The Big Idea
Our relationship with Technology can be charted out according to key opening stories in Genesis. From the Fall, to the Tower, to Storehouses and Monuments these early stories offer a comprehensive look at how we should think about and use technology as a whole.
Similar Notes: An Introductory Framework for Technology A Creature Among Machines A Theology of Technology The Echo Chamber Squeeze Religion of Technology Soundbite Culture The Preservation of Tail Knowledge
It can feel a lot like drowning when technology moves faster than we can keep up. It doesn’t help that we often hear, or feel, the the nagging fear we might get left behind.
While the exact forms or types of technology may be changing very fast around us, I believe that the core stories of Scripture hold the key to understanding a timeless framework for engaging technology. A framework that helps us think about technology as old as fig leaf clothes and as new as AI or Quantum computing.
Technology as a Good but Damaged Gift from God
Many discussions of technology place its origin somewhere outside of the human person. Be it a hammer, car, etc. This picture of technology thinks of it as any kind of external tool. These tools are used to interact with and shape the environment around us. The “discovery of fire” is a common starting place for this kind of understanding.
Interestingly Genesis 2:20 starts in a very different place. It speaks of the first use of human tooling not as an external implement, but an internal naming. Adam is invited to help shape the world by perform the core work of categorization and language formation.
From this we can realize that all our inner technologies (sometimes referred to as “Ancient Technologies”) such as categorization, language, memory, logic, and storytelling are all deeply embedded tools that are formed within us simply as gifts from God.
By them we are able to think and shape our internal worlds as well as our external world. One of the very first skills we work to teach every young child is the same work Adam first performed: “That is a cat!” “That is a dog!”
Afterall, it is only from our internal tooling that external technologies arise at all. Without the internal thought to action, no external tool will be beneficial. A hammer is as useful as a rock if it lays on the ground.
Much more can be said about these most ancient technologies dwelling with in us. Especially how our ability to categorize accurately became corrupted when Adam and Eve stole knowledge of God’s categories of Good and Evil. Or how language was splintered by the idolatry of Babel’s tower.
Yet still, every internal tool we poses is only by the grace of God. However, none of them stand unmarred by the brokenness of our sinful natures.
Technology as Escape from Sin’s Curse
As we continue to walk through the opening chapters of Genesis, the first occurrence of any kind of external tool (or technology) comes immediately after Adam and Eve eat from the forbidden fruit: “they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths” - Gen 3:7 (ESV)
The very first external human innovation comes as a reaction to the new reality of sin. Much of the external technologies around us today (or throughout history) come from this same survival reaction.
To illustrate this, think for a moment about the curses and compare them to the benefits of many technologies:
- In the curse to Eve, we often focus on the pain part of child bearing (epidural?), but how many other technologies have been built to manage and even control all layers of the child bearing process, or to ward off sickness, or other biological danger? How about technologies that help manage the conflicts often found in human relationships?
- In the curse to Adam the very ground becomes cursed and dangerous. How many technologies have been invented to manage farming and food (look in your kitchen), comfortable and safe living environments, reduce the need for physical labor, etc.?
In other words, every piece of technology tends to do things (or solve problems) that help to ward off the effects of sin and its curse. Be that “remediation” of our own sin, protection from others’ sin (ring doorbells), or survival and comfort in our dangerous environment (AC, Toilets, etc.). In a very real and tangible way, these tools all seek to undo some effect of sin’s curse without ever really dealing with the root of it.
Yet as ever, God is gracious and: “made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them” - Gen 3:21 The goodness of technology must always be connected with the graciousness of God. Through them God eases the burden of our sinful condition in ways we are not able to on our own.
Therefore, we should encounter and use our internal and external tooling within this tension. It is in the separation of technology from God that human pride begins to runs amok.
We can see this playing out in Genesis 4. This is the very first mention of humans using particular kinds of external technology (other than a needle and thread). We are introduced to the Tent Dwelling Shepherds, Musicians, and Metal workers. And all of them are the direct dependents of murderous Cain (not to mention their father Lamech). Later generations inhabit these same roles positively, be they the famous Musical Shepherd King, or the Craftsmen of the Tabernacle, but the shadow of human brokenness bleeds through them all.
To summarize these opening considerations, technology is rightly understood along two vital dimensions:
- All technology both external (pluming, books, etc.) and internal (logic, memory, etc.) are gracious gifts from God to ease the suffering of sin and provide for our needs (Think 4th petition of the Lord’s Prayer).
- However, technology is not neutral. It always originates and flows out of our internal tooling and is embedded as firmly as we are in a broken and sinful world. This is seen in the very necessity and design of our technologies. Their shape and structure are derived to solve issues, or create advantages, only necessary in a fallen world. For example, the fact that we need the word of God written down is a testament to just how broken our memory really is.
The Artificial Mountain
With these two dimensions in mind, we can approach the next major biblical narrative that illuminates humanities fraught relationship with technology: The Tower of Babel.
A simple summary of the story following the framework we have outlined so far goes like this: language (an internal tool) and brick and mortar (external tools) are divorced from connection to God. They are then used for the pride and elevation of man over and against God.
The dream seems to start innocently enough. An idea is carried by language into a set of physical technology: “‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar.”- Gen 11: 3
Sounds a lot like the techno-hype we live in today. “Hey look at this new shiny tool! The world will never be the same!”
While claims like this may be true, and the potential for a technology may indeed be exciting, apart from God their use seems to always lead to a false hope for human utopia: “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” - Gen 11:4
On a first read this technological dream seems mundane enough but in it we see the echos of all human pride that has followed throughout history. This is a dream to conquer heaven with a tower and control humans with a city and reputation.
In fact tower is worse than we realize to reach up to heaven on their own
a human and artificial version of the high place of God we hear about all throughout scripture
“It shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and it shall be lifted up above the hills; and peoples shall flow to it,” - Micah 4:1
mountains and high places where were God is encountered and met, Mountains of Scripture but humans have always had the problem of trying to force these high places and use them the way we want to
In other words they are making an artificial mountain the thing that holds them together is not the mountain of God or His dwelling but a human built center of gravity.
ends up being their own artificial Eden coming about because of technology
Artificial mountain on the plain rather than a real mountain in a range.
From the false holy place they plan to gather people together around their human accomplishments.
A world gathered around one language and an artificial mountain is nothing short of humanity that has completely cut themselves off from God
But that dark human dream has never really gone away. The Israelites made all kinds of false high places. And chased after the “advancements” of the nations all around them.
The core technology that God disrupts is not the external one but the internal one: “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” - Gen 11:6
In breaking up the internal tooling the external tooling crumbles
Today we live in a world where the dream for a techno-utopia is right out in the open. Yet while the technologies themselves may be different and more complex the human dream is the same sinful one deeply set within human consciousness. Afterall, if technology can undo some effects of sin and brokenness, maybe it will get us the whole way back to the garden?
Summary, the dream for techno-utopia is old and rears its ugly head whenever we:
- Use any technology to “free” ourselves from God.
- Hope to “save” humanity by technological means (be that internal or external tooling).
Storehouses or Monuments?
Technology is not neutral but codifies and enshrines human decisions.
Use of human technologies makes different worlds possible and discourages others.
Internal technologies like memory, language and imagination are clear examples of this
These decisions accumulate over time and push the world in a particular direction
Lets go back to bricks as see how this works out. Bricks sure seem like a “neutral” technology, but the first murder was committed with a rock of less definition.
Joseph uses bricks to make storehouses to save people’s lives
Pharaoh uses bricks for his own power and pride. vast cities and monuments - Pharaoh using slave labor to employ the brick