Technology is all around us. I’m using it to write this. You’re using it to read this. It’s presence is so ubiquitous that we often don’t even think about it. The question, “what is technology?” seems so obvious that we might think that it’s not even worth asking.
Of course we know what technology is! We use it all the time. Our generation has seen incredible technological advances at incredible speeds. Why would we need to ask such a basic question?
Yet, failure to ask such a basic question is part of what lies at the heart of many of our struggles with technology. This kind of attitude leads us to adopt new technologies without giving any thought to potential consequences or the ways technology shapes us.
As Christians who (hopefully!) want to think biblically about technology, we need to ask this question. We need to go back to basics, dive back into Scripture and mine its depths to discern a biblical view of what technology is.
So, what is technology?
1. Technology is an expression of the image of God.
As we read in Genesis 1, God made all things out of nothing by speaking them into existence. God is the Creator. We are creation. Genesis 1:26-28 further teaches us that God created human beings in his image. God made us to show the world what he is like. And part of that is the propensity God wired in us to make stuff.
We image God by taking his creation and becoming sub-creators (to borrow a term from Tolkien) by designing something good from it. The image comes with what is often called the creation mandate: Adam and Eve were called to be fruitful and multiply, subdue the earth and rule and steward it well for God’s glory (Gen 1:28). Human beings have a mandate from God to use the natural resources he has given to make and create things for his glory and the good of others: which means that human beings have a mandate to make technology.
Tim Challies, building on these biblical principles, defines technology as: “the creative activity of using tools to shape God’s creation for practical purposes,” (The Next Story, p. 27). Technology is what happens when image-bearers take the stuff of God’s creation and shape it into something useful. When we make things that promote human flourishing it glorifies God. Technology used well points to the Creator and honors him. This is God’s design for technology, including the digital technology that marks our age.
Yet, when we come to Genesis 3, it all goes wrong. Adam and Eve disobey God. They fail to keep the mandate they have been given, and the curse of sin and death enter the world. So, the next question we have to answer is: how does technology function in light of the fall?
2. Technology is a gift from God to help us endure the effects of the Fall.
Though we are fallen human beings, sinners by nature and rebels against God, we still bear the image of God, even if that image has been distorted by sin. We still have the capacity to make and create. And even if we now use that capacity for sinful purposes, the capacity to make good things remains.
Tony Reinke writes:
God placed this universe, and our own bodies, under a curse so that we would live in hope of the resurrection. By his grace, he also left us with innovative possibilities as a merciful gift to resist some of these effects, to heal some of the creation that is broken, and to give us new ways to manage the pain of life in a fallen universe.
God, Technology, and the Christian Life, p. 133
We can design tools, techniques, and technologies that make farming easier. We develop medicine to treat disease and stave off death. We create communication technologies to alert people of dangerous weather or dangerous situations. We create weapons to defend ourselves from hostile animals and even people. So, even after the Fall, technologies that promote human flourishing are a mercy from God, a gift of his abundant grace to all humanity.
3. Yet, technology is still subject to the Fall.
Nothing in this world is untouched by the curse, including technology. Technology is not morally neutral. All technology can be used for good or evil, and some may even tend toward one or the other.
Technology can be used to hurt and harm others. While God designed our capacity to make tech to be used for his glory and the good of others, we can use technology to dishonor him, feed our sin, and physically and emotionally harm others.
Technology can become an idol we worship and enable other idols. We can look to technology for a kind of deliverance or meaning that only God can provide. Technology, as Challies notes, also enables other idols in our lives (36). Social media feeds the idol of the praise of man. My new iPhone enables the idol of status and image.
Every technology includes elements of risk and danger, as well as benefits (Challies, 41). With the benefits of technology there is a cost, and the most powerful technologies often come with the potential for the greatest cost. With all the benefits communication technologies bring, for example, come dangers and risk related to how we communicate with and view one another.
All technologies fade. None last forever. I may wish that my iPhone or Toyota or refrigerator will last forever. But they won’t. In a few years, my smartphone will be outdated and my car will be scrapped. Human technology, like all material things in this world, fades and decays. Technology too is subject to the Fall.
We see from the first three chapters of Genesis that technology is an expression of the image of God as we make and create things for practical purposes. It is at times a gracious gift from God that helps us endure life in this hard world corrupted by sin. Yet, technology is likewise subject to that same corruption. It is often used for evil, and it will fade.
These points are a crucial starting point for helping us understand technology. They help us avoid the extremes of viewing technology as a purely evil human endeavor or viewing it as the pathway to utopia. These principles help us approach new technologies with both positivity and caution, and they form the foundation for how we live in this digital age as followers of Jesus.
Theology and Technology 