This week, we are joined on the Aspecial John Podcast with Dr. Richard Linz, who is the author

of a fascinating book that releases this winter titled, Identity and Idolatry.

The image of God and its inversion, its published in Don Carson's series, New Studies in

Biblical Theology.

And Dr. Linz, as you mentioned earlier, connecting with others and community is essential for

us to understand who we are.

My definition or identity must be found outside of us, and we talked about this on Monday

in episode number 674.

So what are our digital communities offer us or not offer us by way of discovering who

we really are?

Yeah, I think we're a little early in the revolution to know for sure.

There's really enough hints that tell us the relationships that are simply digital relationships

online or pretty thin and not substantive.

Now, that's not always the case, and I want to be careful that we don't overgeneralize here,

but broadly speaking, the sheer number of relationships that we are given and granted

access to by virtue of living in the digital age means that none of them can be very thick.

None of them can be very rich, the result of which we live on the surface of each other's

lives.

And so there was a season, probably I want to say five, seven years ago, where we thought

Facebook would eventually be replaced.

Those that had grown up with Facebook were beginning to recognize that it was all about

image and impression and very thin slices of other people's lives.

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