How to develop a life of wisdom in the midst of a culture that works against such a development? Gospel Coalition author and editor Brett McCracken provides an insightful diagnosis of our cultural moment with guidelines for developing a life characterized by wisdom. Join Sean and Scott for Brett's perceptive perspective on this important topic.

Brett McCracken is Senior Editor and Director of Communications for The Gospel Coalition and author of Uncomfortable, Hipster Christianity, and Gray Matters. He has a regular blog post at brettmccracken.com



Episode Transcript

Scott Rae: Welcome to Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture, a podcast from Talbot School of Theology here at Biola university. I'm your host, Scott Rae, Dean of faculty and professor of Christian ethics.

Sean McDowell: I'm your co-host Shawn McDowell, professor of Christian apologetics.

Scott Rae: We're here with a special guest, Brett McCracken, who is a former colleague here at Biola university. Let's just say he wore a number of hats in the communications area at Biola university, very close to the president's office, and now is the senior editor and director of communications for the Gospel Coalition, which is a terrific website that has all sorts of terrific multimedia content available. Brett is the one who basically does the editing and curating of that content and actually authors a good bit of it himself when he runs out of things to do. So, he's got a brand new book out that we are delighted to be able to feature. It's one of the most insightful work that I've come across in a really long time. So it's called, "The Wisdom Pyramid." So we want to alert our listeners to this new book. Brett's going to tell us a little bit about that. So Brett, so good to have you with us. Thanks so much for coming on with us.

Brett McCracken: Yeah. Thank you, Scott and Sean. Great to be with you.

Scott Rae: You've written on a whole host of subjects that range from biblical studies to theology, to culture and apologetics. Why did you set out to write this particular book?

Brett McCracken: Yeah. There could be a long answer to this question or a short one. So I'll try to do the short one. Basically, I think there's three kind of catalysts for me writing this book, working in the digital space as like an editor of a website. I spent all day, every day, basically on the internet and I'm in that ecosystem and I'm on social media for my job. And while there's great things about it and of course The Gospel Coalition, my employer, wouldn't exist were it not for the internet. So, there are some good things about it, but I think I've had a front row seat to the underbelly of it and the downsides of it and kind of the toxic dynamics of the internet. So I think that's one, just observing that over the last couple years and seeing how the internet is making us crazy.

Brett McCracken: Just seeing that for first hand, seeing people in my life, and I think that leads to the second reason. So I'm an elder in a local church here in Southern California, so I'm wearing like a pastoral hat a little bit as I'm writing this book because I see within my own church flock, I see the formative power of the internet and how insidious it is in today's digital age for actually capturing hearts and minds in more potent and powerful ways sometimes than even the church and the Bible capture people, inform people. So just kind of watching how that is happening as we speak, how church going Christians are being more powerfully formed by their diets online and on social media, by their intakes, that whatever formation they might be getting on Sunday at church or in their Christian community is no match for the steady influx of content, forming them.

Sean McDowell: Some of the fascinating material in your book is how you diagnose our cultural moment. So before we get to some suggestions of how to fix it, what trends are you seeing right now that really get your attention, that concern you?

Brett McCracken: So in the book, I highlight three kind of dynamics of the digital age that I think are particularly harmful, and each of them has a corollary with eating. So we can talk about this more later, but the whole book concept is kind of like playing off of the food pyramid in terms of a healthy diet of physical food makes you physically healthy. And I'm saying a healthy diet or makeup of ideas, intakes, voices helps you to be spiritually healthy or wise. So the problems that I'm seeing, each of them has a parallel with eating. So the problems I talk about are too much information, information gluttony. So just like eating too much food makes you sick. I think the inundated overwhelming abundance of information at our fingertips is actually making us sick, or gorging on it. We're binging on it. We're going back to the buffet, so to speak, of Twitter, more than we should, and it's all junk food for the most part.

Brett McCracken: So that's one problem that I'm seeing, the too much information. The second one I talk about is the too fast. The speed of the digital age is not conducive to wisdom. Let's just say that. There's a lot more we could say about that, but we move too fast to be prudent both in what we consume and kind of how we filter information. Is that really a good source, should I trust that source? And we spread information and we say things in the internet age way too fast, that isn't good for our wisdom. So the too much problem, the too fast problem. And then the third one I talk about is the too focused on me problem, the kind of inward self-focused orientation, which, the internet didn't create, that was already a problem in our culture.

Brett McCracken: This look within yourself dynamic, but I think the internet in its very structure actually adds a new layer to this because now algorithms can literally like feed you what you want and build an entire reality around you as an individual. So if we were already kind of prone to narcissism and wanting to kind of define reality on our own terms, the fact is the internet now lets you do that in scary ways. So those are three of many problems I could talk about, but those are the three that I see as the most deadly in terms of making us sick and unwise.

Scott Rae: So too much, too fast, too focused on me.

Brett McCracken: Yep.

Scott Rae: Sean and I can both remember what it was like before the internet, before the digital age-

Brett McCracken: I can too-

Scott Rae: Like you can't-

Brett McCracken: I'm a geriatric millennial.

Scott Rae: There you go.

Brett McCracken: I'm an old millennial.

Scott Rae: That's a term I haven't heard before.

Brett McCracken: It's a real term. It's on my Twitter bio.

Scott Rae: My kids can't really remember what it was like without the internet in their lives, and Sean, your kids are younger than mine and I'm sure that's even more so the case for them.

Sean McDowell: Totally.

Scott Rae: So how do millennials, Gen Z, the generation who's in their teens, 20's and so, how do they generally respond to this? Because you're awfully tough on social media. I think justifiably so, but do they tend to roll their eyes and say, "yeah, that's an old guy talking," or does it resonate with them?

Brett McCracken: Yeah. I think the most common response that I've gotten from that generation is just kind of nodding along and saying, "yeah, he's right and I know it, but I'm still going to pull out my phone right now and just start scrolling," because it's so ingrained and it's such a part of life. It's like oxygen, right? Like wifi is the oxygen for digital natives, and so it's just such a part of life. So I think there is a recognition in our culture right now. I think a lot of young people, Gen Z, who have grown up in this environment are sensing that something is not right. Something is not working out for me. I mean, mental illness is on the rise, depression, suicide, just in the last week I've heard of like three people in Gen Z, in my kind of extended circles, who committed suicide.

Scott Rae: Gosh.

Brett McCracken: And I think this is the product. These are some of the bad outcomes. And there's been books about this, a book by Jean Twenge called, "iGen" is a really good, she basically goes through all the data about mental health and how it actually, on every measure, depression, anxiety, et cetera, it was already going up among younger generations. But the year the iPhone was released, suddenly it skyrockets. So she's making the argument, as I would concur, that there's something about this digital ecosystem and particularly the smartphone and social media that is not making us healthy. And I do sense that people recognize that and younger people are at a place where they're yeah, trying to figure out healthier habits and ways to be more moderate in how they use this, and that's what this book is kind of about. I'm not saying throw away your phones, the internet is never something you should go on. It's on "The Wisdom Pyramid." And we can talk about that more, but I think we just have to be so careful with-

Scott Rae: Yeah, I think it's helpful for our listeners to know it's also at the very top of-

Brett McCracken: Not meaning the most important, which, let me clarify...

Scott Rae: Not foundational.

Brett McCracken: Not foundational, but it is it's in the dessert category. So it's there.

Sean McDowell: I think what a lot of people miss is, you're not just concerned with what's on the internet, things like pornography or the content or false ideas that can capture young people. It's the medium itself that concerns you.

Brett McCracken: Yes.

Sean McDowell: What is it about the medium on top of the message that concerns you, and you have concern of one over the other? Or is it both?

Brett McCracken: Yeah, I think those three problems I've talked about are all kind of more the medium is the problem, right? It's the fact that we have, at our fingertips, access to literally the entire accumulated knowledge of humankind since the dawn of time. It's at our fingertips and while that sounds cool, I think in reality, it's terrible for epistemology for one thing. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and so I think it's dynamics like that, it's the speed that I talked about. Digital media is just by nature, it's prone to want to go fast, right? It's all about conquering the old challenges of space and time and being able to download things at ever faster speeds. And so it conditions us to want to move faster and think faster and speak faster and I don't think that thinking and speaking fast, it rarely ends in wisdom, I find. So, yeah.

Scott Rae: Yeah. It's maybe not an accident that the Bible says, "be quick to listen, not quick to speak."

Brett McCracken: We do the opposite on the internet, a lot of times.

Scott Rae: You're especially critical of the too focused on me.

Brett McCracken: Yeah.

Scott Rae: The autonomy culture, I love the way you describe it, you call it to look within culture instead of looking to other things external to yourself, transcendent sources. But at the end of the day what really is the problem with being true to yourself I think a lot of looking within is actually really healthy, reflective types of things. So what's the balance there?

Brett McCracken: Yeah, and I'm not saying every form of looking within is wrong. I think, introspection, that can be good. Self-reflection, it's just looking within yourself as a source of wisdom is the problem, as the source of truth and guidance for the good life, that's where we go wrong for a lot of reasons. I mean, the Bible says the heart is deceitful above all things. So following your heart often leads us astray and then also just the logic of it doesn't add up because if one person's look within truth says this and another person's look within truth says the opposite, then they both can't be true, right? Because when the rubber meets the road, in the real world, there has to be a truth outside of us. That is the ultimate arbiter of how a society functions. One simple example I use is red lights and green lights... like traffic laws. If I were to declare one day that my truth is that red means go and other person says, no, my truth is green means go, then it would cause chaos.

Scott Rae: Got it.

Brett McCracken: For the world to not be chaotic, there has be something external to our inclinations and our preferences that we all have to submit ourselves to. So I think the logic of it just breaks down.

Sean McDowell: Can you talk about the body/person dualism that you describe and you think this is kind of exemplified in the LGBTQ movement, but also kind of how the creators, The Matrix film franchise, fit in with this idea as well.

Brett McCracken: Yeah, there's a lot in that question. So something that I think the internet age and this kind of largely online life that we now live has led to, is it's made more plausible this dualism, right? If you live most of your life in this ethereal abstract space of the internet where your avatar is really who you are and you don't really know anyone you're interacting with in a bodily way, then I think it becomes more salient. This idea that I am an abstract ethereal person and there is no necessary connection to my physical reality, my bodily reality or anything in the physical world. So this kind of virtual reality world that we live in, I think is one of the big reasons why transgenderism as an idea has become more plausible. I think there were other things going on philosophically in our culture, going way back to the enlightenment of Rousseau, et cetera.

Brett McCracken: But I do think that digital age has really amplified this dualistic kind of gnostic disconnect between physical reality and virtual personhood and The Matrix, it was an offhand comment in the book, but I just find it interesting that The Matrix, which it was kind of a prophetic, early in the internet age movie, that was kind of depicting this very idea of, we live a reality, a virtual reality that is separate from our physical reality and that maybe that's actually preferable, and maybe that's who we really are, right? And I think it's interesting that the filmmakers of that film, The Matrix, they were the Wachowski brothers, but both of them are now transgender women. So they themselves, I don't know if it's a chicken or egg thing, I don't know if they were already on that trajectory before they made The Matrix and The Matrix is just an expression of that kind of ideology or, or maybe it was something that after... I don't know, but it's interesting. It's an interesting thing to me.

Scott Rae: So Brett we've gotten a really helpful diagnosis here that I think is pretty compelling. So what are the various components of your wisdom pyramid? And I love the analogy to the food pyramid for a healthy diet that points us toward wisdom. So what are the kind of the building blocks on the wisdom pyramid?

Brett McCracken: Yeah. So I'll try to be quick with this. The whole second half of the book goes into each of the- [crosstalk 00:16:05]

Scott Rae: We're going to talk about some of the details.

Brett McCracken: Yeah, well basically with the parallel with the food pyramid, from the bottom up, as with food pyramid, same with the wisdom pyramid, it goes from the most important, most foundational for our wisdom to kind of the least important, potentially unhealthy at the top. So at the bottom, of course, is the Bible, God's word. His direct special revelation has to be the foundation of our wisdom. The second level up is the church. This is God's people, his community. So one of the ways I thought through structuring it was the idea that wisdom is from God, it's defined by God, so I oriented the pyramid such that it goes from most proximity to God at the bottom, and then gradually less and less proximity. So I would argue the church is the second most foundational source of wisdom because it's the second most proximity we have to God, it's his very presence among his people.

Brett McCracken: He's shaping them, growing them, we're learning scripture together. And then the third level up, and people often are surprised by this, is nature. And my argument there is going on the logic of most proximate to God, to least nature is the third, most important category for wisdom because it's God's... it's his direct creation, right? There's no other creator of nature. It's his general revelation, right? Christian tradition has these categories of special revelation with the Bible and general revelation with nature creation. It's the two books idea, the book of nature and the book of the Bible.

Brett McCracken: So nature is an important part of our wisdom diet, and I think, especially in the digital age, when we're we're prone to spend all day, every day looking at screens and being mediated by digital technology, we can become more and more disconnected from God's design in nature. And this connects to the transgenderism thing and that whole virtual reality gnosticism, all of that. Anyway, we could talk forever about that. So let me just move on quickly. So after nature, there's books as a category that's important for us and then beauty, kind of the importance of art and beauty for our wisdom. And then finally at the top is where I put the internet and social media. So it's there, but least important.

Sean McDowell: Do you have any sense of what Christians maybe struggle with the most on that pyramid? Is it interpreting scripture through this autonomous self?

Brett McCracken: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: Is it not valuing church? If you had to kind of categorize where you think the bigger challenges are, what might you suggest?

Brett McCracken: Yeah, I mean, I think I would probably say the bottom categories, Bible, church, because those are the most foundational and the most essential for our wisdom, I think that is the one that worries me the most in terms of biblical literacy being so low among even like church going Christians. Even Biola students, the cream of the crop don't know the Bible well, and that's a problem because everything else in terms of wisdom follows from rightly handling the word of God and having a grasp of what his truth is in scripture. So I would say that's one that Christians just struggle with increasingly, and that's a whole nother conversation, but there's lots of ways that our culture is undermining the Bible's legitimacy. And so it's an even bigger challenge today it has been. And then the church, we can maybe talk about that as a separate thing, but church going is... I think, in America, we hit under 50% for the first time in terms of the number of Americans who go to weekly religious services. So church going is on the decline, and I don't think that bodes well for our wisdom.

Scott Rae: You know, Brett, I know that being increasingly among Gen Z millennials, there's a separation between following Jesus faithfully and the necessity of attending a church.

Brett McCracken: Right.

Scott Rae: And it's become much more popular to say, I can follow Jesus, but I don't need to go to church. Well, what does church provide for someone that you can't get anywhere else?

Brett McCracken: Yeah, man, I have so much to say about this. My whole book "Uncomfortable."... my last book was all about this because I do think there's the logic of our consumeristic age is, never choose something willingly that's uncomfortable, or that has a social cost or that has baggage, or that is awkward. And the church is all of those things.

Sean McDowell: At the same time.

Brett McCracken: At the same time. There's a thousand reasons why you would choose not to go to church. So you do have to make a case for, for what is the value. So in "The Wisdom Pyramid," in the chapter on church, I talk a lot about the way that the church functions as a challenge and a buffer against that look within individualism. So if that's a central problem, that's making us sick, is this tendency to always just default to my own wisdom, follow my own heart, do whatever seems right in my own eyes.

Brett McCracken: The church and the community of Christians that you kind of submit to doing life with and growing alongside in a church is a beautiful God given check and balance against our wayward individualism, right? And everything from biblical interpretation, where if we're a lone wolf with the Bible, that can be treacherous, because we tend to read it through the lenses that we have, but in a Christian community, assuming it's a fairly diverse community with a lot of different perspectives and backgrounds, I think we can better get at the truth of scripture and what God has for us in scripture together than we do individualistically. So, that's a big one.

Brett McCracken: I also think just the fact is church is a place where we go to orient our whole selves, not just our minds, but our bodies, in worship and singing and praying. It's an experience of orienting yourself around God and not yourself, right? You are not the star of the show at church. God is and I think that right there is such a key to wisdom. The living a radically God-centered life is, in one sentence, what wisdom is, I would say. It's living a radically God-centered life. And the flip side is true, living a radically me-centered life is your fast track to foolishness. And I think church is one of the last great outposts in our culture where we go somewhere and we actually aren't the center of attention. Everything on our smartphone puts us at the center of attention. Everything on the internet is about you, YouTube, me, Myspace, Facebook, it's all about me, me, me, me, me. Go to church, it's about God. So that's my basic argument for why Gen Z needs to prioritize church.

Scott Rae: Yeah.

Sean McDowell: So I got to point out just for our listeners, the way you're saying it's not so much the content of a worship song or the content of sermon, as important as that is, but the practice of being a part of something bigger than themselves where it's not about them. Independent of the quality of the sermon has value in going to church regular with kids.

Brett McCracken: Totally. Totally. Because the thing is, you can find content with a quick Google search online, right? If church is really just about a good sermon and good worship songs, go to Spotify for that, right? Go to Tim Keller's sermon archives. Your local pastor probably can't do better than Tim Keller, or any number of great pastors who are just a Google search away. So church is so much more than just content. And I think in our internet age though, we're so conditioned to think of everything in terms of content that we consume, that we can start to think of church that way. And I just think that's a really bad, unhealthy way to think about church.

Sean McDowell: I think that's great. That's one of the points I often make to parents about just regularly having meals instills a sense of belonging, identity, stop what you are doing, commit to something just that-

Brett McCracken: Be part of something bigger than yourself.

Sean McDowell: Yeah. Just that ritual in itself. I think you capture the church. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but your fourth tier is books.

Brett McCracken: Yes.

Sean McDowell: Fourth tier. Now when you say books, there's a lot of things that can fall in the category of books, so what kind of books are you talking about, and what does a book offer to screen can't?

Brett McCracken: Yeah. So with that chapter, I'm not just talking about like the content of books. I'm also talking about the form of books that help us in becoming wise. And this is to answer your question. What do books offer that screens can't? I think that one of the problems of media on screens and on our phones is that it tends to cultivate a mile-wide inch-deep sort of engagement, where we just skim and we go from thing to thing to thing. And we never really wrestle with stuff, we never pause and linger. And our attention is just so hyperactive. We go from one thing to the next, and I think what's happening is we're losing the ability to have critical thinking and evaluative thinking. Those muscles are atrophying a little bit in the internet age. Reading books, I would say, is basically the Cross Fit exercise to bulk up those muscles of critical thinking.

Brett McCracken: There's nothing like reading a book and committing yourself to that long process of sitting and just letting one author and their perspective kind of reign for a week or month, however long it takes you to read that book. There's so many good at things about that. Not only does it kind of help cultivate that attention that we're lacking, the ability to attend to one thing over a long period of time. It also reminds us how to listen because reading a book is nothing if not being quick to listen and slow to speak in practice. That's what you're doing when you're reading a book, you're being quick to listen and you're not speaking. You can't speak, the author's not there to for you to yell out to them. Sometimes I write in the margins of a book when I disagree. I'm like, "no," explanation mark, but that's the best I can do to have a conversation back to them.

Brett McCracken: I'm there to listen and learn. Now, it doesn't mean that everything you read you should just take to the bank and agree with, and this is a big thing I talk about in the books chapter of "The Wisdom Pyramid" is really learning to read helps you to be educated and being educated is the ability to like entertain a thought without assenting to it, right? It was Aristotle or someone who said that the mark of an educated man is the ability to entertain arguments without assenting to them.

Brett McCracken: So when we read, Christians should read widely, we should read books by people who we know we're not going to agree with completely, but we should read with critical eyes to see, what is the truth here that I can glean by common grace, what can I learn from them, while at the same time, recognizing that lots of things they argue are probably not true and we need to be able to also recognize that. So anyway, I think that's just a lost art just in our culture broadly, but in Christian culture, I think Christians can sometimes have a fearful posture. "I don't want to read books that are by an atheist or that are by someone on the other side of an issue from me." And I just think for a lot of reasons, it's a healthy thing for our wisdom to be willing to read those books without necessarily agreeing with everything in them.

Scott Rae: I think that's especially true given the fact that so many social media outlets have algorithms that are designed to reinforce our- [crosstalk 00:28:42]

Brett McCracken: Give you only what you want.

Scott Rae: ... and so they select out those kinds of things that might offer an alternative that we would like to entertain, but not necessarily assent to. Now one notch below books, you have nature and you make a really interesting observation. That parts of our culture are totally committed to nature and biology. We love organic foods, we're against we're against genetically modified organisms, but yet, on the other hand, when it comes to gender, all that goes out the window.

Brett McCracken: Right.

Scott Rae: How do you explain that? That tension, that incoherence in our culture's view of nature.

Brett McCracken: Yes, I think it's just an example of a bigger problem with our culture has lost a self-awareness when it comes to inconsistencies. Spend five minutes on the internet and you see all sorts of logical inconsistencies on display. So we just have a lot of this going on where we don't recognize the inconsistencies and with science and biology, I've just found it so funny, recently, the whole like, "follow the science, right?" Certain people want to claim that mantle, "We follow the science." Right? And they're talking about things like climate change maybe, or wearing masks or something. I don't know. But a lot of those same people don't follow the science when it comes to basic things about human biology, like your sex, being male and female. So there's just a lot of picking and choosing which science you follow and for what purpose.

Brett McCracken: And that's kind of what I was getting at with the organic vegetables comment. Some of the same people who are like, "no, we should never genetically modify any of the vegetables, we need to embrace them in their purest form. Mother nature knows best." They're the same ones who have no problem whatsoever with sex reassignment, surgeries and mastectomies for transgender men. So, I just think as Christians, we need to be the ones who actually try to break out of those inconsistencies and say God's creation in nature is what it is regardless of our politics, regardless of our preferences. And it can be an opportunity for us to glorify him and worship him if we accept the givenness of it and embrace the nature as he created it, not as we wish it would be.

Scott Rae: I love the way you put this, that if organic is best in strawberries and kale, it's also best in humans.

Brett McCracken: Yeah. I had fun writing some of those moments.

Scott Rae: So insightful. Brett, one final question here. Beauty is also part of The Wisdom Pyramid. I suspect a lot of people might be a little surprised that something like that is there, but you make a really good observation. God, in a lot of the scripture, God speaks not as a theologian or a philosopher, but as a poet and I'd add to that. I'd say speaks primarily as a storyteller in that. But what does it mean for practically to give attention to beauty?

Brett McCracken: Yeah. I think it means slowing to down and viewing wisdom as something that's more than just cerebral, it's not just about how many facts can you cram into your brain. God didn't create us as just brains on sticks, right? He created us as full bodied creatures with senses where we can taste and see that he is good, right? Not just know that he's good. Part of knowing his goodness is actually tasting and seeing it, as Psalm 34 says.

Brett McCracken: So that's the level at which beauty can cultivate wisdom in us. When we actually pause the kind of logical processes of filling our minds with facts and just sit still in a tinge to beauty, listening to it, looking, touching it, tasting it. So I think there can be a lot of wisdom in just sitting down and really savoring an amazing bite of ice cream or something, there can be a wisdom in sitting down and listening to a Bach symphony, even though there's no message, there's no words, there's nothing that appears to be coming into your brain in the form of knowledge, it's coming into your soul as wisdom. I think that's why beauty is so important.

Scott Rae: So maybe just in summary here instead of too much, too fast, too focused on me. What's the opposite of those, just in a sentence?

Brett McCracken: Yeah, and this is where I end the book is kind of defining what wisdom looks like in three traits that are kind of the opposites of those problems. So in a too much world wisdom looks like discernment. It looks like being a little bit more choosy of what you listen to and what you attend to and avoiding the gluts and being selective. I think wisdom looks like being patient in a too fast world, having the ability to be quicker to listen and slower to speak and actually just being disciplined enough to maybe reserve comment, instead of jumping on Facebook every time you have an opinion. Actually sitting on that, thinking it through, it almost always works out better for you and for everyone when we're slower in our discourse. So being patient is a characteristic of wisdom.

Brett McCracken: And then the third one is in a world that's too focused on me, humility is a mark of wisdom, recognizing and admitting that I don't have all the answers, that I'm not the best source of wisdom. I'm not the expert. There's a lot of, "I'm the expert" going on in our culture right now. Everyone thinks they're an expert on epidemiology or politics or name your super-complex public policy issue. Everyone's an expert, right? And humility would say, I'm not an expert. I actually don't know the right answer, but I'm committed to finding the truth by listening to others, by talking with others and by being patient and pursuing wisdom over the long haul and being okay with not having easy instant answers, which is hard to do in today's world.

Scott Rae: I so appreciate that summary. That's so insightful, and to our listeners, we've just barely scratched the surface of what's in this book. This is just one of the most insightful books that I've read in a really long time. And I want to commend it to you, Brett McCracken, "The Wisdom Pyramid" is just great stuff. And so Brett, we're so thankful for you coming on with us, all the best to your work at The Gospel Coalition and encourage our listeners to regularly visit The Gospel Coalition as part of the way you manage your screen time. I would say make sure that The Gospel Coalition is a part of that.

Brett McCracken: In that dessert category of The Wisdom Pyramid, a cookie could be The Gospel Coalition.

Scott Rae: Well, this has just been terrific. Thanks so much, Brett, for coming on with us.

Brett McCracken: Thanks a lot.

Scott Rae: This has been an episode of the podcast, Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith & Culture. Think Biblically podcast is brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, offering programs in Southern California and online, including our master program in Christian apologetics now offered fully online visit biola.edu/talbot in order to learn more. If you enjoyed today's conversation with Brett McCracken about his book, "The Wisdom Pyramid," feel free to give us a rating on your podcast app, and please do share it with a friend. Thanks so much for listening and remember, think biblically about everything.