Christopher Schroeder

Tag: technology

  • For All

    For All

    I was intrigued by a recent biographical account of John Mark Comer, who for some is the current “personal-spirituality guy” with a large social media following.

    The article offers background about Comer, contextualizes his efforts, and shares professional and personal experiences. In doing so, it seems to be introducing Comer, and explaining his approach and influence, to those who readers who like I hadn’t heard of him.

    One of Comer’s central belief is that technology is negatively affecting its users’ spirituality. In contrast, he advocates for an approach that he calls “spiritual archaeology,” or excavating Christian practices from its history, and argues for organizing adherents’ lives around their founder’s habits, which he identifies as scripture, service, the Sabbath, solitude, fasting, prayer, witnessing, generosity, and community.

    Comer’s appeal, which seems too progressive to conservatives and too conservative to progressives, has been criticized as too narrowly focused. Nonetheless, it appeals to the author of this account, who reports her realization in conversation with Comer that she — late twenties, college-educated, city-living — is his target demographic and confesses her struggle like Comer’s has with these recommendations.

    I wonder whether such practices might increasingly appeal to others, and know that Christianity isn’t the only justification for these. I believe that these practices could appeal to anyone who prefers less revelation and more reason regardless of their religious persuasion if any at all.

    I wonder whether this author is offering her experience as an assessment although it would fall short of anything reliable (n = 1). I wish she would have envisioned a larger audience for her account.

    Others (Doucleff 2026, e.g.) attest to the need for a more values-driving life and offer such practices along with research studies and other reasons as responses to technology-dominated lives. An additional advantage would be reducing the allure of spiritual or moral superiority, which could be more compassionate and more appealing.

    Christians in other words aren’t the only ones who use digital technologies and suffer from spiritual malaise. All of us could benefit from greater community and more solitude, and even from studying canonical texts for example and serving others more.

    Surely any informed account of the foundational Christian figure would approve.

  • Texts Today

    I’ve had my issues with the Chicago Sun-Times, but I’m objecting this time to recent comments from one of its writers.

    Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg wrote one that was ostensibly about why Chicago Children’s Museum had missing lights on a recent national broadcast. He elsewhere described it as “a columny sort of column” from “a columnist for column readers,” and admitted his uncertainty whether the newspaper would even publish it.

    The reason he suggests is that its features — “something chatty, a little funny, with a voice” — represents a kind of article that is disappearing over time. He offers no evidence but should know, and probably isn’t wrong.

    Such a claim could however have made the same claim about all newspaper articles generally. Newspapers as has been reported are disappearing across the United States, in which case readers would have fewer opportunities to encounter all newspaper articles, and not just “chatty” and “funny” ones that have “a voice.”

    Steinberg is suggesting I realize that forms, or genres, of newspaper articles seem to be changing, but that again isn’t particularly insightful. The medium as media critic Marshall McLuhan explained in 1964 is its message — content and “character” — and perhaps even more so after the appearance of the internet, social media, or AI today.

    The more interesting issue I believe can be found not in Steinberg’s comment but its connotations, particularly the suggestion of nostalgia and loss. Are “columny columns” better than the versions that are placing these?

    Should we lament the loss in other words of the “something chatty, a little funny, with a voice” columns? Are columns or while we’re at it other traditional journalistic genres inherently better than other kinds, including blog posts and social media to which he also turns?

    Steinberg’s opinion I believe cannot be separated from his ideas about his reputation for example or his need for continued employment. The rest of us might have different answers, but these must be considered contexts in which genres emerge, evolve, and are sometimes even eliminated.

    Discursive changes, like those in life, are unavoidable, and conclusions about whether such changes are unproductive or undesirable are debates worth having before offering opinions even throwaway ones.