See here for part 1 and part 3 of this series of articles.
I’ve heard it said that an optimist invents a hot air balloon, a pessimist a parachute. But don’t parachutes sometimes fail? Imagine falling through the air with nothing but fabric and theories about wind resistance? Here’s my saying: “An optimist invents a hot air balloon, a pessimist stays at home.” That’s where I’d be, so I suppose that’s what I am. What are you?
How about when it comes to technology? Should we lean in a fundamentally hopeful or gloomy direction? Christian tech optimists have a fundamentally positive view of technology. They will emphasise God’s sovereignty over all things, including technology. They will emphasise that God made humanity to create, to be creative, and to fill and govern and tend to his world. Christian tech pessimists have a negative view. They will emphasise sin and the fall, noting that in this world in its rebellion against God, tech is often used for evil. They will talk about God giving his creatures freedom as ‘second causes’ to make horrific technological mistakes.
My view is that both camps are obviously right and obviously wrong. They are obviously right in what they say, and obviously wrong in what they gloss over or ignore. Neither of these extremes give you a full picture, and I’m a bit concerned about each.
The Example of Load Distribution
Let’s think about a technology near and dear to all our hearts: load distribution. Have you heard of it? The ancients thought hard about it. A pyramid is a precise distribution of weight, otherwise it wouldn’t be a pyramid. Roman arches, domes and vaults carefully allocate the load. You even see load distribution in the Bible: the design of Noah’s ark, construction of the tower of Babel, even the weight-bearing capacity of Christ’s cross.
Are you an optimist or a pessimist about the family of technologies that enable load distribution? That question is near impossible to answer.
Noah built his ark for good, but Babel and the cross were aimed at evil. God brought good out of the cross, but that doesn’t make me a crucifixion optimist. The cross shows us how the sovereignty of God is exercised even as God hands people over to do the most atrocious evil (see Acts 2:23). Christians cannot buy into the naïve positivity of Silicon Valley since we have seen the cross.
Technology as a Gift of God
I’m an optimist about certain technologies. I’m a fan of fridges. I like chairs. I quite like smartphones and computers, but it’s clear that both can cause immense harm to particular people in particular contexts at particular ages. Without glasses, I would have spent my life walking into doors. Having said that, I’m not negative on doors. I am surrounded by technologies and they make my life better.
These technologies are a gift from God. Do you thank God for them? God made our world jammed full of potential. Nothing that we ever invent is beyond his imagination. We are gradually unlocking things that God created as possibilities. The amount of possibility still out there is just inconceivable.
Consider how the Garden of Eden is described:
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the LORD God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. (Genesis 2:5)
No bushes or plants had sprung up partly because there was no human to work it. Adam and Eve were put there to be part of the filling out and beautifying of the world. And so also, when you work or be creative, you’re being who you are, doing what you were made to do.
Isaiah 28 pushes this idea even further. It suggests that, in some sense, God gives us some of our deep technological knowledge:
Dill is not threshed with a threshing sledge,
nor is a cart wheel rolled over cumin,
but dill is beaten out with a stick,
and cumin with a rod.
Does one crush grain for bread?
No, he does not thresh it forever;
when he drives his cart wheel over it
with his horses, he does not crush it.
This also comes from the LORD of hosts;
he is wonderful in counsel
and excellent in wisdom. (Isaiah 28:27–29).
God made us to shape the world using tools. He even gave us the knowledge that we need to do so.
Good but Fallen
Unfortunately, any Christian evaluation of technology must discuss things like crack cocaine, internet pornography, landmines, sarin gas, ransomware, and many other horrors. Any decent history of slavery is a history of technology. As is any decent history of the Holocaust, or of abortion.
But so also any history of the spread of the gospel is a history of technology. The gospel came to me—here in Australia, “the end of the earth” to most people (see Acts 1:8)—after a long voyage. It travelled along Roman roads made with groma and wheelbarrows and Roman concrete. It went back and forward across the Mediterranean in boats moved by sails, with rigging and anchors. It was written down with ink and quills, stored in scrolls and parchments and codices. Eventually, a man in Mainz (in modern-day Germany) invented a method of mass-producing movable type, allowing for the mass production of text. The printing press was a significant driver of the Protestant Reformation, and modern printers have helped the gospel to spread to an ever-growing list of countries and languages.
My view of technology is that it is something good but fallen. I don’t have the clarity of a singular viewpoint. I have tension. It’s the enabler of the cross and the carrier of the gospel. And so I’m against instinctive reactions. We should treat each technology on its own merits, rather than forming a general view.
Always Neutral and Never Neutral
Technology is diverse by design, but also diverse by use. Take any given technology. With a bit of time we could think of a good use for it. With a bit more time we could think of a bad use for it. The steam engine was a central inventions of the Industrial Revolution; it also made it possible for Belgium to turn the Congo into a slave-labour colony.
Consider alcohol. The abstinence movement among nineteenth-century American evangelicals made complete abstinence from all forms of alcohol a requirement for church membership.[1] Many thought that alcohol was evil, a literal poison. All drinking of alcohol was therefore considered a sin. The Bible, however, doesn’t allow such a one-dimensional view. It contains warnings about alcohol (Prov 20:1, 21:17, 23:20–21, 23:29–35; Eph 5:18; 1 Tim 3:8; Titus 2:3; 1 Pet 4:3; 1 Cor 5:11) and teaches that there are situations in which one must not drink (Prov 31:4–7; Luke 1:15, 7:33; Rom 14:21), but it also describes situations in which drinking is viewed positively (Ps 104:15; Luke 7:34, 22:20; John 2:1–10, 1 Tim 5:23). The goodness or badness of alcohol comes from the context. Are you drinking to remember the death of the Lord Jesus, or are you drinking because you lack self-control?
In theory, technology is always neutral because it is capable of both good and evil. Yet in practice, technology is never neutral because it is always used for either good or evil (or some proportion of each). The deepest problem with technology isn’t the fault of technology, it’s the fault of us, the fault of the users. Humanity, in its sinfulness, can make even the best things bad. Yet by God’s grace, in God’s world, we can bring good even from some of our most dangerous inventions.
So should you be optimistic or pessimistic about technology?
Yes.
This article has been adapted from material in Made in Our Image: God, Artificial Intelligence and You (2024).
[1] DG Reid et al., eds., Alcohol in Dictionary of Christianity in America, InterVarsity Press, 1990.
