Screens & Storytellers

Choosing the Influences that Shape Us

“We need to move quickly! The giant truck full of green ketchup is getting away on that high-speed train!”

That was the opening line of a multi-month, make-believe story I am creating with my five-year-old son every night when I tuck him into bed. It’s been a blast. It is becoming a surprisingly complex, multi-layered storyline, and he is 100% tracking along. Kids are smart. Some nights we howl with laughter. Other nights, it gets pretty intense, to the point that he’s now more awake (my bad!).

My purpose in telling stories — besides training my son how to be goofy of course — is to teach him fundamental life lessons. When one character hurts another character, I’m teaching my son the healing power of forgiveness. Or when the leading lady willingly disadvantages herself in order to give advantage to others, I’m teaching my son the responsibility we have to sacrifice for others.

At the very core of telling my son these stories is my desire to disciple him. To teach him what it means to be human and what it means to be a boy, and one day a man. I am teaching him through story, and most importantly, I am trying to model for him these lessons in my everyday life. Because here’s the crazy part of being a father: my son copies what I do and what I say at an alarming rate.

You see, my son is not only being shaped by the story’s characters, he’s also being shaped by his interaction with me, the storyteller. From the words and storylines I choose to emphasize, to my terrible Scottish accents and nonsensical plotlines. The way I tell the story is shaping my son more than the story itself.

As I thought more deeply about these influences on my son — these stories and my example as his father and storyteller — I began thinking about the stories shaping my life. Who are my storytellers? Who am I looking to as my example? The answer, I realized, scared me.

The Storyteller is the Story

Author David Kinnaman writes,

“The lighted rectangles in our pockets — smartphones and their bigger siblings, tablets, and computers — have redefined so much about our lives, including spirituality and the pursuit of God. The ubiquity and power of the interconnected, digital age is affecting how we shape our souls.”

The YouTube personalities, TikTok influencers, Clubhouse chat rooms, and Facebook groups we follow, subscribe to, and like are shaping who we are in tectonic ways. And it’s not only the content on our screens. The device itself is also shaping our habits and behavior, arguably more than the content itself. Marshall McLuhan famously said, “The medium is the message.” Or another way of putting it: the storyteller is the story. Just as my son engages with me as the storyteller, he could also engage with that same story on a device. Yet, while the story would be the same, his engagement would be different because it’s not goofy daddy who knows what makes him laugh, what makes him think deeply, and what details will speak uniquely to his heart.

For many of us, including me, even though we’re aware that the stories and storytellers are shaping us profoundly, we are not taking a moment to just stop and think: is this what I want? Is all of this shaping me into who I am called to be?

You might be thinking, “Great, another alarmist! Just let me be, man. It’s not all bad.” No doubt, I agree. Our screens have opened up remarkable new worlds for us. Education on unprecedented levels: Since the invention of the personal computer in the 1970s, we’ve seen the world’s literacy rate rise from 66% to 86% in 2016. We have headsets giving sight to the blind and texting devices helping the deaf hear. The list goes on. I spend a great deal of my waking hours helping lead a tech community of creators for Christ building useful, meaningful, and impactful technology. I truly believe in the upside. However, there’s something that I wish I had realized a lot sooner: screens, the stories they tell, and the storytellers who tell them have overwhelming authority in our lives, for better or worse.

Step one in finding a flourishing relationship with technology is recognizing the way it is shaping us — our lives, our minds, our hearts, and our souls.

One of the game-changers in my understanding of faith and its relationship to technology came when I began understanding Jesus is a priest.

Imitate the Priest

A priest, in the Bible, was an individual who could sympathize with human need — sin, pain, and suffering — and then bring that before a Holy God for forgiveness and aid. The Bible teaches us that Jesus is the Great High Priest: he is uniquely able to sympathize with all of us, and we can approach him directly for help, healing, comfort, and forgiveness.

Why this matters so much is that Jesus is the great counselor worth seeking counsel from. He is the great teacher worth sitting under to learn how to live. And he is the great example of how to be human and how to live in a chaotic, suffering-filled society. He is worth imitating because, as our Creator, he truly knows us at a level no algorithm, organization, or human ever will.

I feel a growing urgency in my life to give purpose to the screens consuming an absurd amount of my time and to imitate the One who is worth imitating.

One temptation I’ve recognized is that when I feel tired, I open up YouTube. It’s instinctual, habitual, second nature. When I feel tired and listless, I don’t care what I’ll be taught. I’m reacting to my moment of lethargy with a desire for a story by a persuasive storyteller, but it often leaves me more tired and regretful. The entertainment is not helping me deal with my fatigue. It’s not energizing me. Worse yet, even as it pulls me away from my true need — real rest — I am also vulnerable to being influenced by a teacher or counselor not worthy of my imitation.

I’m far from having this all sorted. I am, however, growing more conscious of the implications of screen time and the way it is shaping my character, attitude, faith, habits, relationships, and identity. More and more, it is freeing for me to manage my screen with purpose, decide how often I give strangers my valuable attention, and limit how much influence they truly have in my life. Life must have purpose, on a macro scale, yes, but indeed on a micro scale as well, with each decision and unconscious reaction.

I’m not only doing this for my own good though. What is shaping me is profoundly shaping my son. He imitates me — my actions, my tone of voice, my habits, my instincts, and yes, even my terrible Scottish accent. The conscious and unconscious choices I make, from the messages I digest to the medium in which I digest them, are shaping not only me but the ones I love. Choosing to be more purposeful in who and what we imitate has the power to shape the future for generations to come.

Note: For the best experience, read this article out loud in your best Scottish accent.

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