The Luddites were a band of British millworkers who destroyed laborsaving textile machinery because they thought the machines would steal their jobs. I think they were on to something. But it's not my job I'm worried about; it's my soul. That's why I refused to buy a cell phone until my wife finally made me.

And that's why I hoped Shane Hipps would roundly denounce electronic media in Flickering Pixels: How Technology Shapes Your Faith (Zondervan, 2009). Alas, he doesn't. Instead, he intends the book to "[train] our eyes to see things we usually overlook"—in this case, the way media affects how we perceive ourselves and God and ultimately alters the message of the gospel.

Flickering Pixels is Hipps' second book on the influence of media, and it covers some of the same ground as The Hidden Power of Electronic Culture (Zondervan, 2005) but is a bit more accessible and intended for a broader audience. The profound truth at the center of both books turns conventional wisdom on its head. ...