The Life We're Looking For

Reclaiming Relationship in a Technological World

By: Andy Crouch

Narrated by: Andy Crouch

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

“Andy Crouch shows the path to reclaiming a life that restores the heart of what it means to thrive.”—Arthur C. Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author of From Strength to Strength

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, best-selling 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.

©2022 Andy Crouch (P)2022 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“As I read this breathtaking book, I was surprised to find myself tearing up often, not because it is a book about tragedy or loss, but because Andy Crouch, perhaps more than any other writer of our day, perceives and names the deepest and most vulnerable longings of the human heart. The Life We’re Looking For describes the confusion and contradictions of our cultural moment in clear and resonant ways and, more important, offers hope that we might find a beautiful way of living amidst them.”—Tish Harrison Warren, author of Liturgy of the Ordinary and Prayer in the Night

“The Life We’re Looking For is, and this is saying something, Andy Crouch’s best book: a deeply moving meditation on the human need to find true personhood, which means, among other things, to know as we are known. Strong and cogent critiques of Mammon’s empire—which, as Crouch shows, is where we live—are not unheard of, but a book that goes this deeply into the heart of things, into the heart of God, is a pearl of great price.”—Alan Jacobs, author of How to Think and Breaking Bread with the Dead

“In this truly brilliant book, Andy Crouch uncovers why more and more people feel themselves to be living in an impersonal, unsatisfying, and lonely world. Filled with insightful analysis and wise counsel, The Life We’re Looking For takes us into the heart of a more meaningful, shared, and joyous life that is inspired by the love of God. Reading The Life We’re Looking For, you will discover what it takes to be human.”—Norman Wirzba, Duke Divinity School professor, author of This Sacred Life

Must Read

This book is one I will read again and again over the years. It is truthful, hopeful, and encouraging. Great book to start the year!

Would listen to again.

Very well written. Well thought out ideas about personhood, relationship with devices and explaining our need for authentic relationships even though it is not the easy way. Definitely recommend it.

Great Analysis of the Battlefield of Life

I have never seen the concept of mammon so clearly illustrated. I needed this warning more than I realized!

A gentle yet challenging call to action

The Life We’re Looking For manages to challenge the status quo in a way that doesn’t frighten you. This book calls for a radical rethinking of your life and culture, but it gets you excited to do so. Andy Crouch manages to draw out of you the deep desires you perhaps didn’t know existed. In this way, it’s not a jarring slap in the face for “sinning” but a gentle yet challenging call to action. But this call to action is a call to be more human. More you. You without the magic and mammon. Loved this book!

A true gift

Andy’s gift to us through written word summarizes the life we truly are looking for and I’m extremely grateful for someone who uses his gift to articulate the history and inheritance we have and can have through a life of love inspired by Jesus to be thousand generation children of the Living God.

But the greatest of these is love

I have a much deeper, more full view of love, fellowship, and relationship. This book opened my eyes to the profound impact we can have on each other and the depth of the meaning behind “but the greatest of these is love” and that the hard things are where the most memorable life giving events usually occur. Thank you for this amazing book.

Essential guide to humanizing the digital world

Excellent synthesis of essential wisdom to being a human in a world of digital devices, scientific magic, and boring robots. A vision for replacing devices with instruments.

Excellent

Andy Crouch does it again! Timely, succinct, and profound. Also Andy is a great reader.

Thought provoking call to a fuller life.

Thought provoking look at the effects of technology on our daily lives and a call to fundamentally rethink not only how we interact with that technology, but how we interact with others in society. The book does not lay blame for the disconnectedness of our society at technology’s feet. Rather, it argues that a larger force, Mammon, is at work in our modern age that aims to replace the relational with the transactional.

The solution is to rethink the purpose of technology in our lives. Technology should function only as an instrument to assist in the expression of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Technologies that promise to replace those expressions have negative long-term consequences individually and for society.

Other themes include a call to intentionally engage in relationships and community, caring for those that cannot care for themselves, and understanding our place in the long arc of history.

As an engineer engaged in applying technology in manufacturing (automation), I found this book to be particularly worth the read.

So appropriate for this current moment and generations yet to come.

Andy writes and narrates a spectacular and troubling critique of modern culture yet does not just pose a critique, but suggestions for a way forward. Readers should be prepared to seek ways to take action in their churches, their workplace, their advocacy, their personal choices, and more. There is hope here and it is going to be one of the books I read twice this year as well as suggest others read, especially my pastor and a handful of theologians I know.

Thanks Andy… shalom to you, David