originally published 11/25/2025

English professor Jeffrey Bilbro explores a Christian posture toward contemporary digital media in his book Reading the Times: A Literary and Theological Inquiry into the News (IVP Academic, 2021). Bilbro orients his inquiry around three questions: “To what should we attend? How should we imagine and experience time? And how should we belong to one another?” Bilbro is not a declinist — he recognizes that people have always struggled against distraction. Nonetheless, he is concerned with how social media amplifies that tendency. He wants Christians to evaluate their understanding of time, to realize that their experience of “chronos” time (modern quantified duration) inhabits “kairos” time (time that is seasonal and patterned). This type of realignment toward the eternal can help cultivate the sort of “holy indifference” which Pascal encouraged: a stance which enables Christians to care deeply, but also rest in the providence of God.

23 minutes

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