Theology and Technology

Often some of the most relevant wisdom we find (outside the Bible) for living in our digital age comes from old works of timeless truth. I found this to be true as I recently finished reading The Godly Man’s Picture by 17th-century English pastor, Thomas Watson. In the book, Watson seeks to describe what a godly believer looks like and encourages and challenges those who desire to live godly lives in Christ.

In one section near the end of the book, Watson lays out eight ways believers should pursue godliness, answering the question, “What shall we do that we may be godly?” (chapter 7, pp. 223–27 in the Puritan Paperback edition). As I was reading this chapter, I was struck by how relevant Watson’s words are for believers today.

Here are five of Watson’s answers to the question about pursuing godliness, applied to how we can pursue godliness in our digital age:

1. “Accustom yourselves to holy thoughts.”

Watson writes: “If men would step aside a little out of the noise and hurry of business, and spend only half-an-hour every day thinking about their souls and eternity, it would produce a wonderful alteration in them and tend very much to a real and blessed conversion,” (p. 224).

Pursuing godliness will require deep work, “serious meditation” on God’s Word, our own souls, and the eternal age to come. And yet deep work is often what our digital devices war against. Digital technology thrives in the shallows. It promotes distraction and shapes us to value entertainment and quick content consumption.

The problems of distraction and shallow living are not new. People through the ages have tended to busy themselves with anything but serious reflection on our mortality and the eternal age to come. We struggle to spend thirty minutes a day simply thinking deeply about the things of God.

In our digital age, especially, we need to slow down and do the deep work of meditating on God’s Word and things of eternal significance. Our social media feeds promote entertainment and distraction and controversy. We need to break away from that daily, turn on “Do Not Disturb”, and think deeply about the things that really matter. We will struggle in our pursuit of godliness if we are constantly wading in the shallows and neglect to do the deep, hard work of diving into eternal truths everyday.

2. “Watch your hearts.”

Our hearts, according to the prophet Jeremiah, are more deceitful than anything else (Jer 17:9). If we are not watchful, our hearts will lead us into sinful thoughts and actions. But “watchfulness maintains godliness,” (p. 224). The New Testament is filled with the exhortation to believers: Be watchful (e.g., Mark 13:32-37; Luke 21:34-36; 1 Cor 16:13; Heb 2:1; 1 Pet 5:8).

We must watch both our inputs and outputs—what is coming into our hearts and what is coming out. What we take in through our eyes and ears affects our hearts. What we think about and dwell upon can direct our hearts to Jesus or to our sinful desires. At the same time, what spills forth in our words and actions reveals the state of our hearts. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” (Matt 12:34).

In our digital age, we should be especially alert to the content we view and listen to. We have unprecedented access to an unprecedented amount of inputs. We will never run out of YouTube videos to watch. There will always be new apps to download and podcasts to listen to. We are overloaded with inputs. But if we want to pursue godliness, we must remain watchful and alert to what we our setting our eyes upon and turning our ears to.

We should also ask ourselves: What is spilling out of my heart in how I engage with others online? Why am I posting what I am posting? What we post and how we engage with others online can be a window into our hearts. We must be watchful if we would be godly.

3. “Make spending your time a matter of conscience.”

Wasting time has always been a problem. Watson writes,

“Many people fool away their time, some in idle visits, others in recreations and pleasures which secretly bewitch the heart and take it away from better things. What are our golden hours for but to attend to our souls? Time misspent is not time lived but time lost. Time is a precious commodity.” (p. 224)

It has never been easier to pursue distraction and give in to procrastination. Our digital devices are designed to attract our eyeballs for hours a day. What social platforms, apps, video games, and streaming services want is our attention, and, thus, our time. That’s one reason why a former Netflix CEO once said the greatest enemy to their streaming platform was sleep.

These companies understand that our time is valuable. The question is: do we? Do we actually view our time as a “precious commodity”? Our time is one of the most valuable, limited things we have. What are we using our “golden hours” to pursue? How we spend our time reveals what we really value. So, what does your screen time say about what you value?

Let’s learn this lesson of godliness: we must pay attention to how we use our time. As Paul wrote in Ephesians, “Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil,” (Eph 5:15-16).

4. “Make this maxim your own: godliness is the purpose of your creation.”

We were made to live for God and his glory. Our purpose as creation is to bring glory to the Creator. True godliness, at its core, is living for God’s glory in every area of our lives. To be godly is to live for God’s glory in Christ as those filled with the Spirit.

Yet, as Chris Martin puts it in his book The Wolf in Their Pockets, “Our relationship with social media is a powerful factor in distorting our understanding of purpose,” (41). Social media especially puts forth a vision that our purpose is to gain the approval (likes) of others, to post and view content that is valuable according to the world’s standards. Our purpose according to the wisdom of our age is to make our own purpose, and nowhere is that promise held forth more than online where it seems like we can fashion ourselves in anyway we want (Martin, 43).

This maxim must become our own in this digital age: our purpose, the reason why we are here, is to live for the glory of God. We were made for godliness, bringing glory to him and enjoying him forever. We were not made to define our own purpose or to pursue the praise of the crowd. You will not find real purpose and meaning in worldliness or trendiness. You will find your true purpose in godliness. Don’t let our digital age distract you from your true purpose.

5. “Be often among the godly.”

We were made for community. As believers, we need each other. Watson quotes Proverbs 13:20, which says, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm.” If we want to grow in godliness, we must spend time with those who are farther down the road of godliness than we are.

And this means real, face-to-face community. To be often among the godly means in-person community first and foremost, before online feeds, groups, and forums, etc. Godliness is not something that is really picked up all that well from tweets or YouTube sermon clips. Godliness is learned in community as we do life together and walk together through the ups and downs of life.

Being among the godly, then, means being a part of a true Jesus-exalting, Bible-believing-and-doing church. Livestreams, podcasts, blogs, and Instagram reels are great, but they are nothing compared to the force for godliness that is genuine, gospel-centered community, which should generally be found in the context of the local church. If we wish to be godly, we should seek godly community.

These timeless principles for godliness may seem somewhat basic. But in our digital age, as in all previous generations, we must be intentional about pursuing the end for which we were created: living for the glory of God as we find our joy in him and believe and obey his Word.

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.