The digital world's most serious threat isn't misinformation. It's misformation.

In Digital Discernment, James G. Spencer offers a thoughtful, theologically grounded, and practical approach to faithful witness in a digital culture. Beyond basic approaches like limiting screen time, this book offers a rigorous vision of what faithfulness actually requires in our digital age.

Algorithms, platforms, and digital rhythms are reordering our loves, retraining our instincts, and pressing Christians to live as if God were absent or irrelevant. Without discernment, God's people risk becoming disciples of the digital age rather than disciples of Christ. By integrating biblical theology, spiritual formation, and information literacy, Spencer equips pastors, ministry leaders, and everyday Christians to live as disciples shaped by God's reality rather than the world's illusions.

What you'll find in Digital Discernment:



- A robust understanding of what it means to be human, why that matters, and how the body of Christ must coordinate its witness against the fragmenting forces of the digital age

- A four-way framework for disciplined inquiry utilizing propositional, procedural, perspectival, and participatory ways of knowing that rejects simple, un-nuanced answers to complex questions

- The interpretive habits, theological dispositions, and practical skills needed to evaluate digital information faithfully

- How to recognize the unhealthy ways that digital culture is shaping you, and how to instead pursue the formation that only discipleship to Christ can provide

Living in a digital age requires us to make choices about what content we consume and produce, as well as how we consume and produce it. Digital Discernment equips you to make these choices wisely. In a world that pushes you to be reactive, defensive, and anxious, you can instead choose to be calm, thoughtful, and theological when you learn how to think well about the digital world.



James G. Spencer (PhD, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School) is president of the D. L. Moody Center. He is the author of Serpents and Doves: Christians, Politics, and the Art of Bearing Witness and Christian Resistance: Learning to Defy the World and Follow Jesus. James is a regular contributor to Christianity.com, an associate research fellow with the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology, and host of the Thinking Christian podcast. He is a member of the Institute for Biblical Research and an adjunct instructor at Wheaton College. James and his wife, Kim, live in central Illinois with their four children.



Introduction: Discernment, Formation, and the Challenge of the Digital Age

Part 1: Foundations for Digital Discernment



1. More than Misinformation



2. Human Capacity and Technology



3. Being Human in a Digital World



4. Theological Dispositions

Part 2: Knowing, Discerning, and Being Re-Formed



5. The Quad



6. Participatory Knowing



7. Perspectival Knowing



8. Procedural Knowing



9. Propositional Knowing



10. Good, True, Beautiful



11. Coordinating Response



12. Re-Formed for a Digital Age



Epilogue



Acknowledgments



Notes