6:58

    And I've broken it down into this somewhat intimidating little breakdown of the evolution of computer science. And I actually bring this up because there is going to be a connecting point to scripture in this chart. And so we have here what's often sort of considered by computer scientists, the four eras of the web.

17. 7:16

    Web 1.0 being like going back to the 90s when we all had a little PC in the corner, had our dial-up connections. The dominant trait was then was just that websites just had information. You went out and you logged into AOL.com, went to Alta Vista, and you could go to the various dot-coms to get information.

18. 7:33

    And the internet began to replace libraries, and this saved companies lots of time. And it was really sort of a very new and kind of fresh change that was very valued by a lot of us. And the only spiritual threat at that time that we could see was, well, you know what? It's kind of a waste of time.

19. 7:50

    You go on your computer and you kind of lose track of time. The spiritual threat at that time was minimal. But then you come to the 2000s and Web 2.0 began, where now websites online are not just there for our information. They're now interactive. And you have things like Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, where now people gather together for the social power of the internet.

20. 8:14

    And things like Facebook and Twitter really changed our social structure and began to replace meeting people in person, because you could meet and catch up with people online. And it became addictive. And this is where we start to really now begin to see there is a danger. There is a problem that can arise from where the internet is taking us, because that interaction online is very powerful and addictive, and it can begin to suck us in.

21. 8:41

    It can also expose us to a lot of things we didn't necessarily would have chosen to see if we had just lived our lives regularly without the internet. But now in today's day and age, in the year 2019, we're now entering what's called Web 3.0, where now the machines, the computers, are beginning to run things for us.

22. 9:02

    And now artificial intelligence is taking over, and technology has just grabbed a hold of us and now refuses to let go. Now things are being curated for you. And all you have to do is just open up youtube.com, and YouTube has an algorithm where it knows your search history. It knows what you do online.

23. 9:23

    And it presents to you recommendations of videos that it knows you would want to see. So now technology has the hook inside of us. And you often would see if maybe you're having a, you send a message, an email to a friend saying, are there any good strollers for my kids? The very next ads you'll see online are ads for strollers.

24. 9:44

    So the computers, the machines know us as well as we know ourselves. And web technology now is designed to capture us and to steal us into their market share and not let us go. And the danger now in the intelligent web is that this level of immersion online is consuming. And it will not, it refuses to let us go.

25. 10:06

    There's the social component. Now it knows us better than it knows ourselves. And it refuses to let us go. And it can really change how our society functions. And the way this is going is that in web 4.0, the predictions are, it will be the symbiotic web where humans and computers will have an inextricable relationship to each other.

26. 10:25

    And the machines will just decide things for us. Your car will just drive itself and take you where you need to go, not even asking you where you need to go. It just knows. I get in my car in the morning, it takes me to work. Machines will just make decisions for us.

27. 10:38

    And how can faith survive in that environment if we're not even going to be using our brains 20 years in the future? This is where technology is going. Now the point of this little chart here was not just as a little bit of education on how the web has grown. But I found this history of the internet to connect with a classic scriptural lesson for us that I think is going to be the overall theme for our study today, which is that each of those iterations of web history matches the progression of Lot back in Genesis.

28. 11:11

    Do you recall when Abraham and Lot's herds and their group were too big, and they had to split up and Abraham chose the less fertile area and Lot chose the area by Sodom? How at that point in time, he didn't just say, you know what, I'm going to go live in Sodom. But he slowly, progressively, gradually inched that way.

29. 11:30

    And he eventually wound himself trapped, inextricably tied to the city. And so we have in Genesis chapter 13, verse 10, I'm going to try using my, like, yeah. Genesis chapter 13, verse 10, Lot first saw Sodom. He saw the plain east of the Jordan, how it was fertile. And he said, you know what, that looks like it could be kind of cool.

30. 11:55

    The spiritual threat at that time was minimal. He just saw the fertility and the options available to him, much like us with Web 1.0. Lot then was sort of hooked. He then chose to go live there in the next verse. And he began to move in that direction. And at that point, his course was set.

31. 12:16

    He wasn't fully trapped there, but that's the direction he was heading. And that was us in the previous decade in Web 2.0. We were headed to this point in our lives where technology would be a part of every single thing we do every single day. And that's where we are right now. As Web 3.0 begins, we are now Lot who was dwelling in Sodom.

32. 12:37

    In chapter 13, verse 12. He and his family now lived in that city. They were a part of its culture. And the conformity, the shaping of his family was now beginning. And that's us right now with technology, is it not? How children that grow up today, all they know is a world online where everyone has their gadgets.

33. 12:57

    It's not going to change. And, of course, the doom of Web 4.0, if you will, is that a few chapters later, when Abraham comes to rescue him, Lot was sitting in the gate in Genesis chapter 19. He had become an elder, a wise man who was amongst the leaders. He was now involved in the leadership.

34. 13:15

    He had fully now put on the mantle of the city of Sodom. He was now one of them. He was absolutely a part of the city. There was no difference between him and the Sodomites. And that's the future we're headed towards with technology, where the online world and online communities are now going to be just a part of our lives.

35. 13:36

    And there will be nothing different about us than other people that are functioning online. And that's the danger, is that we're in the case of Sodom. He chose, of his own accord, to proactively move towards Sodom. In defense of us, we've been stationary, and technology has progressively moved into our lives. So we haven't necessarily gone out of our way to go chase after it like Lot, but we've nonetheless accepted it in our lives and embraced it.

36. 14:07

    And we've accepted this progressive, gradual invasion of technology and the spiritual threats that it involves. Now, this is already beginning. Here's one quick headline, that Gmail will do even more thinking for you with these six new features. So already, the computers are thinking for us and conforming our minds to modern, sort of technologically advanced thinking to conform us with how the rest of the world thinks.

37. 14:36

    And I found this screenshot sort of really interesting because look at the ads that popped up for me. This Oracle database ad here. Sit back, relax, and let Oracle do the driving for you. We got you covered. The computers will run your life for you. Just conform to how we think. And even this ad here.

38. 14:54

    IBM data takes you where you need to go faster. All of these are wonderful services, which are great in some respects. Nonetheless, I think all have spiritual downside for us. And there's more. Here's a really interesting article. Google AI creates its own child AI that's more advanced than systems built by humans. So already, computers are better at developing their own AI than we are and making the AI that made them.

39. 15:22

    So they're already ahead of us. Google's AlphaZero alien chess shows the power and the peculiarity of AI. This is an article about how Google used its AlphaZero artificial intelligence and it programmed it to get good at chess. And it got so good that the best chess masters in the world can't even compete in any way.

40. 15:43

    And they describe it as a different game played by aliens. Computers are so good at doing things that we do that it's like a whole different type of person doing it. It's not even a human playing. It's an alien playing chess. And lastly, Google's AI created its own universal language. So again, Google had its AI and it said, try to create for us an algorithm that will be a universal translator to help translate English to French to Spanish and so forth that Google would use for its translation functions.

41. 16:14

    And what the AI did was create its own interlingua, its own universal language that ties all languages of the earth together. Now we obviously remember what happened the last time the planet earth had a universal language. It didn't end so well and only eight people were saved. And this is the path that our world is now back on.

42. 16:37

    And now it's a part of our lives as well. And Google and other companies like this impact us on a daily basis. And in many ways, it's wonderful. And technology really does make our lives better in so many ways. I work in IT. I work hours at a time every day on a computer.

43. 16:57

    And I fully admit I love technology. I embrace it. And it's brought a lot of wonderful things into our lives. But it also has side effects and dangers that we should consider. And really, I would make a comparison to driving. That driving your car is a great thing. Driving a vehicle has opened up travel and ways for us to meet people and go places.

44. 17:22

    Driving enables us to do so many things in life. And we wouldn't have it any other way. But driving comes with dangers. There can be setbacks and accidents. There are real threats to driving a car on the highway. And so what we do is we put our young people, people that haven't driven, through driver's training.

45. 17:39

    And we prepare them. And they have to get a permit. And spend many hours with an adult supervising their initial driving. Before, as adults, we unleash them as independent drivers on the road. So, too, it should be with us with technology. It's a wonderful and great thing. And we're not going to go back.

46. 17:55

    It's absolutely a part of our lives. But are we preparing ourselves and our young people for all the hazards and potential setbacks and dangers that technology brings? Are we truly training ourselves and our young people to deal with those threats? So, for our classes today, what I'd like for us to do is, in each session, we'll address a different potential threat.

47. 18:18

    And the advice or lessons from the Bible to help us and prepare us to face those threats and to be able to integrate technology in our lives while managing these harmful spiritual possibilities. And in each class, what we're hoping to do is actually have two sessions or sort of two dangers, if you will, addressed in each class.

48. 18:39

    With a short little, I'm not going to use the word break, but maybe it's sort of like chat meditation session, a brief pause, if you will, between classes. You know, both due to our shortening attention span in today's society and my own inability to talk for an hour straight. We're going to actually briefly pause for five minutes in the middle of each class and let everyone in the audience chat and discuss about questions that I'll pose after each potential topic we discuss.

49. 19:10

    And so, we're hoping to now begin, as we come to the end of our first session of our first class, with these two questions. Do you agree that the influx of technology and the web are inevitable? Or is there more that we could do, as an ecclesia especially, like Abraham, to avoid it, to get away from Sodom?

50. 19:33

    Or is it too late? Is Sodom just around us and there's nothing we can do to avoid it? We have to do our best to deal with it? Or is there more we could do to avoid it? And lastly, if Abraham could see the threat of Sodom, but Lot could not, why? Why was Lot not able to perceive what Abraham did?

51. 19:53

    And why is it all so hard for us to see the problems in the things that we love today? So, take five minutes. I'm really hoping, it's a new thing. I'm hoping this won't be five minutes of awkward silence. I'm hoping there will be some chatting. You can just sit and think and meditate if you like.

52. 20:11

    But we'll see how it goes. And so, everyone, please take five minutes and I'll see you then. viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele Thank you.

53. 21:28

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You look back at, there were some good kings, but there were just so many more bad kings. How did the people not see, prophet after prophet, how they had to get rid of this?

54. 27:09

    We also marvel at things, you know, how come the disciples, how did the people of Israel? It's easy for us, that's what's wrong with them. to all that his father Amaziah had done. He was one of those rare good kings, but in verse 4, except that the high places were not removed, the people sacrificed and burned incense on the high places. And it's this sort of classic dilemma we see in the Bible of a good faithful person, one of the rare good kings, and yet he, like so many, could not shake idols. And he wasn't the only one, King Asa, really one of the best kings Judah ever had. It said of Asa, when he heard the words of the prophet Obed, he took courage and removed the abominable idols from the land of Judah and Benjamin and from the cities which he had taken from Mount Ephraim. He was a really, really good king, and he removed idols, but the high places were not removed from Israel. Nevertheless, the heart of Asa was good, loyal all his days. Even King Asa couldn't completely shake the idols out of his life. He couldn't fully remove this thing from his life. And here's really, I would say, what's wrong with idolatry and why it's wrong and why it's so powerful and hard to remove.

55. 29:26

    The real reason, the primary reason God condemns idolatry is that it's a threat to him, that idols for believers back then, for the Israelites, they took the place of God. In the Ten Commandments, God said, you shall have no other gods before me. And that's what idols represented to the people. They were worshiping and following and praying to other fake gods. It was really an affront to God's presence and existence. But what was a secondary problem with idols? That idols themselves were associated with practices from the nations around them, the other nations that were idolatrous, their sinful ways would creep in via idolatry to the nation. And so here's a verse from 2 Kings chapter 17. They followed idols. This is the people of Israel, by the way. Became idolaters and went after the nations who were all around them, concerning whom the Lord had charged them that they should not do like them. God wanted his people Israel to be special and set apart and to not practice the same things as the nations around them. And that really sort of began with idols. First it was the idols, and then with it all of the practices and lifestyle and things that idolatry brought along with it.

56. 30:42

    And why was it so hard? Why even when the idols were taken away and you got rid of the overwhelming majority of idols, why couldn't they just get rid of it for good? Because these things were everywhere. There were idols all over the place, and it was so difficult to extract something that is constantly around you. And so Ezekiel chapter 6 verse 13, it says, These things were on the highest peaks, the highest mountains and hills. They were buried under the earth, under trees. Idols were inescapable. And even if you got rid of most of them, your neighbor might still have one. You know, down the street there were some idols. There was always this constant temptation. The people of Israel couldn't just get up and leave. They couldn't move somewhere else.

57. 31:40

    They were stuck where they were in the land. And if idols were there somewhere in the land, that temptation and influence was always going to be there. And of course, even after the captivity and the nation of Israel finally stopped with the physical idols, finally quit with the actual images to calves or whatever, the statues were finally put away, there still was in the New Testament idolatry in a different form. And Colossians chapter 3 verse 5 says, Therefore put to death your members which are on the earth, fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. And so even in the New Testament, the believers, the people of God in the New Testament times, they still had idolatry in a more sort of abstract sense. That if there was something you really wanted in life, if there was a possession, a person, a lifestyle, something, a career that you wanted and you coveted it, it began to take the place of God in the lives of believers back then. And those things that they wanted so much now began to replace God as a focus and the goal and the passion of their life. And they began to also be exposed to other people in their society who also loved these things. And the ways of the world, if you will, like the fornication and uncleanness and evil desires would also creep in via sort of spiritual, more abstract idolatry. And even in New Testament times, they could not shake how there were things through covetousness that were their idols and took the place of God. They couldn't get rid of them and they brought them into bad places. So now it's 2019

58. 33:23

    for us. And a lot of you may be kind of seeing where this is going. And in today's society, we of course don't have statues and things built out of bronze that are calves or goats or whatever. We don't have these silly idols. But nonetheless, do we have man-made objects created out of precious metals that can sometimes take the place of God in our lives, that are everywhere and very difficult to fully remove and are a gateway to worldliness. Now, just to be clear, I'm not going to say that by nature, your cell phone is an idol or that your computer, by definition, is an idol. It's really how we use it. And if our phones take over our lives and if technology rules over us the way that idols ruled over the Israelites back in those days, only then is it an idol. So come to today's society and a survey done by the Pew Research Group, which actually has a lot of really good data.

59. 34:34

    They took a survey of teenagers and found that 39% of teenagers every day spent time talking in person to another human. But right below it was text messaging. And right below that was the cell phone. And there's social networking sites. And so there's these alternative methods that are beginning to take over and really dominate how we and especially our young people communicate. Now, if you're saying, you know what, Mike, that data doesn't seem that bad. Like the dominant trait is that people are still talking in person most of the time. That isn't the worst thing in the world. But maybe you were clever and saw this, that this survey was done in 2007. And now it's 2019 and it's a game over. And 95% of teenagers now have smartphones. And I'll wager that every single adult in this room has a cell phone either on them or they possess it in some form. And the same group, the Pew Research Center, found that now 45% of teenagers are almost constantly online via the device or tablet, cell phone, whatever it is that they have. So we absolutely are living in a time where something that everyone has and is so difficult to remove and take out of our lives now can easily dominate us and become an idol if we let it. I'm not saying that a cell phone is an idol of itself. But if we choose to live that way, it can be.

60. 36:07

    So these three aspects, the first being, does it take the place of God in our life? Ask yourself these questions. What is the first thing we do in the morning? What is the last thing we do at night? Is it a prayer or meditation of some sort? Or is it checking the phone? What is it that we check the most throughout the day? What grabs our attention the most as we do things from morning till evening?

61. 36:36

    What is the first place that we go when we're bored or distressed or upset, sad, restless? Is it prayer or we seek out a friend or we open a verse or do we go to our phone? And where do we go when we're unsure? When we have a question and we're not sure what choice to make, do we Google it or do we pray about it?

62. 37:02

    Maybe these phones are taking the place of God in our life. The second area, these phones are absolutely a gateway to worldliness. And of course, I'm on Instagram. I'm on Facebook. It isn't all bad. It isn't necessarily evil to enjoy social media with your friends. But those same things which can be good are also a potential gateway to things that are very bad. And we're not going to go through examples of that. But as a fact, the CEO of Twitter on an interview I listened to, he described his product Twitter as a public square, a gateway for the world to come together and for the world to talk together.

63. 37:47

    This is his goal for the product. And isn't that what idols were for the nation of Israel? And it can be for us if we abuse it and misuse it. And third, as we all know, it's so difficult to quit the addiction of electronics, isn't it? So in an article published in Psychology Today, a Dr. Victoria Dunkley, this was her conclusion. She said, screen time, particularly the interactive kind, acts like a stimulant, not unlike caffeine, amphetamines, or cocaine. And the dopamine released by the stimulation of electronics hits children, especially virulently, because their cerebral cortexes simply aren't developed enough for them to feel satisfied with small doses or to self-regulate.

64. 38:34

    And so children are most susceptible to electronic addiction. And me as an adult, I absolutely am as well. I've been in this situation playing civilization at 2 a.m. and you wake up and realize, what am I doing? Where have I been? And we've all been sort of addicts like this to electronics in some form or another. And it really begs the question, why should this be so? And should we be doing something about this? So on the subject of how it affects our younger children, and I'm sure there's a lot of experts here on young childhood education, and there's doctors and nurses here, so you probably better know the exact details and science of this. But here was a study done, a joint study at Florida State and San Diego State, published in 2018. They surveyed half a million teenagers, and they found this sort of really sort of, this is data we probably would know anyways, we see it. But the more hours a day spent with an electronic device by a teenager led to a really exponential growth in the percentage that teenager has at least one suicide risk factor, which doesn't mean that they attempted suicide necessarily, they developed a risk factor for it, such as depression or addiction or other mental illness. And there is an absolute correlation between those risk factors and the hours spent with an electronic device amongst teenagers. So this is really just confirmation of what we probably already would guess or know. And the world around us is getting wise to the fact that even in a purely secular sense, this addiction to electronics is bad for us, and it's especially bad for young people.

65. 40:20

    But isn't this really the wisdom of God already given to us so long ago? We're in Deuteronomy chapter 4, God said, Idolatry is bad for us. Obviously, in a spiritual sense for our faith, but even now in this life, idolatry is bad for our lives now. And the counter in Deuteronomy chapter 4 was that if we keep his statutes and obey his commandments, which I command you today, that it may go well with you and with your children after you, that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord your God is giving you for all time.

66. 41:23

    Our lives are better off when we put away our devices, when we minimize the grip and addiction that electronics have over us. It can improve our lives. There has to be a healthy balance that, on one hand, technology is great, and it has benefits, and it helps us. But after a certain quotient or threshold of hours on a daily basis is spent with these things, it can be harmful and bad, and we can't let them rule over us. And so while this seems to really be a problem that hits children the hardest, and the classic sort of note in today's society is we just, we can't get our teenagers off our phones. We as adults have to set an example. And so the people here who are age 25 and up, let's say, the teenagers and children, they look up to us. And if they see us also addicted to our phones and constantly having our phones out in between times, and when we should be discussing and talking, we have our phone out, they see that, and they'll take note of it. And how can we ask our teenagers to put their phones away if we as adults are stuck in the same pattern of behavior? Now don't raise your hand, but think to yourself, how many of you in our five-minute chat session checked your phone?

67. 42:56

    I myself probably would have if I had been in the audience during this time. If we did, maybe it's an indication that we should try our best to minimize the impact that this phone has in our lives. Once again, I'll say, our devices are not necessarily idols. They can be very useful and powerful for good, but if we look at ourselves, and this is where the lesson of the first session needs to apply, if we stop and try to see, if we consider our lives and choose not to be willfully ignorant, and take a look at our lives, if we can honestly say that our phone is overwhelming us, and we're addicted to these electronics and tablets and computers, then what we should do is call it what it is. We should call it idolatry. And that's the beginning of how we can begin to deal with it.

68. 43:51

    We can then apply the message of scripture if we first admit that there is a problem. Adults need to set the example. And so now as we're going to end our class, our first class here, what I think I'd like to do is again leave like five minutes for discussion before we hand it back to TJ to actually dismiss and close the class. But here are some questions for us to take into our break as we discuss this topic. What has worked for you to minimize or reduce or balance, whatever word you want to use, the addictive power of technology? And how do we help our young people avoid idolatry via technology in a world which is absolutely unavoidably heading in that direction? The online world is taking over.

69. 44:41

    How do we show young people to avoid it and manage it? So let's take a few minutes to discuss, and then we'll have TJ close out for a break. Thank you.

70. 44:55

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele ! viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele viele Thank you.

71. 46:26

    Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jay, for any closing or announcements that he's got for us.