“Technology makes us powerful, basically. That’s how I would define it. It can be useful, and it can be addictively destructive as well.”
These days, the development of new technology is constant and often requires time and effort to keep track of what’s useful and what’s risky in our personal and business lives. Have you ever wondered what God’s role is as new ways of doing things come to pass? Journalist, author, and self-described “tech optimist” Tony Reinke is tackling questions Christians might have concerning tech and he uses Bible examples to explain his viewpoint.
Why did Tony write God, Technology, and the Christian Life? Easy answer. “Well, I couldn’t find this book. That’s why I wanted to write it. I wanted to get at Elon Musk and Silicon Valley and look at technology in a macro scale, using biblical principles.” He cites 12 major areas of scripture that “explain what God’s relationship to human innovation is, where human innovation comes from, and how we – as believers – use those innovations.” Tony feels “a lot of Christians, I think, are surprised at how much the Bible has to say about how we should engage with it.”
“Throughout scripture we see that God sets nine boundaries around human innovation that cannot be violated.” Tony explains “I find among Christians there’s this myth floating around that this world is sort of booby-trapped with things God didn’t want us to discover – genetics, nuclear power, you name it. And I think that’s a misreading of the material universe and God’s governance of it - and a misreading of the Tower of Babel story, which is not to say that human aspiration threatens God, but quite the opposite – that God cradles man’s technological future. That’s the takeaway from Babel … God does have very much of an interest” in what mankind comes up with.
[Rather listen? Here’s our podcast interview.]
Some Key Points You’ll Hear in Our Podcast Interview with Tony Reinke:
- How a clash of technology took place between David and Goliath
- Does God drop inventive ideas into peoples’ minds? Yes. “God creates the future by creating the creators of that future.”
- How God provided a tech boost to help Noah complete his mission to preserve the human race and animals
- There’s something Tony calls the “Gospel of Technology”- a hope by some to “engineer our way out of death”- a false hope and impossible desire to make God "irrelevant”
- Your smartphone likely has 100,000 times the processing power of the 70-pound onboard computer that got Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong to the surface of the moon
- The incredible power of computer chips coupled with artificial intelligence – and the future
- And be assured, Tony believes God has not “vacated” Silicon Valley
God is not limited, as we are, by time and space. He knows the now and the future. “God is not standing back and looking at the history of man and making observations. He knows everything by genesis because He is the creator behind it all.”
Earlier we mentioned Tony is a tech optimist – and for that matter – optimistic about the future. “He (God) is over all things. I can trust Him. My hope is not in what Elon Musk can make tomorrow. My hope is in the God, who governs over every square inch of this world, who cradles our technological future, and who gives us hope that we can trust in Him…that even as we see warfare in Ukraine, as we see Russia’s aggression, as we see the powerful war weapons and the carnage and destruction, I know that God governs all things for whatever purpose He has…so that in the end, He will have a bride, He will have His church – happy in His Son for all eternity.
And everything that happens in the news now is working to that end. I don’t know how each headline fits into that plan, but I know that that’s the plan. And so, we can trust God with our technologies. We can trust God with human drama. We can trust God with what we see in the newspaper because we know that He governs all things for His glory and the happiness of His church forever.”
Check out our complete interview podcast below:
