> Matthew Frazer Case #71 Living with technology

Five technologies that have disrupted Christian thinking

December 19, 2024

Matthew Frazer

From the moment that God created humanity, He gave us the instruction to ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it’ (Genesis 1:28). And humanity has not shirked this directive, though our success has not always matched our enthusiasm. One of the chief ways humanity rules over the rest of God's creation is through technology. God created us as toolmakers, and this super-power elevates our ability to shape the world at will well above that of the animal kingdom.

Christians have traditionally had an uneasy relationship with new technology. Modern economists and innovators speak of the ‘disruptive’ effects of technology, wherein innovations will create new markets but simultaneously overtake and displace existing ones. ‘Creative destruction’ is the darling of the modern venture capitalist but can leave conservative thinkers anxious and suspicious.

So following the trend of that most disruptive of media innovations, the BuzzFeed Listicle, herein I submit my (highly subjective) Top 5 Technological Innovations that have disrupted Christian thinking.

Note: There were many contenders for this list, so I have listed technologies with similar disruptive effects as ‘runners up’ in each category. YMMV.

Communication: The Internet

Runners up: The fountain pen, the printing press, wireless radio, the telephone, television

The early Christians were no strangers to long-distance communication. Much of the New Testament is comprised of epistles written to far-flung churches to rally, remind, request or rebuke. However the Internet now enables effectively instantaneous communication among more than 67% of the approximately 8 billion people alive today. I don't imagine the early Christians could have easily comprehended the unfathomable reach that any individual can have in the modern age, if their message can ‘go viral’ and rise above the noise.

The challenges to Christian thinking are manifold.

The complete democratisation of a global publishing medium is very much a two-edged sword. There is no longer any simple ‘filtering mechanism’ to shut down messages that are harmful, false, inflammatory or outright dangerous. This presents significant risks to impressionable minds, especially the young, who are now often exposed to the worst extremes of sinful human rebellion without context or moderation. But it also enables Christians to take the gospel into places that were previously unreachable—allowing missionaries and local believers to communicate and coordinate in places where governments or populations are hostile to the church.

The Internet did not place sin into our hearts, however it has made it much easier for our sinful temptations to be fed. In earlier ages, giving in to some temptations required a visit to the ‘dodgy’ part of town, or the darkened back corner of the video store or newsagent’s. With the advent of the Internet, people can access the same materials in the private comfort of their own home. The struggle to live a holy life, set apart, has been heightened by all that the Internet offers.

The Challenge: Now that Pandora's Router is open, it cannot be closed again, so Christians must navigate the challenge of utilising the capabilities the Internet provides to take God's message of forgiveness and grace to the world, while avoiding the pitfalls of sin and the competing messages that come along with it.

Transport: The Passenger Airliner

Runners up: The steam engine, the ocean liner, the motor car

In the time of the early church, most individuals would rarely travel more than a few dozen kilometres from their place of birth, unless they happened to be a soldier, merchant, or other traveller by vocation. Travel was costly, dangerous, and largely far too risky for anybody to engage in unless there was a specific need.

Today, a significant portion of the global population will at some point in their life hop inside a pressurised aluminium tube full of liquid explosives and be carried to a height far above the highest mountain to cross oceans that their ancestors would spend years voyaging, all while catching up on their unwatched episodes of ‘Real Housewives’, and often for the sole purpose of not working while looking at a different kind of scenery than usual. I think our ancient cousins would be baffled.

Aside from the vacation opportunities, the availability of mass transit at a global scale has completely changed the nature of Christian mission. In times past, many faithful souls called to take the gospel to the unreached world would farewell their family and friends before embarking on their long journeys, fully expecting that they might never return. Today, global missionaries can return to their countries of origin on furlough or home assignment regularly, having spent their time overseas in relatively constant communication using Zoom or the like. The physical barriers to global mission have never been lower (though there remain challenges enough).

A new kind of Christian celebrity is also created—the Super-Preacher. Where a gifted speaker engaged in parish ministry would have previously been known only in his home town, or maybe the few surrounding towns, they can now take speaking engagements around the world to encourage believers from many nations. This is the extreme example of the way the ‘local parish’ has been fundamentally up-ended, with more Christians than ever able to choose their place of regular worship by factors other than proximity.

The ease of long-distance travel is not without its cost. Small, outlying communities are, to put it frankly, dying as the inexorable force of centralisation robs them of their children who seek more interesting, connected lives in the bigger cities. When it is easy to fly back home to visit family, why would you choose to live in a one-pub town? The village parish inevitably follows. To see this effect without leaving your chair, search for a Bed and Breakfast in the country, and look at the number of small village churches that have been sold off and converted into boutique accommodation for the trendy holiday-seeker. AirBnB even gives this phenomenon a delightfully cheesy name following the pattern of glamping: ‘champing’.

The Challenge: Christians are the body of Christ, and while the geographical dispersion of our communities might grow, we must continue to use the gifts God has granted us to love and care for our brothers and sisters in Christ and seek to save the lost. Our neighbour might not live in the house next door.

Health: Penicillin and Modern Antibiotics

Runners up: Public hygiene, vaccines, effective contraception

While our history books are filled with sad stories of lives cut short, these are far outweighed by the silent masses of the young who never survived childhood. Estimates place the global average ratio of children surviving to adulthood at around 50% up until the 20th century. The discovery of Penicillin in the 1920s was a turning point in stemming the tide of early mortality that had washed over humanity for eons.

It is truly not possible to convey in words the heart-wrenching depth of loss that comes from losing a child. And yet, for the majority of human history, this was a near universal experience for parents and families. The adult mortality rate has typically been lower than that of children, but for most individuals who have lived, death was never far off, with illnesses or injuries that would appear mundane to modern eyes often being painfully fatal.

Living with this spectre no doubt had a profound impact on people's readiness to consider their eternal fate, and their willingness to place their trust in a God who promises restoration.

John Donne's sonnet Death, Be Not Proud (from his Holy Sonnets) captures this defiantly hopeful attitude:

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not soe,

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill mee.

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,

Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,

And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then?

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

This frame of mind rings quaint to most modern thinkers. After all, modern science has provided us the means to extend our lives far beyond earlier times, and there is no limit to which ailments might be cured in the future, right? Is not death merely an annoyance; a bothersome blowfly destined to be silenced once we figure out the formula for Mortein?

Of course, the average person today will intellectually acknowledge that yes, one day, they will die. But they hold this reality at arm's length. Death is something that awaits them in their 80s or beyond. For now, in their prime (whatever age they define that to be), they are effectively invincible. Eternity is a problem for tomorrow.

The Challenge: I do not for one moment wish away the incredible advances in health that allow us to keep our children alive. These are great gifts from God for which we ought to give thanks and praise. However they do provide one more way in which we can delude ourselves that we are masters of our universe and have no need of salvation. Why seek out God's plan for eternity when we can make our own? This challenge to modern evangelism has a different character to the fiery opposition of crusades past—this enemy of the gospel is apathy, a dispassionate disinterest due to a perceived lack of necessity. This is a steep obstacle to overcome.

Science: The Telescope

Runners up: The microscope, the Large Hadron Collider

Our bodies are made up of billions of cells; minuscule, complex machines coordinating in a terrific and incomprehensible dance that gives us the ability to breathe, move, eat, communicate, reproduce, and play Wordle. We are all giants—powerful behemoths able to bend the world to our will. Nature cowers before our ingenuity, tenacity and sheer force of will.

And then we looked up.

The first telescope, usually attributed to Galileo Galilei in 1609, opened up the heavens. Primitive though it was, we could explore the far reaches of the universe in ways we never could before. So disruptive to Christian thinking were his observations that his theories of heliocentrism were deemed heretical by the Roman Inquisition, and he was condemned to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

The scale of our universe is truly baffling. Even just considering our own solar system with its family of eight planets (plus the estranged Pluto) is enough to make the tallest person feel like a speck. And the solar system itself is but a speck in the galaxy, which is itself a speck in the greater universe.

As our telescopes improved, through to the most modern technological marvel of the James Webb Space Telescope, we continue to find mysterious wonder upon mysterious wonder. The further we look, the more questions we encounter. And through our exploration we have observed evidence for phenomena that challenge our understanding of the creation, and the Creator. The universe appears to be older than we could have guessed, and more... bang-y.

The Challenge: The universe seems to be so ineffably immense that in many people's minds it precludes the possibility of a creator, because no other entity could possibly be superior in power and scale. Many believers struggle with this prospect so much that they reject the evidence and seize any other explanation, however unlikely. In so doing, they perhaps miss the far grander potential that indeed, God is superior to his creation, no matter how unfathomably gargantuan it proves to be.

Software: Artificial Intelligence

Runners up: ???

I have already, in an earlier Case column, explored some of the challenges that face us as we enter the dawn of the AI age. Every human invention has served to amplify our abilities so that we are the winners of every contest. We have machines that allow us to move faster than the cheetah, fly higher than the hawk, swim deeper than the whale, be more deadly than the taipan and more resilient than the armadillo.

But there was one contest that we were already winning, and that was intelligence. Our oversized brains have always been our greatest asset, giving us the power of invention and adaptability. While we have many tools that compensate for our weaknesses, now, for the first time, we may be on the verge of creating a technology that will surpass us in our chief strength.

AI has already shown remarkable capacity for replacing knowledge workers across many fields. The technology is advancing so rapidly that it is right to wonder if any knowledge work will be truly safe from its eventual reach.

The Challenge: Hypothetically, what would it mean for Christians if there were to exist a truly intelligent individual, capable of original thought, with a personality, memories, preferences and individual will, but which happened to emerge from silicon and copper?

Would it sin? Would it have a soul? Would it be made in the image of God? Could it trust in Jesus? Did Jesus die for it? Will it receive a place in the new creation? I do not know the answer to any of these questions. Nor do I know if this hypothetical will ever come to pass. But at this point in history, it seems within the realm of plausibility, and it would be prudent for us to have an idea of what to say if we ever have the chance to sit down for tea with Marvin the Paranoid Android.

Christians, as a proper subset of humanity, are subject to disruption as much as anyone. These five modern technologies I’ve featured are but the memorable examples, sitting atop millennia of other developments whose disruptive influences are long forgotten. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend these challenges do not exist, and trying to stop the progress may appear to some as foolishly shouting at the wind. But we can remain steadfast in faith.

Do not fear what they fear or be disturbed, but honour the Messiah as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. (1 Peter 3:14b-15)

God, as the Creator of all, is never disrupted.

Do you not know? Have you not heard? Yahweh is the everlasting God, the Creator of the whole earth. He never grows faint or weary; there is no limit to His understanding. (Isaiah 40:28 HCSB)

Matthew Frazer graduated from UNSW in Engineering and Science. After a time programming machines, he switched to the more challenging task of programming teenagers, and now teaches high school Mathematics and Computing in Tamworth.