Where Does Technology Fit in the Story of God?
A Theology of Technology for Coders and Artists
Editor’s Note: Our friend John Dyer gave this talk at FaithTech’s Global Meetup in May 2020. This transcript, lightly edited, is part 1 of 2. Read part 2 here. Watch the full video here.
The church needs creators, artists, and technologists, not just because technology can tell stories, but because technology is actually part of the story of God. When we open up the scriptures, we’ll find that human creativity is a big part of that. When I open up the Bible to the very first chapter, the very first thing we see is that when we’re introduced to God, the first verb he is, is he is a creator and as Genesis unfolds and it talks about the flying things flying and the swimming things swimming, it says that we are God’s image bearers. We could talk about that for quite a while, but one of those things that we do as image bearers is to be creators — we make things. And when we get to Genesis 2, one of the things that we see here in the garden is that in this story, there are no plants in the garden.
And the reason was because there was no rain, but also because there were no humans to cultivate it and to keep it. And this word for cultivate is the word that we use, eventually it becomes culture in the English language. It’s all of the things like art and music and technology that we make. So on the one hand, there’s this call of God, kind of like when I used to just dump Legos out on the floor, and I just wanted to see what my kid would make — because that, that brings me delight — God has kind of made it the whole creation, like a box of Legos that he wants to just be delighted in what we’ll make, to see what we’ll make from what he has made.
Yet there’s also this other word of keep, right? This “guard,” or “preserve.” That word for keep would be like a soldier in front of a tower — that we’re here to kind of guard part of who we are as humans and God’s creation.
And so we’re going to balance these things. And the world needs believers who care about both cultivation and keeping to go out into the world and to be makers.
Sin and Creativity
Of course, pretty early on in the story, sin comes in and I love, you know, that the apple is the symbol of the greatest, most valuable company in the world and also the archetype of human fallenness. I’m told that they didn’t know that when they were making it. Regardless, even when you see Adam and Eve sinning, the very first thing they do is they run, they hide, and they engage in an act of creativity.
And so, from the very beginning of the story, human making is part of it. When God comes down, he curses their sin. He curses the serpent. He talks about work. But what he says about their act of making is not “stop doing that,” but “let me show you how to do it better. Let me show you how to do this in a way that will promote more human flourishing in a world of destruction.”
From the very beginning of the story, human making is part of it.
Just like the story that we heard earlier, of somebody coming along and saying, “I can make something that can bring life into people.” This is what God is telling us that we’re going to be doing with some of our technology. Of course, this story also looks forward to Jesus, right? It says that we can’t cover our own sin with our own works, that it’s going to take something more than that. We don’t want to let technology become this kind of false god for us. I think this is God’s sanctioning us, using technology to overcome some of the effects of the fall and to bring people to him.
Cain and Cities
As we keep going through Scripture, we see that there are people like Cain that build cities from which we get music and we get all kinds of tools, that there are people who are going to use technology in ways that aren’t helpful, that are not aimed toward God. And yet even in Cain’s life, as much as he was trying to run from God and to reject God and to kind of build a city that was like an “anti-garden” — a place where he could be away from God and people — the image of God flows through him as he makes and as he creates. As we think about some of our great creators in the world today like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos — these guys, I don’t think that they are very close to the Lord, but I do think the image of God shines through a lot of the things that they do, whether they’re building rockets and going into space, or just making flame throwers. These are things that in some way honor God.
Time and time again, as we move on through the story, we see what God is doing in the world, that he’s making human creativity be a major part of this story, that he’s redeeming it.
Noah and the Ark
Then there is this wonderful story of Noah’s Ark that we tell kids about animals and all different kinds of beautiful things going onto a ship. And here in the middle of it, God is saying, I’m literally going to save humanity through an act of creativity.
And of course, this is looking forward to Jesus: We have a righteous man on a construction of wood, riding over death and destruction. Ultimately Noah failed in his role as being a new leader. We needed somebody else. I think this is God’s saying, “I care about what you make and I’m gonna make it part of the story over and over and over again.” So even when humans make something that they want to use for evil like they did with the Tower of Babel, God doesn’t destroy it. Instead, he comes in and hacks it and reorients it in a way that leads to human redemption, that leads them to go back to the purpose for which they were made: to multiply and fill the earth.
We have a righteous man on a construction of wood, riding over death and destruction.
Jesus and the Cross
Continuing forward through the story, we also see that Jesus himself, in the Greek language, he’s called a tekton. That word tekton is the Greek word that we get technology from.
We translate it in English as “carpenter” because we think that Jesus was the kind of artisan or craftsperson who worked with wood and nails. So here in the center of our story is again a place where Jesus could have been killed by any number of means. He could have been strangled for example, and yet Jesus when he dies for us, he chooses to use an object of human creativity in this. The technology with which he worked, wood and nails, is the technology by which he dies. We don’t tell the story of our faith, the story of our hope, without talking about human creativity here, that God has somehow transformed something we meant for evil into good.
When we go forward into the end of the story, to re-creation, we don’t go back to the garden. We don’t go back to a place where we frolic around. But we go to a place that’s a holy city where God takes all the things that people have made — roads and trumpets and banners — and brings those down into a new kind of world that is full of holiness and goodness. So the things that we make now could be in that place.
God isn’t interested in destroying the things that people are making, but in transforming them into things that can help humans flourish. So that’s why I say this idea that technology is not just about telling stories, but it’s also part of the story. What we are doing today is built into the story of God and not just now, but into the future.
Technology: Good, Bad, or Neutral?
It’s important that we see technology as more than just “a conduit for truth,” a thing that we can put truth through. Technology is itself is a kind of truth, a form of truth.
Here’s what I mean by that: When you go into a gym, you choose a technology based on how you want your body to be shaped, right? You choose different ones, if you want to change your arms and if you want to change your legs. This brings us to this question that we sometimes ask, “Is technology good or is it bad or is it neutral?”
And a lot of us are tempted to say, “Hey, you know what? It’s just neutral because all that really matters is how I use it.” But, you know, when you go into a gym and you choose a tool, you know it’s going to shape you when you use it. And this happens with all kinds of tools, like a shovel. We think of that shovel as being simply just neutral.
I can use it for good, or I can use it for bad. I can use it to build a church, to build the kingdom of God. I can use it to go kill somebody and bury treasure or something like that. But when I use a tool, I’m always going to be transformed by that tool. It’s going to change my hands. They’re going to get blisters, which are gonna turn to calluses. Whether I’m using it for good or for evil, I’m going to be changed in there.
The Medium and the Message
Whenever you’re using a tool, you’re going to be changed by that tool. And the same thing with our messages. We like to think that if we have a message, that we shoot it through a tube, it just comes out the other side. But really whenever we put something through, depending on the tool, it’s going to come out a little bit different.
I illustrate this with this slide here. Because had this been the beginning slide of my talk, you would have wondered, What’s the deal here? Because there’s a message in this slide that says I’m good at PowerPoint.
There’s something else that says I’m bad at PowerPoint. You all know that Comic Sans is terrible. You all know that the official Christian font of the universe Papyrus is also terrible, that the contrast here is not very good, and that there’s so many things about this that say, “I’m bad at PowerPoint.”
What’s happening here is that there’s a message that “I’m good at PowerPoint.” There’s a medium that says “I’m bad at PowerPoint.” And these two things are in conflict, and this is happening all the time when we’re using technology, that we’re constantly awash in information. So when we think about our technology, when we think about a phone, we think about a technology that we have.
Whenever you’re using a tool, you’re going to be changed by that tool. And the same thing with our messages.
We often think about the message coming out of the phone, right? What is on it? And is it morally good or morally bad? And that is something that Christians should be thinking about. But we also want to be thinking about the back of the phone. What is the message it is sending to the people around us?
So when you’re holding up the phone and someone wants to talk to you, they see a message emanating off the back of your phone. We want to think at the same time about how we can use our phones to get people together and then put them away so that we can be together.
We want to be thinking about the medium and the message at the same time, whenever we’re making or creating something.
Going back to the story of God, this was part of the story. Going back to the original Ten Commandments, the first commandment is about who God is. And the second commandment is about how we use a technology to portray that God.
Had we said that God has a sanctioned Yahweh doll that you would go buy somewhere, that doll would communicate that God was just like all the other gods, right? He would be just alongside them. So in this case, by not using media in a particular way, the technology of the second commandment reinforces the theology of the first one. So the technology choices that we’re making about the way that we speak about God and the way that we talk about our own lives are going to be vastly important. And you guys and gals, who are the technology creators, people will listen to you. People will believe that you know what you’re talking about here.
The technology of the second commandment reinforces the theology of the first one.
So even the apostles like John were saying, there’s some things that are really good for the technology of their day — paper and ink — and there are other things that are really good to be face-to-face (2 John 1:12; 3 John 1:13–14). John is not saying “technology bad. Face-to-face good.” He’s saying, “both things are important for us.” Both things are part of a whole human experience and we need wisdom to know the difference.
We need wisdom collectively to know when to use these alone and to use them in a complementary fashion.
Continue reading Part 2 of 2.
John Dyer (PhD, Durham University) is a dean and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. He has also been a technology creator for more than 20 years, building tools used by Facebook, Google, Apple, Anheuser-Busch, the Department of Defense, and the Digital Bible Society. His open source code is now used on more than 30% of websites. He has written on technology and faith for a number of publications including Gizmodo, Christianity Today, The Gospel Coalition, and in the book From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology. You can find out more about him at https://j.hn/.
Editor’s Note: John’s book From the Garden to the City is one of the nine books you can win this summer with our Writing Contest. Find more details here.
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