Don: Every aspect of out world is affected by technology, including faith, hope, grace, and our understanding of God. The anthropomorphic view of God is as a vastly bigger and stronger and smarter version of us. Isaiah told us God is immeasurably more than anything we could imagine, but we still tend to think that technology can help us get closer to him, as did the Babelonians when they built their Tower to heaven.
If the world were perfect, would technology have any role to play? In the process of Creation, the result of every day’s work was declared to be “good” except for the sixth day, when God created Mankind, which was declared not merely “good” but “very good.” A good earth occupied by Mankind is, according to God, very good. In the garden of Eden he charged Mankind to work the good earth, to subdue it, and to rule over it. But there is no mention of technology or tools. Mankind had work to do in the garden but it was effortless and technology free. Would a tractor have made life any better for Adam and Eve before the Fall?
After the Fall, the ground (but not, interestingly, Mankind) is cursed, and from this point on Mankind began using tools and technology to try to recreate the garden. They first used the technology of sewing—making clothes out of fig leaves. God upgraded them from fig leaves to skin, from clothing 1.0 to clothing 2.0. Is technology then a result of the Fall? To put it another way: Is technology the result of sin? If so, how can it be a way back to the garden? It sure did not work for the Babelonians!
Before the Fall, Mankind was given effortless and technology-free work in the garden of Eden. But the prohibition to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil seems to be aimed at limiting the knowledge and understanding of Mankind, eternally, if “knowledge of good and evil” may be taken as a metaphor for the sum of all knowledge. This might then mean a limit to Man’s creativity. God seems to be saying that Man is finite, has boundaries, and is limited.
Technology, however, appears to know no boundaries, and by eating the fruit of the tree, Man seeks to use technology to overcome his own limitations and become like God, just as the Babelonians did:
The Lord said, “Behold, … now nothing which they purpose to do will be impossible for them. (Genesis 11:6)
At the completion of his work of Creation, God rested on the seventh day. He did not need rest, but he wanted to emphasize that Mankind does; that unlike him, we have limits. We were made for work and creativity and for the end products of work, but not without limits.
After the Fall, God made weeds—thorns and thistles—which Man tries to overcome with technology—hoes and weedkillers. Man tried to build a tower (Babel) to heaven, and God had to thwart them. The story is of Man using technology to constantly push beyond the boundaries God set for him. Who is winning?
So on the one hand, God gave technology to help Man manage the cursed ground, to survive the Flood (which was God’s way of “re-booting” his Creation); and on the other, Man seeks to take advantage of it to push beyond his boundaries and make a name for himself. It is not the first thing that God has created and Man has corrupted. It seems we need a theology of technology, a righteous view of technology. As we push the envelope of technology, are we more—or less—likely to see God? Does a perfect world need technology?
Donald: In a perfect world, do we need to work? What would we be trying to accomplish?
David: To answer that, we need first to know: What is a perfect world? We’ve tried many utopias as thought-experiments in books, and in real-life as communes and so on, and they never, ever, last. They break down internally. Technology or no technology. The garden of Eden was a utopia, but as I interpret the Scripture it was not a natural world until the Fall; it was a spiritual world until then. Technology is material, a true utopia is spiritual; and ne’er the twain shall meet. The garden of Eden could not be improved upon, but it could be—and was—disturbed and sullied and made material through willfulness.
To me the question then becomes: Can technology help in this life in our search for the way back to the garden, back to God? We tend to see technology (and science) as a race or a game with God, where they keep opening doors to what was once thought to be mystical. They keep making material and physical what was once thought to be spiritual and metaphysical. In that sense, they can lead to less faith in God. The only way out of this dilemma for the person of faith is to separate the material/physical world from the spiritual world entirely. This is what I interpret Isaiah as trying to say. We cannot, even in principle, have or get a clue about the world God inhabits—which is to say, the perfect world.
Or can we? I love going into nature—God’s visible Creation—and resting by a babbling brook in the forest. It brings a moment of feeling close to God, of being—however momentarily—in that perfect world. There is and can be no technology involved in the moment itself (the mere thought of taking a selfie to prove you were in the moment would destroy it), but technology—in the forms of my car and my mountain bike—was involved in getting me to the physical place where the spiritual experience could occur. But then again: That moment, that spiritual place, occurs not in geographic coordinates: It occurs inside me, wherever I happen to be at the time. It may perhaps be catalyzed by nature, but ultimately it is driven from inside, by the inner spirit, the inner light. Once again, though, there is and can be no technology in there.
Donald: If Utopia requires a natural setting, how is it possible to have one in an urban environment? Is that why we cling to our little gardens? Church is made of concrete and glass and steel. It is a technological environment.
Don: Perhaps our little gardens are an interface between our personal world and God.
Anonymous: I feel attracted to God when I leave the man-made house and its technology and take a walk, especially in the morning, when I feel the breeze on my skin. I feel that everything man-made is a spiritual hindrance; that we are in bondage to our man made world, just as the Israelites were in bondage to Egypt. God intervened with the Egyptians to enable the Israelites to go free.
The direct route from Egypt to the Promised Land was a mere 3-4 day walk, yet the Israelites took a circuitous, 40 year, journey. That is what is happening to us: At the Fall, it would have been faster to go straight to God and beg forgiveness instead of being lost, and further and further away from the garden, for millennia.
Donald: GPS seemed magical. We marvel at technological advances that enhance life.
Don: …And save life. And even resurrect life—people who would have died are now alive because of technology. Technology has strikingly God-like qualities.
David: And they are growing more striking by the minute, which is why we must anticipate what is coming. GPS was a total surprise, and for most of us the outcome seems to have been benign (terrorists blown up by GPS-guided missiles, and the “collateral damage” that often accompanies them, might disagree). History guarantees there will be advances even more striking, and more momentous in their impact on society and civilization, than GPS. Perhaps the deepest impact of such advances is that they tend to shove the spiritual world into the background. They allow for no stillness. Technology promotes movement. In our mortal minds, it outshines the inner light; or, rather, it distracts our attention away from the boringly pure white light and towards a changing rainbow of pretty LED neons. It’s up to us, individually, to choose to keep the inner light lit and observed.
Donald: There are groups—the Amish, the Masai—who have essentially rejected technology. Our parents used to try to limit our TV time.
Anonymous: God wants us to live in constant praise and peace. It’s not a matter of moments. Technology is stealing our precious time with God. God used to provide all the technology we needed, included natural light to see by. Now we need technology—glasses—to see by. We need medical technology because we live in unhealthy environments. If we lived in a healthy environment, without cars and so on, then we would have stronger hearts and better health. We think we need more technology, but we need less.
Donald: We live this way because we live in an imperfect world.
Don: Anonymous sees technology as bad, because it does nothing to bring us closer to God. Is that right? Especially given that God provided it in the first place?
David: Looking to the future, if one accepts that machines will become autonomous and conscious and free-willed, one could argue that they will also be: (a) Still God’s creations, ultimately; and (b) spiritual beings, as we are. But they will also be more powerful than us in every dimension. If they are fundamentally evil, as Anon believes is the case with all technology, then indeed we have much to fear. But I do not believe that a higher-level intelligent being with free-will would choose evil over good—on balance, because it must also have knowledge of good and evil and thus some sense of morality.
Donald: The Amish don’t use automobiles because they fear it tends to disperse communities and because drivers are overburdened with responsibility for the lives of their passengers. Musical instruments are a form of technology, and music draws people to God.
Anonymous: We can make music without technology.
Donald: We might live in a very quiet world. Is that a perfect world?
Anonymous: Resting is an eternal Sabbath, when everything Man-made is no more, and we love in utter simplicity.
Don: Does God seek to control the expansive nature of technology?
David: The danger is in treating the spiritual and material worlds as “either/or” rather than “both/and” choices. Our world is what it is: We fell from the garden, technology came into our world. If we fight it, there can be tragedy. Perhaps an example of that is the case of the native American tribes in Ontario that recently declared states of emergency because their young people are committing suicide in alarmingly high numbers. These tribes live in what some of us would consider utopian worlds, close to nature, etc.
Donald: We wear our own versions of Utopia on our sleeves, as it were, when we choose our vacations. Some choose beaches, others the countryside, some even choose a city. But there are some who prefer to stay home and help their fellow Man.
Anonymous: Some relevant Scripture:
“If because of the sabbath, you turn your foot
From doing your own pleasure on My holy day,
And call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable,
And honor it, desisting from your own ways,
From seeking your own pleasure
And speaking your own word,
Then you will take delight in the Lord,
And I will make you ride on the heights of the earth;
And I will feed you with the heritage of Jacob your father,
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 58:13)
Our troubles stem from our searching for the wrong things:
And I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom concerning all that has been done under heaven. It is a grievous task which God has given to the sons of men to be afflicted with…. Because in much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain. (Ecclesiastes 1:13,18)
There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without Him? For to a person who is good in His sight He has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner He has given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good in God’s sight. This too is vanity and striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 2:24-26)
Spiritual knowledge and insight comes from God, not from technology. If we seek God, he will provide.
Donald: Technology is often a source of false knowledge, of untruth; such as when images are “Photoshop’d” (digitally altered).
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