Daniel Darling on Watching Our Words Online

When Daniel Darling was still in junior high, a teacher noticed he had a talent with words and encouraged him to pursue a career in writing. This brief conversation would change his life. “When you’re a middle school kid who’s not a jock, who’s kind of clumsy, who’s trying to figure out who you are, to have a teacher say, ‘Here’s an area that I think you’re good at,’ you just take it and run with it.”

Today, Daniel is the Senior Vice President for Communications for National Religious Broadcasters, a bestselling author, and a regular contributor to USA Today, Homelife, Christianity Today, and The Gospel Coalition. His op-eds have appeared in The Washington Post, CNN, Time Magazine, and other leading outlets. He also hosts the popular podcast The Way Home, where he interviews Christian leaders, politicians, and journalists.

His newest book is entitled A Way with Words: Using Our Online Conversations for Good. Just as his teacher spoke words of affirmation that changed his life, Daniel writes in this book about how our words shape the people we interact with, specifically on the internet.

“The internet’s here to stay,” he explains. “We can all wish for a different time, but we’re not going to suddenly all become Amish. So we have to ask ourselves, how do we steward this age we live in? How do we steward our words?”

The book delves into some of the traps that online communications causes people to fall into. Foremost is forgetting the humanity of people who disagree with us. Daniel says, “We reduce someone down to their wrong opinion on a certain topic, as if that’s the only thing about them. We forget that they’re also a whole person.”

In this episode of the STEP INTO THE STORY Podcast, Phil and Daniel discuss how to stay on the internet without forgetting that we’re Christians, a topic that could not be more relevant for the modern believer.