In general, I recommend reading anything that Tony Reinke writes. I can assure you that you will be both challenged to grow in Christ and encouraged to examine your heart and mind. His latest work, God, Technology, and the Christian Life, squarely falls into those categories. Pick it up, read it slowly, and apply it to your life.
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- Writing as a ‘tech optimist’ who trusts in God’s providential orchestration over all things, Reinke offers us an expansive and compelling ‘biblical theology of technology.’ God’s glory is the end of creation and the aim of all innovations. Apart from Christ there is no art, no science, no technology, no agriculture, no microprocessor, and no medical innovation. If God is the center of our life, technology is a great gift. If technology is our savior, we are lost. This is a mind-expanding, heart-stabilizing, God-glorifying, joy-sustaining book.” John Piper p. 1
- Technology is applied science and amplified power. It’s art, method, know-how, formulas, and expertise. The word technology is built on the root technique. We amplify our native powers through new techniques. p. 14
- What is God’s relationship to human innovation and technology? In Noah, he commanded it. In the ark, God took human engineering and technology and wrote it into the grand story of redemption. But in Babel, God squashed it. In the face of human self-glory, he introduced the tensions that utterly thwarted human collaboration. p. 44
- The world’s greatest threats, even at their most technologically outfitted, can only wield a power given and a purpose governed entirely by God. p. 50
- Because God creates the innovators, God can thwart the innovators. Forged iron cannot halt providence. p. 56
- God powers all things, and turns all things according to his governance and design. The whole machine of providence works to a single, unified end according to God’s plan, his glory, and his people’s eternal joy. p. 57
- By his intentional patterns in creation God called forth science and technology. Science discovers the patterns. Technology exploits the patterns. God is the genesis of all human technology. p. 118
- Everything in creation exists to serve a higher purpose than itself. This same dynamic works in human innovation. The innovative brilliance of natural man exists for a higher purpose beyond itself, namely for others to use in glorifying God in service to his mission on earth. This principle comes directly from Paul, who confirms that everything you find in this world—including, we can assume, all the gifts of innovation given to mankind—exists as a gift to the church. All innovation is a gift that reminds us not to boast in man’s innovative brilliance. That brilliance is God-given and God-orchestrated to serve the church in her mission. No matter what else it does, every human innovation that benefits the world is a gift from God, for his glory, in service to his people. p. 142
- God makes things out of nothing. We make things from what is available. He is sovereign; we are limited. Yet we’ve managed to invent potent innovations. We have multiplied powers at our disposal to meet many of our needs and wants. But technology cannot solve our greatest need. p. 152
- God is the center of your life, technology is a great gift. If technology is your savior, you’re lost. p. 179
- There are a million ways to use innovation, but technology is used best when we follow the lead from creation and restore what is broken. p. 238
- Technological innovations have always attracted human awe because they disclose the cutting edge of human imagination and physical possibility. The original seven wonders of the world were all feats of engineering: pyramids, statues, towers, and temples. Our innovations are even more captivating because we can see the rapid change, even in the course of one lifetime. If you were born on December 17, 1903, the date of the Wright brothers’ first successful flight, you could have witnessed the first fighter jet flight at age thirty-seven, bought a ticket for a commercial jetliner at the age of forty-eight, seen the first rocket launch into space at age fifty-three, watched the moon landing on TV at age sixty-five, and attended the first space shuttle flight at age seventy-seven. p. 276
- Back in the fall of 1888, Charles Spurgeon heard recorded music for the first time. It’s hard for us to imagine this; recorded music has never not been part of our lives. But the innovation was brand-new for Spurgeon. In 1888 Jubal’s tech tree leapt forward in progress. “I sat yesterday with two tubes in my ears to listen to sounds that came from revolving cylinders of wax,” Spurgeon said. “I heard music, though I knew that no instrument was near. It was music which had been caught up months before, and now was ringing out as clearly and distinctly in my ears as it could have done had I been present at its first sound. I sat and listened,” said Spurgeon, “and I felt lost in the mystery.” But then Spurgeon wondered out loud. Why are we not lost in the mystery of the gospel? Why do shiny new innovations more easily capture our wonder? Why was it that as electric lights began illuminating London churches, the glory of Christ began dimming into the intellectual skepticism of the age? The glory of the gospel is more wonderful than electricity and the radiance of engineered lighting. Spurgeon said, “In the gospel of the Lord Jesus, God speaks into the ear of his child more music than all the harps of heaven can yield. I pray you, do not despise it. Be not such dull, driven cattle that, when God has set before you what angels desire to look into, you close your eyes to such glories, and pay attention to the miserable trifles of time and sense.” p. 277
- Christ’s supremacy over all things means that Christian flourishing does not hinge on my adoption or rejection of certain technologies. It hinges on my heart’s focus on the Savior. This will be true across the spectrum of tech-adopting Christians and tech-rejecting Christians. Whether we buy a seat on a spaceship rendezvous to the moon or stay within the confines of an Amishlike commune, we will find no hope apart from our union to Christ. As the center of our lives and our eternal hopes, Christ takes our minds off ourselves and frees us to love and to live for something bigger than our tiny kingdoms. He frees us from slavery to the technological desires of self-creation and self-determining individualism. The church, liberated by Calvin from trying to serve as the arbiter of all scientific discovery, can now preach Christ in the tech age. Only Christ can disenchant the false promises of the tech age. Our gadgets and techno-possibilities no longer define us; Christ does. He defines our calling. If we follow his word, we will be protected from being used by our tools. p. 298