by Jim Miller
Growing with Purpose: Connecting with God Every Day
Shane Hipps
Zondervan (February 1, 2009)
I am of a generation that thinks a TV remote control is something like high technology. But I’m on a learning track, I think. Along my journey to technological savviness I chanced across a book that has opened my eyes even wider to the world in which we live: Shane Hipps’ Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith. For those of my generation, I probably need to explain that pixels are those imperceptible little dots of light on your TV screen that taken together make up the image you see. These tiny flickering pixels go unnoticed while we watch the larger picture that feeds our imagination and, as Hipps shows, manipulates our lives. He warns, “We are only puppets of our technology” if we remain asleep and allow our lives to be shaped by the shimmering points of light that invade our consciousness (and unconsciousness) all day long. He hopes to awaken us with this book.
Flickering Pixels is actually a follow-up to Hipps’ 2006 book, The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture, written primarily for church leaders and professionals. Hipps newest takes much of the material from his earlier book and makes it less technical, more user-friendly. Hipps is himself a pastor with a prior career in advertising hawking Porsche automobiles, a career that gained for him an understanding of how media is employed through advertising and entertainment to entice and exploit the culture. These forces are the “flickering pixels” of our lives, which little-by-little shape the values we come to embrace and live. The scary thing is, as the subtitle of the book points out, these forces can also shape our faith.
The most insightful part of the book (for me) is chapter 4 where Hipps confronts Western culture’s marriage to human reason and how the influence of written language and the invention of the printing press have fed our exaltation of cognitive linear thinking, logic, and reason. This devotion to reason has influenced even our theology to the point where human emotion and feeling have been subjugated to the caboose while empirical bytes of factoids have become the engine that drives everything, even our theology. By way of example he demonstrates how the evangelically sacrosanct “Four Spiritual Laws” approach to salvation is linear thinking, the “Laws” clearly warning us not to “depend on your feelings.” Subjugating emotion and feeling, Hipps shows, is a Greek Aristotelian invention that has become the Western worldview; not the worldview shared by Mid-Eastern or Eastern cultures—the culture, incidentally, in which the Bible was written. “The heart does not take kindly to being ignored,” writes Hipps. When feeling is suppressed by stoical logic it often remerges in unexpected ways—addiction to food, sex, abusive relationships, and power. I came away from this book with the idea that God is all about communication. Hipps believes the church—“Y’all,” as he calls it—is God’s medium for every generation, even this technological one.
In the process, Hipps proves to be a superb storyteller, making use of memorable metaphors and anecdotes from such things as great literature to Saturday Night Live, making Flickering Pixels both an informative and very interesting read.
Artist Bio
Shane Hipps is pastor of Trinity Mennonite Church, Phoenix AZ, a growing, urban, Anabaptist congregation. Prior to accepting his call as a pastor, Shane was a strategic planner in advertising where he gained experience in understanding media and culture. Much of his time was spent working on the multimillion-dollar communications strategy for Porsche Cars North America.
Several years into his career, he had a “Damascus” experience in which he realized he was spending his life working diligently to perpetuate consumer culture and promote values that ran counter to his most deeply held beliefs. So he left advertising to pursue his long held interest in spirituality and theology.
He went on to earn a Master of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and in 2004 accepted a call to serve as Lead Pastor at Trinity. Shane is a dynamic communicator, author, and sought after speaker. He lives with his family in Phoenix, Arizona. For more information about Shane link to www.shanehipps.com.
