Greetings and salutations. This is Life and Books and Everything, and I'm Kevin DeYoung.

Good to have you with us. Today I want to read through another recent article, this one from the

World Opinions page. You may have realized I write there about every other week, so you can go

check that out. Not only articles I may have there, but other columnists and contributors,

that's the World Opinions page.

You do need to subscribe after getting a few free articles, but I think it's well worth it.

So do check that out, and I'm grateful that they're giving me the opportunity to read this,

so you can listen to it here.

The articles themselves in print will show up on my

website, Kevin DeYoung.org, about a month after they're posted, and that's just to hopefully

allow people to get them from world and not take away from that platform, but after a month,

if you want to go back and find them you can get them on my own

website this is from march 18 from world opinions my article the dangers of digital discourse

it's no secret that the digital world can be rough. The way we talk about each other and to each

other online is not often a model of careful reason and good faith, but maybe a little literary theory

can help. We've all heard the term genre before. It's a French word, meaning kind or sort. We use it as a

designation for any type of communication, often written or spoken, with agreed upon features and

norms. We see, for example, that the Bible contains different genres of literature.

There are narratives, laws, poems, prophecies, epistles,

apocalypses, just to name a few. Each genre follows certain loose but noticeable patterns.

There are common constructions, repeated phrases, standard templates, and the like. If we read the Psalms, like Leviticus or Romans like Revelation, we are likely to misinterpret some passages and miss the

meaning of others altogether. Knowing what sort of thing we are reading or hearing is critical

...