I started this book in January and was forced to slowly read it. While I may have wanted to be a how-to for disconnecting, I ended up being more thankful for the book that was written. Andy took the time to share a theological vision for how to exist in our tech-centric society. This look at how to count the costs and spend some time seeing how I can apply this to my own life was very helpful. In what could be a contentious arena, this book has a gentle and encouraging voice.

In "The Life We're Looking For," Andy Crouch argues that our society's obsession with technology has displaced our need for true human connection, leaving us feeling lonely, anxious, and disconnected. However, he offers a way out by examining the social innovations of the early Christian movement and entrepreneurs who are working to create more humane technology, emphasizing the importance of restoring true community and putting people first in a world dominated by money, power, and devices. This insightful book challenges readers to re-evaluate their priorities and offers a hopeful message and practical steps towards creating a world where we are known and loved and where technology serves us rather than masters us, helping us become more human, not less.

I was hoping for a bit more from this book but it was similar to his previous books that have left me wanting more. Not bad but just not what I was wanting, maybe just not that right book for me on technology.

Andy Crouch speaks my language. He has put into beautiful words many of the ideas that were churning in unfinished nexus form deep inside my heart and my subconscious. His insights have put into words the discontent and ill ease that has been growing in my soul with regards to the ever increasing isolationism that is part of our technological world.

Crouch isn't a Luddite. His premise is not that technology is bad but rather that we must own out technology rather than letting it own us. He creates dichotomies like devices vs instruments and superpowers vs flow to demonstrate how modern innovations can promise the world and yet steal our soul (while giving us none of those things promised).

A few quotes:

"Before we ever knew to look for a mirror, we were looking for another person's face."

"Power without effort, it turns out, diminishes us as much as it delights us."

"Once we lived with allness of heart, with a boldness of quest that was too in love with the good to call off pursuit when we encountered risk. Now we live as voyeurs, pursuing shadowy vestiges of what we desire from behind the one way mirror of a screen, invulnerable but alone."

Crouch gives his book a bold title. As he himself acknowledges, we are bombarded with big, bold promises all the time. There are all kinds of new gadgets, new diets, new financial investment plans, new... whatever, that will boldly promise "the life we are looking for" and yet they all fail to deliver even a fraction of what they promise. So I was skeptical going in to this book. It didn't take me long to realize that Crouch doesn't just promise... he delivers. My life, your life, our lives will all be so much deeper and richer if we allow the ideas he presents to saturate our souls and influence our lives. Get this book. Devour it. You won't regret it.

Once again Andy Crouch offers startling commentary on the culture and our relationship to technology. Picking up where The Tech Wise Family left off, The Life We’re Looking For addresses the state of our hearts, for our obsession with our devices is truly an obsession with ourselves. Over time, humanity has traded our search for significance in the eyes of another person for the self-affirming mirror of customized entertainment and digital distraction.

Somehow, in a world obsessed with identity, we have lost touch with some of the most important ways of being human. Part One of the book laments this loss, and Part Two responds by offering strategies and a mindset for a more fully human life.

I have been personally challenged on some specific fronts:

To continue to see my dining room table as a place where genuine change can happen.
To be suspicious of the word “superpower” as a dehumanizing influence. Wherever the sensation of strength is separated form the sensation of effort, we have been diminished.
To be cautious about making choices that mask emptiness, all the while deepening it. Crouch puts a finger on our “small consolations and addictions,” the things that keep us just barely comforted, when God has designed us to flourish.
To beware of the allure of “impact.” What I really want to have with my readers is influence, a subtle and lasting change over time and through relationship and intentional, consequential contact over words and ideas.
Rather than replacing people with cyborgs, the goal of truly valuable technology is to re-place us, to “put us back in our place as… the crown of creation.” (1480) As an instrument in the the hand of a skilled practitioner, technology benefits us most when it enhances our human capabilities and lifts our burdens.

Many thanks to Convergent Books and NetGalley for providing a copy of this book to facilitate my review, which is, of course, offered freely and with honesty.

The book is welcome in our tech culture. Andy Crouch elaborates on the way technology invades our space and identities. He talks about using it as instruments in our lives, jobs and families. Loved this idea!

As more people live and work online, the age-old question of what are we looking for remains unanswered. What are we searching for whenever we are at an Internet search engine? Are we dependent on personalization algorithms to tell us what we need or do we already know what we want? During our times of loneliness, what are we looking for to fill that relationship vacuum? Clearly, there is a growing problem. Research continually reveals that the problem of loneliness is growing. Technology was supposed to be the relationship saviour, but alas, it might have worsened the problem instead. The key is not to let technology lead us but to recognize our unique personhood. Unfortunately, our modern lifestyle is not just impersonal, it reduces relationships to transactions. Just like cashiers going through the motion of collecting money for purchases without even looking at their customers. Worse, in an Internet age, transactions are increasingly conducted without having to talk to a human face or person. The framework of the book is as follows. First, the author highlights the growing problem of living in an increasingly impersonal world. Aided by technology, this trajectory is poised to get worse. If it is not recognized or addressed, we might be paying a deep price for the cost of technological and scientific advancement. Crouch asserts that every human person is a "heart-soul-mind-strength complex designed for love." The heart arouses our desire. The soul drives the depth of ourselves. The mind influences our quest for knowledge. The will emboldens our energy toward actions. Our chief goal is love.

However, this world has other plans. In desiring more power for less effort, more time for less investment, and more fruit for less work, we consume technology thinking that by saving energy, time, and effort, we can become more of what we want to be. Technology seduces us into thinking that it can replace the very things that define our personhood. By focusing only on the product, we let technology deal with the process, including the very things that nourish the process of becoming human. Like the frequent use of the calculator that diminishes our mental skills in math. Truth is, being human requires both process and product. In other words, we have allowed our drive for technology to replace our quest for personal connections and human development. Crouch points out how technology is a form of money and mammon. We use technology to make more money. We use technology to attain the positions promised by mammon power. Yet, something's gotta give, and Crouch tells us it is our personhood. What then must we do? Redeem, reclaim, and restore. Redeem our opportunities while they exist. Reclaim our relationships before it is too late. Restore our need for authentic relationships while we can.

My Thoughts
==============
Let me offer three reflections on this book. First, I appreciate how Crouch highlights the problem of loneliness. Since the creation of man, God had already said that it is not good for man to be alone. That applies across genders. Loneliness is a problem. With technology, this problem has been exacerbated by disconnectedness and disembodiment. The latter two worsen the loneliness problem. Just being family alone is not enough. We need a household, a community to which we can have a sense of belonging. For Crouch, a common household is one that is about intimate relationships among people who love us. It is a community that recognizes us and cares for us. My question is whether Crouch's vision is some unattainable utopia on earth? A cursory reading might suggest it is improbable, if not impossible. Yet, it is important to cast vision. A farmer who plants seeds must have a vision of a great harvest. Likewise, we need to cast a vision of hope of community in an increasingly lonely world. This is an all-important first step. Recognize the problem and re-orientate ourselves toward solving it.

Second, I think Crouch is spot on when he points out the need for community. I like how Crouch brings back the dignity of the ordinary, the mundane, and the seemingly "unuseful" processes of our lives. This is something that we can learn from the dying. Caregivers often share the four words people most needed: "I am not alone." Anything we do that reminds us that we are not alone is definitely worth doing. Whether it is mundane jobs or monotonous routines, there is a difference between doing it alone versus doing it together in a community. Once we allow technology to replace the opportunities to establish friendship and community, we dig our own graves of loneliness.

Finally, we are reminded of how the human race has been cursed by sin, leading to the problem of restlessness. Where is this restlessness driving us toward" What are the things that the unconscious use of technology leading us away from? These are questions that we ought to ask from time to time. The way we use search engines could be a clue to what we are looking for in life. In seeking for solutions, are we downplaying the critical place of process? In trying to make things more efficient, are we unwittingly destroying the very space where communities flourish? If yes, are we then able to create new opportunities for human connections?

Technology is not the problem. It's the uncritical use of it that is the problem. Thankfully, Crouch is one of those who not only recognizes the dangerous trajectories of our current technological environment, he points us on a way forward on what to do about it. We need to bring back the spirit of community. Technology is here to stay. As we learn to use it and live with it, we should not let technology replace our humanness. Wake up and take charge of technology. Otherwise, we will be taken over.

Andy Crouch is the author of four books; he is also a partner for theology and culture at Praxis, an organization that works as a creative engine for redemptive entrepreneurship. For more than ten years, Crouch was a producer and then executive editor at Christianity Today. His work and writing have been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time, Best Christian Writing, and Best Spiritual Writing.

From 1998 to 2003, Andy was the editor-in-chief of re:generation quarterly, a magazine for an emerging generation of culturally creative Christians. For ten years he was a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at Harvard University. He studied classics at Cornell University and received an M.Div. summa cum laude from Boston University School of Theology. A classically trained musician who draws on pop, folk, rock, jazz, and gospel, he has led musical worship for congregations of 5 to 20,000. He lives with his family in Pennsylvania.
Rating: 4.75 stars of 5.

conrade
This book has been provided courtesy of Convergent Books and NetGalley without requiring a positive review. All opinions offered above are mine unless otherwise stated or implied.

The Life We’re Looking For was a thought-provoking and convicting read that is vying for status as my favorite nonfiction book this year so far.

Andy Crouch starts out by talking about the ways we were made for personal connection, and the idea develops throughout, from children desiring connection with their caregivers, to smiling and waving to the trash collectors as they go by. The research and examples were educational but also made me consider the true cost of things in a way I had never thought about before. I was constantly telling everyone around me about what I was reading.

The Life We’re Looking For made me rethink a lot of my daily habits and behaviors and how they fit with my values. Do my habits support the things I say matter to me? Do I value convenience over honoring the image of God in others? Do I use technology as an instrument or let it use me?

Two majors topics are money and technology. While the author spends time on the problems of each, it is really our attitudes and motivations in how we use each of them that is addressed, and not the things themselves that are demonized.

The redemptive solutions offered in the second part of the book make this a really worthwhile read. With technology especially, it can seem like an all-or-nothing approach is the only option, but there is so much that can happen when we examine and make changes in our outlook, uses of technology, and way we build community that doesn’t require swearing off everything that uses electricity.

I’m grateful to have been able to read an e-arc and am wanting to read the rest of Andy Crouch’s books.

This is a very needed book for our isolated world. I read a lot of books about the need for connection in the digital age, and while this one wasn’t my favorite, I greatly appreciate Andy Crouch’s take on the subject. One thing I keep thinking about and have started practicing in my own life (particularly when I feel the need to hurry through an errand or deal with difficult people) is to take note of each person I pass and say to myself “Image bearer.” Even if I complete the errand without directly working with or speaking to anybody, I feel more connected to others than before. It helps me slow down and think about others in the middle of a busy day.

I’ve been looking forward to this book anxiously, and it did not disappoint me. This book isn’t an excellent combination and next step of the argument from Playing God, Culture Making, and Tech-Wise Family.

This is also a very timely book.

We live in a moment of increasing isolation, and there are many consequences to that reality. Andy prophetically states amid the current cultural milieu that the way forward is not through the magic of technology but in recognizing and seeing people as heart-soul-mind-strength complexes designed for love. Our culture would be radically different if we all lived out the principles from this book.

Thank you, Andy, for a thoughtful, challenging, well-written gift.

I appreciate that Andy Crouch views technology as something to assess critically instead of accepting it as if it was the messiah himself, as many people do. There are many helpful things in this book, and I especially found useful the part that talks about the difference between instruments and devices, which was an eye opener. He questions pagan terminology that we've accepted, such as the word charmed, and others. This is great, since language shapes thought.