The Life We're Looking For Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World

A deeply reflective primer on creating meaningful connections, rebuilding abundant communities, and living in a way that engages our full humanity in an age of unprecedented anxiety and loneliness—from the author of The Tech-Wise Family

Our greatest need is to be recognized—to be seen, loved, and embedded in rich relationships with those around us. But for the last century, we’ve displaced that need with the ease of technology. We’ve dreamed of mastery without relationship (what the premodern world called magic) and abundance without dependence (what Jesus called Mammon). Yet even before a pandemic disrupted that quest, we felt threatened and strangely out of place: lonely, anxious, bored amid endless options, oddly disconnected amid infinite connections.

In The Life We’re Looking For, bestselling author Andy Crouch shows how we have been seduced by a false vision of human flourishing—and how each of us can fight back. From the social innovations of the early Christian movement to the efforts of entrepreneurs working to create more humane technology, Crouch shows how we can restore true community and put people first in a world dominated by money, power, and devices.

There is a way out of our impersonal world, into a world where knowing and being known are the heartbeat of our days, our households, and our economies. Where our vulnerabilities are seen not as something to be escaped but as the key to our becoming who we were made to be together. Where technology serves us rather than masters us—and helps us become more human, not less.

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.