Today it is our huge privilege to be speaking with Dr. Quintin J. Schultz. Dr. Schultz is an author, speaker, mentor and Professor of Communication emeritus at Kelvin University. He's the author of many texts, including the text that we'll be speaking of today, habits of the high tech heart living virtuously in the information age, originally published in 2002. Professor Schultz, thank you so much for joining us.
My pleasure, Jonathan, great to be on with you. And thanks for doing this whole series. It's wonderful.
Professor scholtes. This text, written in 2002 is now almost 20 years old habits of the high tech hard living virtuously in the information age, at this time 2002. There were very few books covering this intersection between faith and technology. How did you begin to develop an interest in this area?
Well, what happened was that I went to the University of Illinois as an undergraduate student after growing up in Chicago. And I was going to study engineering, electrical engineering, in fact, and this was just the days when the first big computers were out there. And I got very interested in what these computers were doing. But it seemed to me that computers were basically data processing units, you put data in crunched the data, gave you some results, and you did studies. But then somebody during my graduate days at the University of Illinois in communication said to me, Well, you know, one day everybody is going to have their own computer. And I thought, Boy, this person is goofy. No, that's not going to happen. And they said, Oh, yeah, it'll happen because the computers will be networked. Now, this is in the 1970s, the mid 70s. And I thought to myself, if that ever happened, it would be a major development. But it will probably never happen. And I didn't do much with it. I got my master's degree, my PhD, I went out, I started teaching. And lo and behold, one day I read an article that said the same thing, that computers were coming down in price, they were getting small, you didn't have to have a whole room and people are going to be communicating with them. Well, to me as a student of communication, that really was a game changer, because I suddenly realized that what I thought of as a data processing unit, was going to be a communication vehicle, ultimately, maybe was something like a telephone, which we now call a smartphone, so that everybody like Dick Tracy, with a little phone, on your wrist, could all watch, which was also a communication device could communicate to anybody else. While this was unheard of, in the field of communication at the time, other than a concept. But the concept grabbed me, I was a relatively new Christian, and was studying communication as a Christian. And in the theology of communication, I realized that communication is all about relationship. It's about how we develop relationships, our relationship with God with each other and with ourselves. And so if this happened, with computers being connected, and instant communication, then our relationships were going to be different. So that that really got me thinking about the new technologies of communication that were coming along. And I was one of the first people at Calvin University where I started in 1982, to get a computer hooked up to the internet, communicating with other people. And so as that began on folding, I began looking at the relationship between these communication technologies and the quality of our relationships. And then when it really became clear to me that in fact, it was going to happen that people were going to have small communication devices. Now we're talking about the mid to late 90s. I thought, I need to write something about this. Because biblically speaking, our communication comes from our hearts, the habits of our hearts, the tendencies of our hearts. And what we love, do we love technology? We love technology more than God? Do. We love technology more than people do. We love technology more than ourselves. That that was the basis of the book. And I thought early on in this technological revolution, I would address that issue. can we possibly as human beings use communication in such a way that we develop really good and right relationships with God, other people and ourselves?
Thank you so much for that introduction. And what I as a reader of your book was not fully aware of is that you saw this communication revolution coming several decades prior to the birth of The Internet. If I remember my internet history correctly, it was 1991, I think August when the internet went public and was available not just to researchers at universities, but to a broader audience in the early 90s, was it clear to us a professor of communication that the revolution had begun that this thing you anticipated was now unfolding?
Yes, it was out now I was on the internet, before it went public, because educators could be part of it. And it was simple texting, you know, typing up texting and sending messages and having bulletin boards and that kind of thing already in the 80s. And then in the mid 90s, when the worldwide web took off. And I would get a daily email from Yahoo, that would tell me the number of new websites that had come on the internet that day, if you can imagine that. And so there may be 10, or 20, or 30. And I was looking at those. And it was, that's interesting. This is going to be all over, we're going to be connected throughout the world, at least wherever technologies available. And so in the mid 90s, I got together with other people, and among other things, developed an organization for teaching Christian organizations to use the internet in ministry. This was starting in 94. And then in 9495, I was also involved in the development of the Bible gateway, which is the principal online site now that people use to access the Bible, and to link to Bible verses and so on. Because we knew at that time that with this growing the this would make the Bible available in parts of the world where Bibles were prevented, you couldn't have them in public life, or where very few people could afford them or get access to them. And it would be government, military officials in particular that would have them. So from our hearts wanting to share the Bible, we decided to run with it and put that on. And that was before I started writing the book.
This is an amazing story. Dr. Schultz, in the early chapters of your book, you argue that technology in and of itself does not improve the moral condition of our society. In fact, you warn the reader that faith in technology in and of itself renders our societies more vulnerable to moral deterioration. Do I have that right? How would you state the argument of your book?
Yeah, that's exactly right. Habits of the high tech heart. Now habits of the heart is a term that comes from Tocqueville, Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who toured the US in the 1830s. And he wrote two volumes, arguably the best things ever written about democracy and the best things ever written about democracy in America. And he said, what makes democracy work is the habits of heart. When we have the kind of habits where we voluntarily reached out to help and serve other people, which is what he saw happening in the US, he said, democracy works. When people are selfish, when they're mean when they're nasty, when they just do what they want to do to get ahead of other people. Without having those habits of the heart, then democracy doesn't work. And I thought, you know, this is, this is so much related to the nature of the church, as an organization where we cultivate love, where we cultivate love of God neighbor itself. And we, in a sense, become selfless as God through Jesus Christ became selfless for us, humbled himself came down to earth, on our behalf. And I got to thinking that what happens with technology is we tend to think of technology itself as the answer to human problems, the solution, whatever the problem, there must be a technological solution. And if we work hard to check for those technological solutions, everything will work out for good. Well, of course, technology's always create other problems. So we may have social media today where people can get on and connect with other people, but they may stop connecting with people that are in their own household, or people that they live with work with. And so they're always advantages and disadvantages. So the habits of our heart, the tendencies of our heart become very important. And the love of technology, which I would say is kind of an arrogance toward technology is being the solution to all problems gets in the way. And I think of this in Babylonian terms, that is the Tower of Babel, so they build this tower up into the heavens, and what they're doing is trying to quote unquote, make a name for themselves. Be godlike. So they can go up and say, and shake hands with God at God's level and say, hey, look what we did. And meanwhile, they don't realize all the problems that they're creating with this arrogance of theirs. So God comes down and looks at it and kind of laughs and says, Hey guys, that's enough of this and he follows up their language, their communication. So they cannot work on this technological thing in an arrogant way that's going to cause problems, their hearts being warped. I like to think of the Tower of Babel as the first Silicon Valley.
Thank you very much, Dr. Schultz for that reflection. Dr. Schultz in your book habits of the high tech heart living virtuously in the information age in an in an early chapter discerning our information ism, you state this quote, We are succumbing to information ism, a non discerning vacuous faith in the collection and dissemination of information is a route to social progress. And personal happiness, in your opinion, is information ism. Now, today, nearly 20 years after you originally penned the book, is it a greater or lesser threat than it was then?
Yeah, Jonathan, let's think about this for a minute together. So we love information. And we love machines that can produce information. And we see information as fact. And even information as truth. And, and this, but this is a very slim, narrow definition of truth. We can have information about things but not understand things become kind of foolish in a way. So in the age, we're living now, we're concerned about things like viruses. And we know that we can track viruses, we can collect data, and we can see where the virus is most, quote, unquote, active. And we can create charts and graphs and look at those. But what do we do? It comes down, of course, to human habits, the information itself can suggest what we might do, but it can't point us in the right direction. It can't give us the answers of wisdom, the answers of proper action, ethical action. And so we invariably find the limits of information. But I would say, the development of technologies, information technologies that allow us to create more information faster, and to spread it faster, also create confusion. So information ism includes information overload. And no matter what the subject is, today, if we try to study it, understand it, we are bound to face head on information overload. And we're back to square one, which is how do we deal with all of that. And I think the people that really should be the most valued in society in church are those who can take that information, make sense of it, so that we don't pay obeisance to the information, but we pay attention to the wisdom in our interpretation of the information.
very much appreciate that reflection. Dr. Schultz, if I can read paraphrase that question, just getting in a little bit to a different corner of that question. So you've been following the advance of Internet Information Technology for decades now. each decade, we gain more societal experience with the technology, but the technology keeps changing on us too. Are we getting ahead of this game? Are we as a society becoming wiser in our use of technology through experience or not?
Know what happens is the technology changes faster, then we can get a handle on it, and understand how to use it well. So if I throw out a yardstick, let's just throw out a basic Hebrew, Christian yardstick. Purpose of our lives, love God, love neighbor, as self. Okay, throw that out there as a yardstick, and only say, are the latest technologies helping us to do that better? Well, just about the time we get a handle on how we might do that, with a particular technology, let's say how do I use my cell phone to do that? There are new apps, new applications, or wholly new technologies, smaller devices, many devices, glasses that allow me to, to see others record others, even though they don't know that I'm doing it, or internet related transactions out there in cyberspace that we can't see. But some people can crack into and steal. So we're always behind the game. And what happens Jonathan, this is the most fascinating thing is that when the the new technologies were out, and they don't solve all the problems, we think they will. along comes a new technology. And we abandon our quest to use the previous technology well, and we jump on the new one, we say this is the one that will do it. And this is the one for example. evangelism is a good example. Invariably, through the history of the church, new technologies come along, the church jumps on the latest one and says, this is the one we need, this is going to help us evangelize the world, and usher in the second coming of Christ. And then along the way, the technology doesn't quite prove to be able to do that. So they go to the next one. And so we get out of town and we go when we build a new town, a new heaven on earth with a new technology and think that that's the solution.
Dr. Schwartz, if I may quote you again, on page 68 of your text, quote, we do not need unlimited bandwidth. As much as we need refreshment through time consuming disciplines such as contemplation and conversation, we need to learn how to moderate the transient traffic of bits and bytes, so that we are seeking to listen to the non technological voices of virtue. Dr. Schultz, what are your best tips today for how we can seek these time consuming disciplines of contemplation and quality conversation?
Great question, Jonathan. So let's think about this for a minute together in terms of what practices or habits most make our life meaningful. So that we should really seize those and learn how to do them. Well, what would those look like? I think near the top of the list would be listening. not speaking, not sending, not texting, that's transmitting. But listening. Listening is foundational to our humaneness. We need to be good listeners, in all media. So person to person, we need to be good listeners, when we're in social media, we need to listen carefully to the messages coming from other people. In all the different venues, if if we're viewing some type of film, let's say, we need to be able to listen to it. Now what is listening about, it's about coming to an understanding, knowing what the meaning is, what someone is really trying to say or to communicate, it's understanding, it's standing under, standing under, not being arrogant, above and assuming we know what somebody else means, but getting under them humbly to understand that. So I know with my own wife, I have to spend time with her regularly listening, I have to be willing to ask the tough questions. How am I doing as a husband? How are we doing as grandparents? How is our relationship growing? What about our relationship with God, both individually and together? We need to ask the questions and listen, and listen. And the noise that's coming in all the time, the messages from all over all the different media can consume so much of our time that we don't listen. And when we don't listen, we don't understand. We don't get to know. And the kicker with this from a biblical frame of references that we when we don't know, we can't love. Loving means knowing God, knowing other people knowing ourselves well enough, that we know what the needs are, and we can address the needs. So loving is a basis for knowing, in order to be able to love We never love in the abstract. I don't love my wife, as a concept of love. I love her as a specific person. And so, right at the top, I would put listening, and I think that important practice is on hard times in this growing, developing high tech information age that continues to expand. Let me add to that, listening to God. We do that with a reading of Scripture. We do that with the conversing with other people about scripture. We do that in prayer. And we do it fundamentally in worship. So today, we live in an age where listening is on hard times because people say well, why do I need to go to worship? I can read Scripture, I can pray I can talk to other Christians in small groups. And they can it's all good. But why? Why worship, because worship is where we come together as a bigger unit. And we listen together. And we appoint someone if you will, we anoint someone to say you really delve deep into scripture and help share it with us, so that we can then wrestle with it together. And so worship, I think today as an activity coming together to listen, as well as to pray and to speak is really important. So listening is number one. Number two, I would say is prayer itself. And I want to include in prayer, all forms of meditation. Now I don't mean Middle Eastern meditation. What I mean by meditation here is a kind of mindful reflection. What's going on in my life today? How am I doing as a person? Am I thinking about God? And am I honoring God? Am I praising God in my life I'm, it's a kind of mindfulness, where we are speaking in a way all day long. We're, we're mindful of God's presence with us. So when Paul says, pray continually, or pray all the time, keep praying, keep it going. I think what he's getting at there is in from a communication standpoint, I'll just give you a communication example. Imagine, after everything we say we end it with.
And may God be pleased by this. So we're mindful that what we are saying, is a product of our listening, and is our attending to reality. And suddenly, we're praying all the time where we are living in the presence of God, prayer to live a prayerful life. I'm going to one more practice, I want to throw in the top three, so to speak in the high tech age, being patient, being patient, we think of patients in the information age as not accomplishing anything, of squandering our time. Where, in fact, patience, is letting things unfold in a way where we have enough time to understand them and respond to them well. So patience is, if you will, the opposite of having to immediately do something to change something, to press that button, bam, and make something happen on our smartphone, or to go to a website and it doesn't come up right away. So we get impatient, we go to a different website. We know from studies, boy, if your website doesn't come up in 10 seconds, somebody might try one more time or they're gone. Our level of patience is very low. Well, a lot of our situations in life, especially relationships, require patience. They're a long obedience in the right, faithful direction. It's not instantaneous. So I think about those three things all the time, I think about our listening, I think about our prayerfulness I think about our patients is really, really important today. Dr. Schultz,
thank you so much for that reflection. Actually, so let's let's talk about the virtual church. Briefly. No one could have predicted a few weeks ago, the depth of changes that our churches are experiencing due to the covid 19 crisis. You write in your text, quote, there are no virtual sacraments that merely approximate or emulate real ones, they then cease to be sacraments. Well, could you help me understand? What did you mean by the statement back in 2002? And what do you believe about the way that church can or cannot operate in an online venue?
Well, let's start with ourselves as created bodies. So God, as a Trinitarian, God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, in the sun, person of God is Jesus Christ in the flesh. We are made in the image and likeness of God. And we are created as beings of flesh. It's basic to our creativeness, this is the way we are. And I think we're meant to have our primary relationships as relationships in the flesh. And so all of our senses are all you know, our senses are including, let's say, seeing and hearing and smelling and touching. All of our senses are meant to be in the flesh, primarily, not exclusively, but primarily. So in our lives, we build relationships with God with other people and our relationship with ourselves. As incarnate in the flesh, people created this way. And then all other media are extensions. This is in part a concept from Marshall McLuhan, who talked about media as extensions of our senses. But I think it's also very biblical. So we want to work primarily on our relationships in person and that includes for the church where we get together as a body, in person, whether it's one person, two persons, three persons, wherever two or three or more are gathered. Wow, we've got some community going. We've got quite a nice It's wonderful, it's a gift from God a splendid gift to be able to do this. And it's, and it's so natural for us to eat together when we get together, and to have the Lord's Supper, as in the flesh, and in fact, to share that supper together in the flesh, and then we move out in these extensions. And the extensions can be really good. So when we think about a church service where somebody cannot participate, because they live in a place, it's too far away, or they're sick, and they can't get out, or for whatever reason, they can't make it and they can participate, quote, unquote, virtually, it's wonderful. It's an add on. It's not a substitute for getting together in the flesh. But it's important. And so in all times, and in all kinds of venues for the church, whatever it is, if it's a Bible study, if it's worship, if it's mentoring, whatever it is, we can have these extensions. And they're great. But as soon as we allow those extensions to eclipse or eliminate getting together in person, then we get into trouble because we're losing some of the deeper connectedness, the value built into us by our creativeness. Dr. Schultz, thank
you so much for that, if I can ask the question that many pastors happened to be asking these weeks, and that is, can churches validly celebrate the Eucharist on zoom, for example, or another digital technology? What's your view, sir?
Yeah, what do we do with something like communion? By the way, this is an age old debate that goes back to the earliest use of the Internet. And people believe that there would be totally virtual churches that people would never have to get together, and they would celebrate communion online, and so forth. And I say, if we have to do it that way, we do it that way. If we can get together in the flesh, we do that. Now in my church, we are having virtual services. And my wife and I get together since we're kind of under our lockdown together. And we get together in a room and we use technology, we're participating with other people. And our ministers in one place, and the person operating the technology is in another and we have some singers, and another and so on, and we're all participating. And then when it's time for communion, we go through the regular communion service as we do it. But in each home, people are encouraged if they are desirous of doing it, to have some, like, we use grape juice, and we have some bread. And at the time, when the minister says we appropriate words, my wife and I share it with each other right there, at the same time, that people in other locations in our church are sharing it. And we do it that way. It's not as good as being together in person, I don't feel the same depth of connection with God. And one thing about communion that's interesting in the early church, communion was the primary way that congregants coming together, express their unity in Christ. So that sacrament was a sacrament of unity in Christ, a oneness. And I think that one is takes on additional power and strength when it can be done in person. But if it can't, and if people are open to it and willing to do it, virtually I say do it. But I'm certainly open to people disagreeing with me on that and wanting to take it in a different direction.
attritional, thank you very much. What advice would you have to our churches? Obviously, we're living in unprecedented times right now with the COVID-19 crisis. What would be your advice to pastors in this time?
The most important ministry is relational. In the flesh, that's the most important ministry. There's been a lot of study of that in youth ministry. And so you can find all these books on youth ministry as relational ministry is very important. And you can supplement it, you can facilitate it using things like social media. But the more there is this ministry in person, which means getting together, spending time together, doing things together, the more of that there is, the more ministry there is. And so what we have to do is work against the trend, to allow ourselves to be super busy, filled up with all kinds of extraneous messaging so we don't get together. And here is a basic principle from my field that is so important. Often, it is when people are together doing something else That their communication is most important and most effective, most impactful. So we get together in hobbies, we get together in a trip for a vacation, we get together around a meal, and we don't think of the primary purpose of those activities is communication. We don't say, Hey, get together to communicate. But we do those things in the process of doing them. Communication becomes natural. And we listen to each other. And we learn from each other, and we become comfortable. And we say the words of gratitude, and love, it just comes naturally out of that. And so the more we can have these practices where we come together to do things, with youth, for example, service is extremely important in the high tech age, so that youth get together with adults cross generationally. And they do things in the service of others genuine service. And they simply get to know each other better as they serve. Very, very important. You look at other technologies as ancillary and supportive of that, but focus on relationship.
Dr. Shorts, if I may close this interview with a question that we've been asking all of the interviewees on this program, and that is this, what would it mean for the church to be united today? How would we recognize this unity? And what is it that we can do is individual Christians to pursue the Unity for which Jesus prayed in john 17?
Here are my thoughts, I could be way off track on this. But my sense is in the world today, there is a desperate need, in the hearts of many people for receiving unconditional love. We live in a world of people who are alienated, lonely, agitated, sometimes filled with anger. There, there are a lot of people that feel outrage. And when the church comes along and acts holier than thou, and seems to make its love, conditional people sads the church, it's just like everything else. It's a bunch of self righteous people. And we should be known by our unconditional love. That does not mean we accept everything. That does not mean where we lack discernment about culture or anything. What it means is that we are the ones always on the front line, in every part of society, of work, of relationship of play, a fun of sports, a business, we are the ones there who in our relationships with other people are the very love of Jesus Christ, the unconditional love of Christ. So we are the last, to be quick to judge. We are the first to listen. We are the first to know that we too, are wrong and are sinners. If we can be that, that kind of person and that kind of collective person as a church. We have a long and healthy way to go in this high tech world. Or many, many people need it. They need that unconditional love. They want the desire. It's deep in their hearts.
It's been our huge pleasure today to be speaking with Dr. Quintin J. Schultz, author, speaker, mentor and Professor of Communication emeritus at Calvin University. Dr. Phil, thank you so much for your time this morning. My pleasure, my honor. Blessings to you