• Recommended resource:
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Selena: Okay, so last week we talked about tech in marriage, the elephant in the room, trying to kind of put words in order and being able to identify when it’s bad, why it’s bad, kind of diagnosing the heart issues around that, and then how to proceed forward.

This week we’re talking about kind of those tangible steps.

Ryan: Boundaries. Tech boundaries.

Selena: Boundaries.

Ryan: Boundaries. And we’re gonna talk about the tech reset. But if you’re not watching, you have to know this. Nathan and Anna Sutherland are sitting here with us. Hey guys.

Anna: Hi.

Nathan: Hi.

Ryan: Good to have you again. So we’re excited to go-

Nathan: I was like, “Do I look at you? Do I look at the camera?”

Ryan: Yeah, I don’t know what to do either. This is the first time. We’re The Forge. This is the second episode here in The Forge.

Selena: Second episode of The Forge.

Nathan: Come on.

Ryan: The Forge, whatever we’re going to call it. But yeah, today we’re going to be really practical. We kind of spent our time in the ideological ether, if you will. We got a little bit practical.

Selena: Well, you got to anchor some stuff down in your heart, in the heart, right? You got to find out what… Sorry, we’re not on the other side yet. I always want to get there.

Ryan: So yeah, we’re going to be really practical. It’s going to be fun. See you on the other side.

[00:00:57]

Ryan: All right, before we get into the content, it’s an important day. This is the day that your two books released. So it’s launch day!

Selena: Yay.

Nathan: Come on.

Ryan: I don’t have covers to show because they’re still being printed. Because we’re recording this as these things go. But congratulations, you guys.

Selena: Yes, congratulations.

Ryan: Your books released today, officially. That’s weird saying that because it’s not today yet. But it will be today. Let me mention it. Anyway.

Nathan: What is time, man? So yeah, okay, so tell us about those books. By the way, if you want to check out, we didn’t mention this last time, but I’ll put the URL on it. Go to GospelCenteredTech.com and you can order those books. The pre-order pricing will still be good.

Nathan: Ooh.

Ryan: Today only.

Nathan: All right.

Ryan: So GospelCenteredTech.com. Save a bunch of money.

Nathan: 28% I believe is the exact amount.

Ryan: A lot of money saved.

Nathan: Yeah. Because we’re charging so much. Tell us about these books. It’s two books. You each wrote one of them. Give us the 30-second elevator pitch, if you will. Anna, go.

Anna: Mine is called The Graceful Disconnect and it’s a 25-day devotional journey for moms to reorient our hearts back on the Lord and just consider how we’re spending our time. And there’s some tech challenges in there to just push back on some habits that maybe aren’t healthy.

Ryan: I love that. It’s pushback. Not judgy.

Anna: There’s no judgment.

Ryan: You’re wagging.

Anna: It’s just what are we doing here?

Ryan: It’s a bit of a nudge.

Nathan: A nudge. And Anna’s like, “Are you sure?” Let’s think about that for a second. Are you sure about that?”

Anna: Is that what you want to wear? [all laughs]

Nathan: “You sure you want to turn that on? Let’s take a quick thought.”

Selena: Let’s think about this.

Ryan: That’s good.

Selena: Good.

Ryan: Graceful. This is good.

Selena: It is.

Nathan: It’s good.

Ryan: Nathan, what is your book about?

Nathan: I know this is proud husbanding but Anna, her writing on this devotional is fantastic. It’s encouraging. And every one of them, when I was reading them, I was like, That was so good. I’m so encouraged.

Selena: I second that.

Nathan: My book is Gospel-Centered Tech. And it’s how do we equip families to love God and use tech? How do we give parents the tools they need to raise young people in a tech world who can talk about healthy tech, communicate the gospel, and then connect the hope of the gospel. This idea that we’re sinners saved by grace, and take that newfound sainthood and apply it to our daily tech lives, to the tech we use, to the tech we don’t use, to the platforms we’re on, to our search history, to the games we play, music we listen to.

Selena: So good.

Ryan: Wow.

Selena: And a note about these books, because they are not like a couple… They’re not like side-by-side devotionals.

Ryan: They’re standalones.

Selena: They’re standalones, but we would recommend you read them all together.

Nathan: So mine’s more like the family conversation and Anna’s is like the daily reflection, like application piece.

Ryan: Awesome. Awesome. So, in light of that and in light of last week’s conversation, we’re going to get really practical. Boundaries. How can a couple create boundaries around their tech use? We talked about kind of diagnosing ourselves, if you will, and we’re going to talk about the reset assessment in more detail here today.

Nathan: You teased that one hard.

Ryan: I’m just going to keep teasing it. But I just want to… let’s get real. Not that we haven’t been. But in your experience, what aspects of your technology use have created the most, I’ll say problems, or the most conversations, arguments, fights, whatever, in your marriage? So, Nathan, in the last episode you talked about your proclivities toward video games. But that didn’t create any fights, right?

Nathan: Because I was really good at hiding it.

Ryan: What aspects of techniques maybe have you had to…

Nathan: So relationally. So not what caused the most problems individually for me, but interpersonal?

Ryan: Yeah.

Nathan: Ooh.

Anna: Do you have an answer for me? What do I do?

Nathan: Oh, I answer for you? That’s fascinating.

Ryan: That’s risky. That is risky.

Nathan: Oh, I know what it is for us. You’ve wanted a TV, Anna. Anna was raised on TV and love… not raised with TV.

Selena: Weren’t we all?

Nathan: Raise with. That was…

Anna: She was raised on TV.

Nathan: She was left in a box with a television.

Anna: I think it was a typical 90s home. I think your child home-

Nathan: The word was “with.”

Anna: With TV.

Nathan: The word was “with”.

Anna: I think we just had a TV and it was a part of our daily routine. Not in a… like nobody-

Ryan: It’s background noise.

Anna: Yes, totally background noise. Like my family could function with the TV on. Like the news would be on or we’d come home and watch a show after school. Grew up with TJF. That was our Friday night.

Ryan: Darkwing Duck?

Anna: Yeah. And I’m falling asleep on the couch to a show. Like that was just a really normal part of it. But I also could come home from school and I would do my homework in front of the TV, which is very opposite. But it was like a soothing… almost like… it still is that to me of like-

Selena: It’s like a warm noise, like background noise, yeah.

Anna: It’s probably not the most healthy.

Selena: Interesting.

Nathan: The reason that has become a conflict though, is that’s the opposite. Like I was raised no television in our home. We had a TV, but no television. That makes sense. So we’d watch like a family movie night, Focus on the Family movies on VHS, Five Mile Creek was a big one. McGee and Me!.

Selena: I love McGee and Me!. Don’t even knock it.

Nathan: And then like I played video games. You keep that tongue in your mouth, young sir. McGee and me. And then I feel like in adulthood I didn’t have a rhythm of television. So that’s not something I enjoy or value. In my personal preference, if I had to spend time in front of the screen, I want to be the one having the adventures. Like video games become like movies and shows don’t typically be turned my crank.

Anna: Let’s just say you also have some ADD happening in your brain.

Nathan: What?

Anna: And so anything cannot function with a TV on. That was something I feel like we had to learn. Because we would go to my mom and dad’s and the baseball game’s just always on or the news would be on and I’m like, “You have to turn it off because he cannot…

Nathan: He’s staring at-

Anna: Yes, he turns into a zombie. There’s no conversation happening.

Ryan: Mainly Red Robin dinners.

Anna: Yes. Like we can’t go to a restaurant where he can see the TV. He has to have his back to it because he can’t do anything else except look at the TV. So that was a very real part of learning.

Nathan: And that was real before my family got rid of the television. Just for those who were like, see, you got to put your kid around a screen.

Anna: That had nothing to do with-

Nathan: Part of why they got rid of it was because they’re like, “This kid is broken. We need to do something with him.”

Ryan: So that’s created a little bit of a conversation.

Anna: Yes.

Nathan: A regular ongoing. We read Andy Crouch’s Tech Wise Family, put tech in your proper place. And so we chose to go no TV for a couple of years and we have just reintroduced TV to our home.

Anna: Well, also I feel like it is in full… we don’t not watch something.

Nathan: No. Yeah. Full disclosure.

Anna: We don’t have a TV.

Nathan: We use laptop put in a drawer.

Anna: Yeah. The kids will still watch a show. I will watch a show.

Ryan: Every March there’s March Madness.

Ryan: Every March.

Anna: And the Olympics that are starting. They may be are over.

Selena: When is this releasing? It should be in the middle of it.

Anna: It’s like every two years in the summer. And March Madness every year. There is a legitimate fight because I want to be able to have the games on and just watch whatever is going on. And he’s like, well, I’ll get this TV screen in here. Turn the projector on. I’m like, that’s not what I want.

Nathan: Presentation projector. And it’s like a roll-up thing. I put it in the wall.

Anna: So it’s custom mixed.

Nathan: We’ve done it.

Ryan: That’s interesting. Selene, what would you say? I mean, in our household.

Nathan: I feel like you were just thinking of something and you chose not to say it. I feel like you just self-edited that answer.

Ryan: Well, I mean, we could easily-

Selena: How dare you?

Ryan: I mean, as a family, it’s definitely the default to be like, “I’m tired. It’s nighttime. The kids are being like… they’re asking questions. They’re getting cranky. Let’s all just turn on a movie and just everybody can just veg out.” That’s something we have to constantly and consciously push back the tide of-

Selena: Well, because now things are on demand. It wasn’t like that when we were growing up. So like you wanted to watch Full House at 8 o’clock, you gotta watch it at 8 o’clock.

Ryan: At 9:30 it’s done.

Selena: It’s done. You missed it.

Nathan: And at 9:30 it’s just colored bars.

Selena: It is. It really is.

Nathan: TV is done for the day.

Selena: Yes. And so what we’ve, I think, worked on with that is we want to be intentional. So the things that they watch, like we want to have good stories. We want to have the good, the pure, you know? We will read books and then we’ll typically try to watch the movies if there are ones out or, you know, we’ve watched Star Wars now and I thought it would scare them and they’re like, “More Star Wars. Can we listen to The Mandalorian? Can we…” And I’m like, “Oh my goodness.”

Ryan: Right.

Selena: So there’s just been these standards that have been implemented.

Nathan: That’s got to follow you. Your kids like Star Wars.

Ryan: I’m a Star Trek guy myself.

Nathan: I know. I’m not joking. That’s my… No-

Selena: That’s true. But personally, I think in our marriage, like, I don’t-

Ryan: I think we can like… probably a lot of couples-

Selena: You default just to like, oh, we’re sitting in a stoplight or where you’re stopped talking in the middle of conversation.

Ryan: I get irritated when I’m chauffeuring you around and Selena’s on your phone. And I’ve said this to you.

Anna: If it’s just the two of you in the car?

Selena: Whenever he’s driving.

Ryan: I’m like, “I’m driving. I can’t zone out.”

Anna: He can’t scroll.

Ryan: You should not zone out.

Selena: It’s jealousy. It’s not an actual. He doesn’t care about my heart. He’s just mad because he can’t do it.

Ryan:

Nathan: Like, Whoa, hey.

Ryan: Your heart should not zone out.

Nathan: “You should be narrating to me.”

Selena: When all the kids are strapped in and I’m like, “Okay, I have like five minutes to just answer all these texts, which is why I should probably chunk it together on some time.

Ryan: I talked about chunking last week, by the way.

Anna: It is hard. The car is hard.

Ryan: Chunked in the car today.

Nathan: And it was so convenient.

Ryan: I like to chunk before I go to bed.

Selena: I think it irritates me when I start talking to you and then you’re on the phone and you don’t put it down. And I’m like, Cool.

Ryan: We were sitting today, we were having… if the morning goes as planned, we have coffee and Bible time in vicinity and proximity together. And I came in because I was working out here. And I-

Selena: Came on The Forge.

Nathan: Come on.

Ryan: And I sat down and you’re sitting there just like hang with the baby because she’s still waking up. And I got my phone out and I’m just like doing nothing. Nothing valuable. And I’d put it down, I was like, “I’m sorry. I don’t need to be looking at my phone right now.”

Selena: Well, and weirdly, it didn’t like affect me. No, it didn’t affect me because I’m like, “He’s here.” But now that I think of it, I’m like, “It didn’t bother me this morning that that happened.” But reflecting back, I’m like, “Well, maybe that should bother us,” right? Maybe we should question. We’re sitting here together. Why does the phone need to be out? What’s the purpose of it?

Ryan: I think if we’re disconnected, it definitely bothers us.

Selena: Absolutely.

Ryan: I think we’ve gotten pretty good at speaking up about it without getting defensive.

Selena: Right. I’ve gotten really good at it.

Nathan: Can I just ask, like, what does that look like? Because I feel like as a married couple, it gets so personal because the first reaction of someone coming to me, like, “I don’t like what you’re doing on your phone right now,” immediately it’s, what about you? What about what you were doing on your phone? Right?

Ryan: Pointing the finger and justifying. So how do you lovingly bring that up without touching him?

Selena: Well, I think if it’s not constant, you know, if I’m not constantly bringing it up and it’s not really an issue, so when I do bring it up or when you bring it up, clearly there is something going on and I feel like you care about my heart, you care about the culture of our home and that’s why you’re bringing it up. But if you bring it up out of spite and anger and you know, while you’re doing this, so I, you know, blaming-

Ryan: And that’s why we’re talking about boundaries here today because it helps that we have a defined, like this is what we want and this is what we don’t want. So when one of us falls outside of that boundary, then if we’re on our game, we’ll both recognize it, not just the person accusing.

Selena: Right. So when you bring it… yeah, absolutely. The response is very telling.

Ryan: Yeah. So let’s talk about boundaries very specifically. How can a couple create boundaries around their tech use? So we talk about TV, talk about phone use, talk about video game use, which we talked about last week at length, on whatever tech category.

Selena: Start with the RESET?

Ryan: So would you start with the RESET?

Nathan: Yeah. I mean, the RESET is your best answer. Do you want to tackle any of that?

Anna: No.

Ryan: What is RESET?

Nathan: How big would you say a RESET is? Tell me when to stop. So RESET is an acronym that we teased a while ago now. But the idea is it’s a way for families to assess their tech health and decide, is this just something that is different from how we would normally do it? So my kid plays video games. My kid is on social media-

Anna: But this is for spouses.

Nathan: Oh, I’m sorry. I was thinking families. You’re right. But for my spouse, my spouse plays video games or my spouse loves shows. Is that a problem that we need to address? Or is it just different and not the way I would do it?

So the RESET says, all right, look at these five areas and ask, do any of these get impeded by your technology? So your relationships and responsibilities, your emotions, your sleep, your enjoyment, and your time. So, this is a beautiful way to fight for your spouse, not just with your spouse, when it comes to technology. The RESET is premised around research and around real-world experience. But, all right, so you’re playing video games. Okay. So, husband or wife, do those video games impede relationships and responsibilities? The way you treat your wife, the way you treat your kids, the way you engage God. The things you’re committed to at work, the things you’re committed to at home, the things you’re committed to in ministry.

Right there in the first R, if you can say, no, tech doesn’t get in the way of it, in fact, it improves multiple of those. Phenomenal, right? We have a zero out of five so far and we’ll keep going down the list. Emotions. I don’t mean just do you feel good doing it? I mean, do your emotions hinge on this thing? You need it to be okay. So that’s what we’re looking at.

Anna: Or the disproportionate reaction. Like if you don’t get that time is… you can’t control.

Nathan: So people say, Oh, I play video games to debrief from work. This is what I hear all the time. That’s fine. But do you need it to debrief from work? Because if you’re a Christian, you say, I find my hope in Christ, you can’t also need video games. That’s called coping. And it’s perfectly okay to cope. We all cope with different things. But that’s not sustainable. That’s not the fruitfulness of the Lord’s planet of sin. That’s, hey, something’s wrong and I’m just dealing with this. It’s the blister, right? Video games become the blister. Something else is the rub. We need to dig deeper to figure out what’s wrong that video games are just covering over right now. So that’s it’s an easy way to spot it.

Again, it’s the conversational win because I’m not fighting with you now about tech. I’m fighting for you. I’m saying, “Hey, I’ve noticed every time you play video games, you seem 10 out of 10, but every time you come away, something seems wrong with life. What’s going on? Is there something in work? Is there something emotionally? Mental health is off, diet, sleep, work. Is our relationship… are we distant? And you’re using this to fulfill your sense of adventure because we don’t have a relationship going on. Like, those are all real options. Those need to be conversational talking points.

So relationships, responsibilities, emotions, sleep. Basically, if you have drool tech in the bedroom, your sleep is impeded. So if you have tech that’s designed to keep your attention, social media, video games, streaming services-

Ryan: In the bedroom?

Nathan: If it’s in the bedroom physically, like if it’s present, your sleep is impeded.

Ryan: What if it’s just outside the door?

Nathan: Great, you’re fine. For example, no one…

Anna: What’s right outside your door?

Ryan: Like right at the doorframe. Phone just right there. Is that where your phone is?

Nathan: That’s fine.

Anna: You plug it in right there?

Ryan: It’s fine. He says it’s fine, Selena.

Nathan: If the phone is the last thing you look at, no one needs a thousand-dollar alarm clock. So, you don’t need your smartphone to get you awake. You need a $30 flip alarm from Amazon, and it could be there by the time this podcast is done.

I just say that because the evidence is there’s lots of research showing that drool tech in the bedroom, tech that’s designed to keep your time, your focus, your money, in the bedroom harms your mental health, your emotional well-being, your relationships, and there’s no evidence saying that it improves. There are certainly some benefits. And I’m not talking to fringe groups with like, my kid has diabetes and we need the blood sugar alert and my phone’s the way… I get it. That’s incredible. That’s tool tech. And sometimes a smartphone’s the only way to do it.

Ryan: I remember you saying… as you were some sort of documentary. Same thing. That Netflix is not competing against Amazon Prime, they’re not competing against whatever.

Nathan: This is Reed Hastings that said this.

Ryan: Netflix is competing against your own sleep. Your sleep.

Nathan: Co-founder of Netflix said, our competition is not the other streaming services, it’s sleep.

Ryan: If we could just get one more hour of your day where you should be sleeping.

Nathan: Yeah. That’s their growth market. We can’t take more of the wedge. We own the wedge. We can’t just get more of the market. We own the market. So what are we competing against? We’re competing against the other hours of your 24.

Ryan: Jokes on them because anytime I walk the show in bed, I fall asleep.

Nathan: Boom.

Anna: You put me to sleep.

Nathan: You put me to sleep.

Ryan: You’re the tool.

Nathan: Who’s a tool now? The sleep part is really just trying to get to this idea of like more than like, well, how much sleep do I need? It’s just saying, if you have drool tech present, there are gains to be made that are real low-hanging fruit. Your enjoyment, what we’re looking for here is does the engaging of this tech cause a pivot in what you enjoy? Do you lose the ability to enjoy those things that used to be a God-given gift?

In spouses, this would be basically to the things God gave you to enjoy and to celebrate that are just wired into you. I have a love of things like fiction and creative narrative. And Anna absolutely loves athletics and sporting events and time with our kids. That’s a beautiful mother’s heart. If we engage tech and it starts to wilt, where this tech becomes the apex of all enjoyment, and then everything else kind of trickles down from there, that’s the conversational point. You start talking about that. “Hey, I’ve noticed that you’re getting through these things, but you’re really getting back to, like your heart is set on this.” And that becomes the talking point.

And finally, it’s time. And really all we’re looking at with time is contentment. In a RESET, can you be content? Or is it constantly fighting to get a little bit more because that last hit just wasn’t enough? Like me with video games. Every time I finished a game, it was, “That was awesome. When can I do it again?” I never once played a video game and I was like, “That was it. Perfectly content, don’t need to play it anymore. I’m going to go about my day now.”

Like it was always, “I have to stop now because this impending deadline that would blow up my life and joy is now looming because I pushed it off so close to it. So RESET is a beautiful way to lovingly start a conversation. If it can’t be had healthfully, that’s where biblical counselors and professional care come in. Because there are certainly times where things are just too big for the two of you to heck out yourself.

Ryan: The enjoyment one feels like that can be pretty hard to nail down. And that’s why I think the books are so important, because you spend time helping, unpacking the issue, unpacking the theology behind how you view technology. Is that appropriate to say?

Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m happy to dive more into that. I was just trying to be brief.

Ryan: No, no, no.

Nathan: It’s nuanced.

Ryan: We’re gonna let our listeners buy the books.

Nathan: Oh, all right. Okay. All right.

Ryan: With a huge discount. Limited time only.

Nathan: GospelCenterTech.com.

Ryan: Yeah, that’s good. Okay, let me find this next spot here. Couple does the tech RESET assessment, they go through the five areas, they look at themselves, hopefully, honestly, you know, with clarity. I heard you say there’s a boundary around the bedroom. Okay, so that’s a very tangible boundary. Are there other boundaries that can be kind of like the hooks that were hanging these ideas on? I don’t know if that’s a good analogy or not.

Nathan: Sure.

Ryan: What are the big boundaries that couples could at least assess to help as they’re implementing what they learned from the reset assessment? Maybe Anna, if you want to take a stab at any that come to mind.

Anna: I think the time is a big one. And we’ve seen that in our marriage too. But just evaluating like when are we going to be using, especially Drool Tech. And even maybe Tool Tech.

Nathan: I think ToolTech. Yeah.

Anna: In the work. I think probably all of us have… we don’t go to an office and work. It’s like it could always be on. And so I know we’ve had to put some real boundaries around when are we working and when are we talking about work even.

Nathan: That was sneaky. I didn’t see that one coming. I was like, it’s a ministry. The Lord has given us this opportunity.

Selena: When do you stop talking about that?

Nathan: You know what else the Lord has given us? Marriage. How about we do that for a while?

Anna: So I think time. Just when are we going to like do our phones? We do put our phones to bed at night. They stay downstairs in the kitchen. We don’t have it necessarily like this is the last time I’m checking them, but-

Nathan: Oh, the Lexon flip. That’s the brand. Not a sponsor, but we like the Lexon flip alarm clock.

Anna: Some parameters around when are we going to have our tech time. So in the morning, like for us, that tends to be devotionals and time in the word before we are on our phones and then put them to bed and then that gives you that space.

Ryan: It’s so funny because I see this at work in you guys because I’ll be like emailing, because you’ve written these books, we’re helping publish them. Anna’s working on another kid’s book, Lord Willing, and I’ll be like, “Hey, this thing is due or what are your thoughts on this?” And Nathan responds, “Anna’s time is at 10 o’clock. She’ll get back to you then.” And it wasn’t weird, but I was like, Oh, well, clearly there’s like a lot of time for-

Anna: I’m also just not a good multitasker. So when I’m not in work mode, I am not a good… my brain can’t handle that capacity. But I think that-

Nathan: When we talk about the boundaries, like the time, so not like the reset time of like contentment, but putting-

Anna: When are we going to use this? Or how long do we want to watch a show at night? Is that something we’re doing?

Nathan: How often? What time?

Anna: We’ve had that conversation a lot. Like, are we watching a show every night? And I think in the winter that happens more just-

Nathan: Here in southern Alaska?

Anna: Dark black. In the summer, that just naturally happens less. But we also don’t fight. Like that fight kind of goes out the window too, because he’s happier when we don’t watch the show every night.

Nathan: Not being raised on television.

Anna: Does that answer the question?

Ryan: Do you have any questions? I have a curveball.

Anna: Oh good.

Nathan: Ooh.

Ryan: It’s not maybe. Maybe not a curveball. So say a couple has, you know, their shows that they like to watch. One doesn’t watch… say a husband likes to watch a certain show, the wife doesn’t watch it for moral reasons. It’s not that she doesn’t enjoy the genre or the show or the character, it’s that she thinks there’s an objection.

Nathan: There’s too much sex position. Okay, maybe that.

Selena: Violence.

Ryan: Or violence. Or language.

Selena: Sure.

Ryan: Maybe it’s not a curveball at all, but how would you coach that couple?

Nathan: Oh, really?

Anna: You have a really small amount of things that you will watch.

Nathan: Yes. But it’s not moral. That’s just really persnickety.

Anna: Okay. I feel like there are…

Ryan: Lord of the Rings or nothing.

Anna: Well, even like The Crown, like he was not going to watch The Crown.

Ryan: I do not blame you, Nathan.

Anna: I feel like I am the one who’s like, I like watching shows anyway.

Nathan: Oh yeah.

Anna: And I have a little maybe wider net of what I would watch. But I don’t think we’ve had a moral… I don’t think you’ve ever been like, I don’t like that you’re watching this because it’s morally-

Nathan: There are certain couples that were one couple that, Oh, but the story is so good. And the other spouse is like, Yeah, but like, that’s not great.

Anna: Right.

Ryan: I can think of a really controversial one right now.

Selena: The Chosen.

Ryan: Yeah, The Chosen.

Anna: Oh. I was like, I feel like I’m the one that I feel like maybe… no, that doesn’t matter.

Nathan: No need to name names, but if there are dragons and kings involved.

Ryan: Okay, so Game of Thrones.

Nathan: Oh, what?

Anna: That doesn’t even feel controversial.

Ryan: It’s not controversial.

Nathan: But some people watch it and the spouse doesn’t want to, and you’re like, how do you have that conversation?

Anna: That feels like a Philippians 4:1 to me though. Like it’s not honorable.

Ryan: That’s pretty clear. Like if there’s all kinds of sex-

Nathan: Great writing, wonderful cinematography.

Ryan: I’ve never watched it for that reason.

Nathan: The term sex position was invented because of that. So like if important plot points happen during a sex scene, it’s sex position.

Ryan: So they force you to watch it.

Nathan: You have to like get through that because otherwise-

Anna: There’s no getting around it.

Nathan: The storyline is happening during this scene. And you will miss plot if you use, you know, angel vid and you like skip that. You’re like, “Wait, who just died?” Like, where are we right now? And you missed a four-minute chunk of the show.

Anna: So if I’m watching Game of Thrones and you’re like, “I don’t think you should be…”

Nathan: Right. That would be the question.

Anna: What would you do?

Nathan: I mean, okay, we have a… That’s another piece. Because if you as a loving spouse, again, if you have two believers and one believer says, I’m uncomfortable with this content on a moral level, and you go, “Who cares? I’m free in Christ,” that is concerning on its face. Even if it wasn’t immoral, the one partner said, I feel morally, my conscience is graded by this, and you go, you’re the weaker brother or sister, and I’m doing me because I’m free in Christ, that is a wrong perspective to start with.

Our job is to serve the weaker brother or sister, and so our job is to say, you know what, this is my right to watch this morally approvable, or morally approved, biblically, peace. No, I’m saying like, just on its face, if it was a moral, someone say, you know what, this is great…. so the example… I won’t name names. We have friends who say, “Hey, there’s a book that we can’t read because of our family history.” It’s sensitive, it’s real, which is the whole point.

Anna: You’d really blow people up with that book.

Nathan: Paul’s whole point was these people have come out of pagan rituals where they saw the prostitution, they saw the idol worship and they can’t eat this meat because it chafes them and they know what happened and they remember their own brokenness. And the meat isn’t tainted, but their hearts are hurt because of this. Do not make them eat this meat. It would be a sin for them to partake in it.

If that person says, I can’t watch the show because I’ve been here. Like, it’s not immoral to watch this, but like, that hurts me. I don’t want to watch it. And you go, “Well, whatever. It doesn’t bother me. You’re just weird,” and you go and do it anyway, that’s not loving, that’s not Christ, and that’s something we could repent of. So that’s on the not moral.

Then if it’s actually immoral, like you need to call them on it. You need to lovingly say, “Hey, this doesn’t fit with who we’re called to be in Christ. And if that person can’t receive it, it’s definitely not the only problem you have. Something else is off. And that’s a lovely spot to start talking about it. I find tech is a wonderful, wonderful blister finder. It finds all the things that are getting chafed and rubbed and swelling and causing pain. And they’re not the problem. It’s not just quit watching two violent shows-

Selena: It’s just the flag.

Nathan: It’s just what’s happening here. An indicator.

Ryan: We won’t go down the rabbit trail, but the genre comes to mind that is like true crime documentary-type stuff.

Nathan: Celebrating the macabre.

Ryan: Yeah. It morally neutral? I don’t think anything’s morally neutral frankly. So you have to hash through that.

Nathan: I mean, to use an example that I’m sure many people listening to this, there was a particular special that was run on church history in the recent past, that was like a true crime, but within the church, talking about a Northwest church that imploded. And while it was incredibly informative and extremely well-produced, the heart behind a vast majority of people I talked to that listened to it, was kind of that little bit of joy that we get the Schadenfreude of like, oh, we like watching the slow implosion of the destruction-

Ryan: Like watching the train wreck.

Nathan: Right? There’s something in me that just goes-

Ryan: And you’re talking about… we can mention it. The Mars Hill one.

Nathan: The Mars Hill one, yeah. I would say that would be an example of like, Hey, let’s check our hearts. It’s important to know truth and to unveil… it’s important to unveil real hurts and to talk about them and bring them to light, because that’s the only way God can deal with them. And many of us engaged in that particular series for other reasons other than being able to pray well, being able to be discerning leaders within our own church and ministry environments. We got the jollies off other people’s suffering and the kind of righteous indignation that comes from being a third party, just hearing that tea spilled and be like, yeah, juicy.

Ryan: This is a very big topic we don’t have time for, but yeah, things that are entertainment that are wearing masks as if they’re not entertainment. So that-

Nathan: Infotainment.

Ryan: Infotainment. Or like news. Like, what is nightly news? It’s like little, three-minute snippets of events that have zero import on my life, but like I’m being entertained by them under the guise of I’m being-

Selena: Informed.

Nathan: What’s Postman say?

Selena: Yeah.

Nathan: And now this?

Anna: And now this.

Nathan: And now this.

Anna: And then you’ll post-

Ryan: He’s just the example of like this big tragedy died or this big tragedy happened.

Anna: And now…

Ryan: And now… I actually was kind of lamenting this earlier this week, like how seared do our consciences get? Here’s what happened. That church in Dallas, burned down. Did you see that?

Selena: No.

Ryan: It came through my X feed, right?

Nathan: Sure.

Ryan: And so it’s like big church in Dallas. I don’t know how it burned down, but it was burning. It was a tragic, beautiful building that tragically burned. And I’m like, next. I don’t have the capacity to care for everything that comes through my feed.

Selena: So what does that do to the other things downstream of your life? Even reading stories. Like I’ll read through things and even in the Bible, I’ll be like, “Oh, that stinks. They had a battle.” 5,000 men, like these were brothers. These were husbands. These were young men that had the future of Israel ahead of them and they were slaughtered. Like you just brush past it.

I think it’s those types of things that feed our conscience that it has seared them. We can’t feel the impact until we stop and examine and observe. But even then it’s like, why do we even take the time to do that? Well, there’s a lot there, actually, believe it or not. Then, yeah, instead of just scrolling through. I feel I’m starting to feel convicted about, wow, you look at one tragedy, right? And it’s the and then or-

Ryan: And now-

Selena: And now is just the scroll. That’s all it is. You’re like, wow, somebody just lost their life or their child. And oh, wow, look at this pretty table that was set.

Ryan: So what I hear in this conversation, the theme that I’m seeing is that there needs to be in the life of a Christian, especially around tech, around the things that we’re bringing, allowing into our hearts and minds, there needs to be a level of introspection, a level of discernment, a level of filtering consciously. And in marriage, we help each other do that, right? And tools like the RESET assessment are useful to that end if we will approach the topic with vulnerability, with transparency, with honesty.

Selena: Well, yeah, what’s the objective?

Ryan: And the willingness to be changed.

Selena: Yeah. It’s not to police each other and to, you know, one-up each other and be self-righteous and everything. It’s because I love you. It’s because I want our marriage to thrive. It’s because I want to protect our covenant. It’s because God has purposed us for this. So, you using your phone too much or us, you know, getting our conscience seared because we just scroll through things quickly, like that’s not okay, right? For these reasons.

Ryan: And this isn’t to mention all the other heart issues that arise because of social media around comparison, around fear of missing out, around whatever the-

Selena: It’s binding.

Nathan: General anxiety that something’s wrong and you don’t know what it is.

Ryan: You just don’t feel right. That discontentment.

Selena: I would venture to say it’s a stab at being omniscient, right? To be like God, just always present everywhere.

Ryan: Yeah. We have this idea.

Selena: It’s a lie. We’re very finite, obviously.

Ryan: And so what I hear again, drawing out themes is that to be aware of your tech use, to be aware of tech’s impact and import in the human heart and mind is to acknowledge I am not capable of managing this all the time and everything that this brings into my life. And you do that, why? Is it just because you want to optimize your life? Is it just because you don’t want to do the wrong things? No, it’s because we have a life that’s been given by the grace of God and we are called to steward it unto His glory and not just undo our whatever whims and fancies. And tech has a really unique way of wedging itself in and then opening up gaping holes in our lives that it will then fill. And like we like to always do with these episodes, remind ourselves of the gospel that those holes can’t be filled by tech. They can only be filled by the good news of Jesus Christ and everything that His life means for us and all the hope that He brings to us.

So we like to remind our listeners and our viewers, if you don’t know who Jesus is we want you to know who Jesus is. So we actually have a website… well, we first say, talk to a friend. If you have a friend who’s a Christian, talk to a friend.

Nathan was a Christian before we met. Otherwise, he would have talked to me and we read John together. Now we say, talk to a friend, find a church that preaches out of the Bible. And if you don’t have either of those things, go to this website, it’s thenewsisgood.com.

Regarding these books, okay, so where can they find your tech books?

Anna: GospelCenteredTech.com.

Nathan: Boom. Get there. And today.

Ryan: Presale. You get a pre-sale price.

Selena: Pre-sale price.

Ryan: If you want to save thousands of dollars, these are just $5,000 a book. Marked down to $16 a piece.

Selena: You should buy one and buy a set for a friend. I think they would lend themselves beautifully to like a study group. Where you have like a group of… Anna’s book I think would really work for this or the Gospel-Centered Tech book.

Nathan: Yeah, Gospel Center Tech is designed for that concept, that it can easily be chunked. It can be broken into smaller pieces. You can do it before bed, you can do it on the go. And yeah, it can be broken down into small pieces. GospelCenterTech.com, check out those books.

Let’s pray. Lord Jesus, thank you for your word that is instructive, even with our modern issues of technology and how to manage them and all the new sinful proclivities they bring out in our hearts. Lord, help us to submit even this unto you. I pray for the husbands and the wives who are struggling to find balance in this area, struggling to find boundaries. I pray that they would take something from this episode and apply it Lord, in a way that would bear fruit in their lives. I pray that you would empower them and bolden them to do just that. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Selena: Amen.

Nathan: Amen.

Anna: Amen.

Ryan: Thank you guys for joining us.

Anna: Thank you.

Nathan: Thanks for having us.

Selena: Happy book launch day.

Ryan: Happy book launch day. Enjoy. Enjoy your day in the sun.

Nathan: Thank you.

Ryan: It’s a good day. It’s a good day. You’re famous authors now.

Nathan: Oh, wow. That just went from publishing day to famous. That’s incredible.

Anna: That’s really a big jump.

Ryan: It takes minutes. Published, famous, boom.

Anna: Especially books.

Selena: Yes.

Ryan: Yeah.

Anna: It does happen.

Ryan: That’s awesome. Well, anyway, thank you for joining us, listeners and viewers. That’s it for this episode. This episode of Fierce Marriage Podcast is—

Selena: In the can.

Ryan: See you again in about seven days. Until next time—

Selena: Stay fierce.