March 3, 2025
Christians and Technology, Part 1: Just Because We Can, Doesn't Mean We Should
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Can technological advancement pull us away from our divine purpose? In this episode of PREPPED, James Spencer, PhD, is exploring how technology shapes our spiritual journey, using the Tower of Babel as a framework to examine the tension between innovation and faith.
By drawing insights from Nassim Taleb’s iatrogenics, Marshall McLuhan’s Four Laws of Media, and Nick Bostrom’s Vulnerable World Hypothesis, join us in discussion of how unchecked ambitions—then and now—can distance us from God’s plan. As AI, social media, and modern conveniences reshape our daily lives, are we losing sight of what truly matters?
We’re diving into the ethical dilemmas of technology, contrasting Albert Borgman’s distinction between things and devices to help us discern whether our digital habits align with our spiritual priorities. Through the story of Martha and Mary, we’re challenging our listeners to reflect: does technology bring us closer to God, or is it quietly displacing meaningful practices in our faith?
(00:00) Navigating Technology in the Christian Life
(05:03) Human Capacity
(15:52) Technology, Ethics, and Christian Discernment
(21:56) Impact of Technology on Human Engagement
(34:21) Reflections on Technology and Christian Living
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Transcript
00:00 - James Spencer (Host)
So discernment requires reflection on how each act shapes our relationship with God. Are we moving toward Him or drifting away? Discernment also is going to require accountability, and I think sharing our struggles and decisions with trusted friends or mentors can help us stay on track and together we can encourage one another to use technology in ways that glorify God and His kingdom.
00:19 - Speaker 2 (None)
Welcome to PREPPED, the podcast that equips you to live out God's story, not the world's story. Hosted by James Spencer, phd, each episode bridges the gap between academic insights and everyday life, preparing you to understand the Word of God and put it into practice. Whether you're diving into biblical studies, looking for ministry guidance or aiming to deepen your faith, PREPPED empowers you to think biblically and theologically in a world that encourages you not to Ready to get PREPPED. Subscribe now and transform the way you bring God's story into the world.
00:54 - James Spencer (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of PREPPED. I'm Dr James Spencer. This is where we're going to explore biblical and theological topics, in a way to speak directly to the challenges and opportunities of today, and in this episode we're actually not going to be talking about Genesis 14. I said at the end of last episode that we're moving into Genesis 14. I misspoke there. I had forgotten that there were a few episodes that we were going to do before Genesis 14. And so today what we're going to do is sort of piggyback off of the Tower and Babel narrative, where we talked a little bit about the unrestrained and unguided development and use of human capacity, and so we're going to be talking about technology and the Christian life for a couple of episodes.
01:33
And I think this is important because there's very few times in the Bible where we can actually jump in and look at something that is technological. There are obviously, you know, the development of different sorts of weaponry and there's, you know the development of different sorts of weaponry. There's the you know, different ages, where we have the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, and so there are technologies developed from a warfare perspective, but there isn't a lot of philosophical conversation around technology and I think the Tower of Babel narrative is probably one of those that gets the closest to talking philosophically and theologically about how we should think about technology, how we should think about human capacity and how we should think about exercising it. So, as Christians, we're called to discern and to live wisely in a rapidly advancing world, and technology often enhances our lives. Obviously, I'm not shy about technology. I'm putting a video out, I'm doing a podcast. You know I use technology an awful lot, I use artificial intelligence an awful lot, and so I am not opposed to technology. But I do think that one of the crucial aspects we need to understand is how are we thinking about technology, about technology? Because the way we're thinking about technology is ultimately going to involve or shift the way that we think about technology, the way we discern how to use that technology in our lives.
02:53
So I want to just frame this discussion and I want to draw on several paradigms. The first is Nassim Taleb's concept of iantrogenics, this sort of idea of when an intervention actually has detrimental effects and he uses it in terms of it actually came out of. I believe its origins were found in medicine, when people were trying to treat various diseases or disease states, and in doing so they actually ended up harming people more than helping people. So that's the first sort of paradigm. The second one is Albert Borgman's distinction between things and devices. He does this in his book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life Contemporary Culture, I believe.
03:35
And then finally, marshall McLuhan's Four Laws of Media, and these are really interesting. I think they offer some really clear questions. I actually talk about them with another guest on the Thinking Christian podcast, which I will include in the show notes after that launches. Each of those offers a unique lens, I think, through which we can evaluate how to engage with technology, and it just gives us a nice framework. So in the Tower of Babel narrative you recall from the last episode all I was saying was that the Tower of Babel narrative involves this idea of ignorance. The people were ignorant of who God was, what God wanted, how they were to relate to him, and that ignorance then allowed them to see their human capacities as something that would allow them to be independent of God as opposed to dependent on God. It cultivated self-reliance as opposed to dependence, and so these paradigms are intended to sort of help us understand how we might think through that. How do you? You know it's nice to say, okay, you're supposed to be dependent on God, not independent from God, but then there's the practical aspect. Okay, james, great, you're saying that, but what does it actually mean? And so that's where we're going to kind of go a little bit today. If you're enjoying these discussions, please I would just suggest that you share the podcast, share the videos, leave a review. Your support helps spread these conversations and equips others to think critically about their faith in the modern world.
05:03
So let's dive in and explore how human capacity, when misaligned with God's purposes, can lead us away from true flourishing. So the first one I want to talk about is just the gift and challenge of human capacity. Human capacity is one of God's greatest gifts. From the beginning, we see humans created in the image of God, tasked with cultivating and stewarding creation and our ability to create, innovate, problem solve. I think these are reflective of our creative nature, the way that God created us. But this capacity also comes with responsibility, and it's supposed to be exercised within relationship, and so the Tower of Babel narrative really draws us back there. What's our responsibility? Well, our responsibility is primarily to be enhancing and extending the glory of God. It's to be working with God's creation in such a way that God's glory is extended throughout that creation.
05:57
I'll be doing some more episodes on this later and maybe even doing some writing on it, but for right now what I would say is that the and if you go back and listen to some of the other PREPPED episodes, you'll find this as well but the idea is that the garden was only a small part of the world, and so what God is asking the human couple to do initially, in multiplying, filling the world and subduing it, is he's asking them to extend the precincts of the garden. And as they extend the precincts of the garden, as they have children, as those children then follow God and experience life in God's presence, then that glorification of God extends all over the world. And so what we're supposed to be, that's what we're supposed to be doing, that's the responsibility we're always supposed to be pointing to and glorifying God. But I would also say that it comes in relationship. So we're incapable of really doing that, of pointing to and glorifying God, if we're not in a right relationship with him.
06:53
And I know we talk a lot about personal relationship in evangelicalism. When I was saved, it was all about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I don't deny that. I think that's very true, but that's not what I'm talking about exactly. So we are situated or positioned in a way we have a posture toward God that is appropriate to us being dependent on him and us actually reflecting out that glory from him. So I'm not talking about that personal relationship necessarily, but maybe the nature of that relationship, the way that we act out that relationship, is more what I have in mind here. So the Tower of Babel narrative again just to sort of revisit last time is this great story where we see human efforts that are unguided and unrestrained and they lead the people away from God rather than toward him.
07:44
And I think that tension between the potential for good and the risk of harm is really evident in the realm of technology. When we are exercising our human capacity in the area of technology, we are putting ourselves to some degree at risk. Nick Bostroms, who is a philosophically, he is a transhumanist, which transhumanism is a really sort of odd and interesting paradigm for thinking through what we can and should be able to do with our bodies. It's not something that I agree with and so, again, I've done other writing and different episodes on that and I'll link those in the show description. But I bring Nick Bostrom up not because I agree with his philosophy but because he wrote a paper called the Vulnerable World Hypothesis. And the Vulnerable World Hypothesis just suggests that we've not experienced a culture killing or a civilization ending sort of technology, not because we're so careful and discerning in the sort of technologies that we build. His analysis is that we've just gotten lucky, and so his paper is really compelling.
08:52
Actually, and I think it's a really important piece to remind us that many times when we're messing around with technology, we don't really understand what we're messing with. We know how to manipulate the world, put the pieces together, build this or that, but we don't always understand how the world is going to, let's say, respond once those pieces are built. We don't understand how those things fit together, and it's because we aren't starting from an understanding of the world. We're starting from a position of how do we manipulate this or that within the world. We're starting from a position of how do we manipulate this or that within the world. If we start with an understanding of the world, an understanding of the world has to involve our relationship with God. It has to entail a right relationship with the triune God.
09:35
Now we have a different basis from which we can understand and implement technology and we're going to see a little bit better, I think, the dangers that some certain technologies pose. And the way I usually think about it is we'll be able to reap the benefits of those technologies while mitigating against their downsides. About technology, I don't know it's exactly the right way, but I think it's really helped me not to fall into a totally positive or totally negative approach. I think that what we're always trying to do is we're trying to say, okay, this technology is going to bring a certain set of benefits and we would like to have those benefits, but the reality is that it also could have some really significant downsides. I think part of our problem has been in implementing social media and implementing even AI, even things like mass transportation. We've seen the benefits, we've recognized what we want to do, but we haven't really thought about what these things are going to push out of our lives, not eliminate totally. It's not as if we couldn't make those choices. The exact same choices we were making prior to a technology, we could make after a technology, but we don't reckon with the way that it tends to get us to eliminate those practices that were really meaningful to us prior to the onset of that technology. And so that's what I mean when I say that we want to reap the benefits while mitigating the downside. So something to think about.
11:15
I'll just give an example. You know, if we think about the difference, I always go back to the show Little House on the Prairie right, because Little House on the Prairie, the church and the schoolhouse are the same place. You have a fairly isolated town where people are neighborly to one another. Everybody kind of knows one another. Yes, they have their problems, but ultimately there's a social network there, and I use that phrase intentionally. There's a social network that's created within that community where people are held responsible for what they're doing. They're expected to do certain things. When someone departs from a norm, that's recognized as a problem. And it's very difficult to escape that community, and it's because it's localized.
11:58
Travel was just much more difficult. And you see the various episodes. If you ever watch Little House on the Prairie, they tend to go to a city every once in a while. I think it was Mankato, but I won't, I wouldn't swear to that. But they go to the city and the expectations are completely different. These people are completely fish out of water and as the community, you know, in those cities grew, there were more and more problems and very different sorts of problems. You know, you have brawls at the bar, you have, you know, all of the sort of trappings of life that come along with being in the city. And so if we think about just that idea of not really, you know, travel being difficult, travel being expensive, hard to get from one place to another, yes, that creates real hardships, you know. I can remember watching episodes of that show where you know the snow is so high they have to, you know, tie a rope from the door of the house to the door of the barn to go care for the animals and those kind of things. Those are areas where you kind of sit back and you go, wow, technology could really have helped. You know episodes where people get sick and then the medicine just isn't there to help them get better. Again, that's a great place where technology can kind of plug in and help.
13:12
But if you think about the onset of something like mass transit, where it's easy for us to travel, and you think about that, the accountability and the responsibility that was cultivated within a community that really couldn't escape one another easily, you start to recognize, maybe, something that we're losing. So as we think about you know, I think about going to my church. I'm about five minutes away from my church building. But let's say I'm going to church and they decide that something I've said on the podcast, something I've said I've written in public, or something like that, they just disagree with it. And so they want to have a conversation with me about that. They want to talk about my responsibility to the congregation. They want to talk to me about what sort of accountability I need to have to the congregation of which I'm a part. And let's say I don't want to have that conversation. Let's say I just want to say listen, I do what I do, it's my job, it's my life, it's my thoughts. I don't need any of this oversight. This is ridiculous.
14:12
And so my family and I decide to go 20 minutes in the other direction to a different church, where they don't know me of mass transportation and it's created these different dynamics where there's a whole host of different reasons that we don't have the same sort of community that you see pictured in the little house on the prairie right. You just don't see it because we can all go different directions. Even the people at my church right now, there are some that are 20 minutes in the opposite direction from me, and so we don't live next to each other, and I think that these are things that we've with technology, with technology expansion. It's not that I'm saying mass transit is bad I don't want to go back to riding horses but what I would like to highlight is that we've got an accountability problem, we've got a responsibility problem, we've got a community problem, and we didn't really think through how mass transit was going to change that. And because we didn't think about that, we are struggling, I think, to reproduce that in an era where people can drive 20, 30, 40 minutes, go to church and not necessarily necessarily be near anyone within their sort of ecosystem, and so there's a way for us to think about technology where we're reaping all these benefits, and then there's a way for us to think about technology where we want to avoid the downsides of that technology. So, as we go through these paradigms, as we try to think these paradigms through Taleb Borgman and then Marshall McLuhan, I just want you to keep that in mind. That's sort of the framework.
15:52
I'm approaching this from Not trying to be a Luddite, not trying to say you know, all technology should go away and we should go back to the dark ages or whatever. That's not it. I don't really think that's realistic, nor do I think it's what we should be assuming the Bible teaches. I don't think that's quite it. And so what always we need to do is root ourselves back in that dependence of God, root ourselves back in that mission of extending God's glory around the world, and then, from that position, asking ourselves how does technology fit into this? So let me start by just outlining a little bit about what Nassim Taleb says about these issues, and then we'll go from there.
16:37
So, nassim Taleb, he introduces this concept of antigenics in his work on risk and uncertainty. I'm more familiar with it from his book Anti-Fragile, but I think he addresses it in other works as well. The term comes from medicine and it refers to harm caused by the healer, for instance when a treatment unintentionally worsens a patient's condition. So Taleb extends this idea to other areas of life and he highlights how interventions actually intended to help can sometimes cause harm. And, in the context of technology, androgenics reminds us to approach innovation with caution.
17:12
Many technologies are created with good intentions, but we have unintended consequences around them. Social media, for instance, was designed to connect people, yet it's also contributed to mental health struggles, polarization, misinformation. I've talked about this on my other podcast, thinking Christian, and there's actually a Surgeon General's warning. He put out a parental advisory on social media, and so I'll link that episode in this episode description. But I'd encourage you to take a look at that.
17:42
It's a really interesting phenomenon because we've jumped into social media and it does do good things, but the reality is that we're all living with this downside as well, and so you know we've got these different problems that these technologies have created that we didn't foresee and that we're not really going to. You know, step away from the technology in order to solve. We're going to try to solve them alongside the technology. So I think the rise of artificial intelligence has sort of improved efficiency in countless industries, but it's also raising ethical concerns about privacy and bias and job displacement, and so, as we've jumped into artificial intelligence, as good and as helpful as it can be, I would also say that we're not paying enough attention to some of the potential negative consequences that we are probably going to suffer from the iantrogenics of the situation or, as another person has taught us, called the revenge effects of these technologies.
18:41
Now, the reason I like Taleb's framework is that it does encourage us to weigh the risks and benefits of technological advancements, and it asks us whether these solutions will create maybe inadvertently worse problems than they aim to solve. And I think, for Christians, the principle is really something that calls us back to humility and it challenges us to recognize the limits of human knowledge and depend on God's wisdom as we navigate complex decisions. Now, the way I would really want to phrase this and I want to get this as precise as possible is just this Christians, if we are really supposed to point to and glorify God in everything that we do and we're always doing that, we're always trying to extend God's glory we have to start there. We can't start by asking ourselves whether a technology has some sort of pragmatic benefit. We have to ask ourselves does this technology allow us to, or push us to become less dependent on God and thus to shift our position from glorifying God in all that we do to stepping away from him and maybe not glorifying him in the way that we should? And so that idea of being rooted in that pointing to and glorifying God is actually, I think, a really crucial idea. So that's where I would sort of begin thinking that this principle of the antregetics really does challenge us to consider how our use of technology might inadvertently harm ourselves or others, and it invites us to pause and reflect on the potential consequences of our actions, ensuring that our choices are guided by wisdom and a commitment to love God and love our neighbor. So discernment and foresight rooted in prayer, biblical reflection, are essential to navigating these challenges faithfully. I would also just say that you know, I really love Romans 14 and 15, where Paul is talking about the relationship between the weak and the strong, and so we have to take care and really recognize that sometimes, when we're using these technologies, we are inadvertently harming others within the community, we're hindering someone from moving forward in their faith in Christ, and so we can think through that grid as well.
20:57
Now let's talk a little bit about Albert Borgman's distinction between things and devices. So this distinction is actually really interesting and I think it offers a valuable perspective. Again, it comes from his book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, and Borgman argues that things are these tangible objects that require engagement and skill. The example he uses in the book is like a wood-burning fireplace it provides warmth and it also demands effort to maintain, and so you have to go out and cut the wood. Maybe it's a father and a son or a father and a daughter who go out and they're going to cut this wood, and the father's going to show the child how to do this. It's going to help the child carry this wood back, and when they get back, he's going to show the. You know he's going to show the child how to light the fire. There's a social aspect to things that require not only effort, but allow for social interaction, and so that's what a thing is for Borgman.
21:56
Devices, on the other hand, are technologies designed to deliver the outcomes with more of a minimal effort. It isn't hard to show someone how to use a central heating and cooling system that provides warmth at the push of a button. So I have an app for that. Now you can. You know I could turn my heat up. My wife usually does this. She turns the heat up and eventually I'll notice that it's hot, but it's not something we do together. It's not like she's asking me to put wood on the fire. She's just going in and changing the app and nobody would necessarily know until it got hot enough in the house for us to be uncomfortable.
22:32
Now, while devices do make life easier, borgman is really warning us that they can also distance us from meaningful engagement with the world and with each other. A device paradigm, as he calls it, prioritizes convenience over connection and efficiency over experience. So consider how smartphones, for instance, have replaced face-to-face conversations with text messages or social media interactions. I would say even how smartphones have displaced phone interactions with text messages and social media interactions. Those tools are convenient, but they can also erode sort of a richness of human relationships. No-transcript like we have to answer all these emails. We feel like we have to answer all these texts, and so what we're doing in making things more efficient is we're also putting it back on us to respond to a much broader array of things, and everything seems to become more and more urgent.
23:48
Now, say, for Christians. Borgman's framework really does challenge us to evaluate how technology shapes our daily lives. Are we using these tools in ways that deepen our relationships, foster gratitude, connect us to God and his creation, or are we allowing the devices to diminish our capacity for meaningful engagement with God and others, and I think by recovering sort of an art of presence, being fully engaged with people and tasks, we align more closely with God's intent for human flourishing. So the distinction also applies in our spiritual practices. Digital Bibles, devotional apps, are helpful, but they can sometimes reduce our engagement with scripture to sort of passive consumption. You know the verse of the day that pulls up a Bible verse for you, the small, you know, pithy devotional that we're using. These don't necessarily guide us into God's word. Sometimes these sort of keep us out of God's word.
24:42
And so I'm not saying to give those things up necessarily. I'm suggesting that you recognize that these can be. They are like devices, they're convenient, they're easy, and I'm wondering, I guess what I would push you to is how much effort do you really need to put into your spiritual life? So that would be my sort of take on Borgman's insights, and I just encourage us to consider how to think about the convenience that a device brings versus the effort. That can be very formative for us. And again, I've talked about this in various other places. But what I would say is you know, as a personal trainer, when I was a personal trainer, I worked people out.
25:27
When I was a personal trainer, I'd work people out. I never brought a client in and said, okay, today what you're going to do is sit in the corner and watch me work out and think that that was going to have an impact on their fitness. It wasn't. If they wanted to get stronger, if they wanted to get bigger, if they wanted to lose weight, if they wanted, you know, whatever their fitness goals were, they couldn't just sit back and watch me passively. There had to be effort. Now, when you think about from an efficiency perspective and they're watching me move weights around it's very efficient for them. I'm doing all the work and they're watching me do it.
26:00
But when you think about it, the effort is actually part of the equation. The effort disburdening ourselves, as Borgman talks about it. It also involves this effort, and that effort is really crucial, I think, for us, as we're thinking about discipleship, as we're thinking about growing in our faith, but also just as we're thinking about taking care of our bodies and being in the world in general. We're not just supposed to be here to watch a series of automated processes do their thing. We have an effort, we have a task and we should be about that effort, and so that's my challenge is not to get rid of all the conveniences. I don't plan on getting rid of email, I don't plan on stopping using AI, for you know, for certain things. But I will say I do tend to curtail those practices. I stop myself, I try to restrain the practice and what I use these various technologies for. So I'm still putting forth an effort that is beneficial to me. It works back on me. What I give out, I get back in some interesting way.
27:06
So let's talk about the third paradigm Marshall McLuhan's Four Laws of Media. Mcluhan has these laws that he provided as part of his work and his understanding of the impact of technology, and so McLuhan suggests that every technology has these four effects. Number one enhancement. What does the technology amplify or improve? Notice that that doesn't necessarily have to be something good. It could be something bad. Necessarily have to be something good. It could be something bad. Amplification, and especially amplification, is not necessarily good. Improvement, we might argue, is necessarily good. But I would also say that improvement is value neutral. In other words, I can improve the ease which which we could shop online. Well, that has a certain ring of positivity to it, but the reality is that it can also go overboard, and so this amplification, I actually think, is more what he's trying to get at.
28:04
What does the technology amplify? How does it amplify, let's say, from a theological perspective, our tendencies toward greed and covetousness? How would it amplify our tendencies to get by with things in a more anonymous fashion? How would it amplify things to, instead of being quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger? How would it amplify our tendency to be slow to listen, quick to speak and slow to anger? How would it amplify our tendency to be slow to listen, quick to speak and quick to anger? So that's enhancement Obsolescence.
28:40
What does the technology render unnecessary? And I think this goes back to that sort of device paradigm that Borgman's talking about a little bit Because as we decide to automate certain things and we create these commodities, these efficiencies that are easy, we are essentially eliminating other things. We don't need them anymore. I think this is the tension that many content creators, many scholars, many folks in what we might usually call knowledge industries are feeling about artificial intelligence is that artificial intelligence, at least at some point in the future, will have the effect of rendering many of those knowledge workers unnecessary? We see the same thing with robotics and artificial intelligence and factory workers and those kind of things. At what point will they be rendered unnecessary? And so this idea of obsolescence is that technology does tend to render things unnecessary.
29:41
Retrieval what older practice or value does the technology bring back? So this one's kind of interesting. So what older practice or value does the technology bring back? So the idea here is that there's really nothing new underneath the sun, right, if you think about social media. What is social media? Social media is a large gathering where people are having a discussion. Well, those have been around, and so social media makes those more frequent, it amplifies it. But it's really just a reiteration of this process, and we could say that for a whole host of other technologies. They're constantly bringing something back. They're trying to make it better, but they're bringing something back that used to be there anyway.
30:30
Reversal what intended negative effects emerge when the technology is overused and I think that's really crucial and a great question from McLuhan when it's overused, when it's used beyond the boundaries that are helpful, used when it's used beyond the boundaries that are helpful, when this technology begins to overtake as opposed to simply assist, and that's a real crucial question. So, again, when we look at something like the difference between MySpace and Facebook right, if any of you are old enough to remember, myspace never really took off. It was an interesting little web platform, it was kind of cool, but it really never reached the zenith that Facebook has. And I think that these are things that we have to sort of step back from and take a look and ask what are the unintended negative effects? Here, social media is the easiest one to pick on because you have the data to demonstrate that there are actual negative effects that have come across. Those are, I think, largely unintended negative effects, but the fact that they're unintended doesn't make them any less negative. So let's apply all these laws to an example like streaming services.
31:43
Streaming enhances our access to entertainment. It gives us 24-7 sort of access to anything we want to see. We no longer have to be there synchronously or in time. When I was a kid, if I wanted to watch a show and it came on at five o'clock, I needed to be there at five o'clock. I needed to be in front of a television at five o'clock because there's nowhere to record it. Now we don't have that. You can watch a show at any point in time across 24, seven. I mean it doesn't really matter, you can download it and have access to it whenever you'd like it. It obsolesces traditional media forms like DVDs. I think it retrieves the concept of on demand content from earlier technologies like TiVo, but it can also reverse into overconsumption or isolation when binge watching replaces real world interactions.
32:32
So McLuhan's framework really does invite us to think critically about how technology shapes our habits and values, and I think for Christians it's a tool for discernment, helping us ask whether our use of technology aligns with our call to love God and love others. Are we mindful of how technology enhances or detracts from our spiritual lives? Are we aware of what it replaces or distorts? And this framework can also help us reflect on our broader cultural engagement. How do we witness to Christ in a world shaped by ever-evolving media landscapes? Mcluhan's four laws remind us that, while technologies may change, our call to love and truth remains constant.
33:13
So let's talk about discernment and technology a little bit, building on the ideas we've discussed in previous episodes, but also as we've been looking through Genesis and particularly the Tower of Babel incident. I would say discernment is essential when engaging with technology and as Christians, our goal is to live in God's presence and grow closer to him, to glorify him in all that we're doing. Yet technology can either hinder or help that pursuit, depending on how we use it. And so my tendency is to see technology not as neutral in the sense that it has no effects, but as neutral in the sense that it isn't particularly moral in and of itself. It does require us to use it. But I think anytime we introduce a technology into our world, that technology has effects and in that sense it is not neutral. For example, prayer and meditation require stillness and focus, yet the constant notifications of our devices can pull us away from that sacred time with God. Similarly, while social media can connect us to others, it can also foster envy or distraction, which erodes our ability to love God and our neighbors fully.
34:21
I always go back to. Silence of the Lambs came out when I was in high school and I remember watching it If you've ever seen the show. There's an FBI agent named Clarice and she's interviewing this serial killer who's been captured and he's trying to help her find this other serial killer who is out, and they're trying to catch. What's driving this serial killer? How can she figure out who he is what's his motivation? And Hannibal Lecter, who is the serial killer who's locked up, says what do we covet? We covet first what we see every day, and that then leads this FBI agent, clarice, to his childhood home. She starts looking back into older murders and she eventually finds it.
35:04
But the idea of coveting what we see every day is really interesting when we think about something like Instagram or TikTok or Facebook, where we're actually able now not just appear into our neighbor's yard and look at their driveway and see the new car. We're not looking across the street or going to the gym and maybe seeing somebody who's really in shape. Now we're bringing this into our lives in a much more frequent, much more persistent, much more constant way because of the technology that we're using. So this is another one of those areas where I just don't know that we've really thought it all the way through what it is that we're doing to ourselves, but we've essentially opened ourselves up to a sense in which we could easily cultivate discontentment with what God has given us and begin to question how God allocates what he gives to others. In other words, god's given X to this person when he should have given it to me, so that's a component of what I think technology does to it.
36:11
Now I do think that technology technology can support our spiritual growth. I am not one that believes that we should just the christian community can stay away from technology. I think technology will be crucial in accomplishing our mission as Christians, and so I think there's apps that provide the daily scripture readings, there are reminders to pray, there's tools for journaling, there's podcasting, there's artificial intelligence. There's all of these different things. I just think we need to ask ourselves is this tool helping me to attend to God's presence, or am I paying more attention to the tool than I am to God? Am I enamored with the technology? Is it drawing me away from looking at the Lord, or am I actually growing closer to God through it? So discernment requires reflection on how each act shapes our relationship with God. Are we moving toward him or drifting away? So discernment also is going to require accountability, and I think sharing our struggles and decisions with trusted friends or mentors can help us stay on track, and together we can encourage one another to use technology in ways that glorify God and his kingdom.
37:15
So, as we wrap up, let's just consider some practical implications and questions to guide our engagement with technology? Say number one what are the potential unintended consequences of a given technology? I'd say number one what are the potential unintended consequences of a given technology, whether it's a new app or a major innovation? Take time to consider how it might impact your life, the lives of others, how we see the world, where God fits in. These things are not neutral. As I said, when they're put into the world, they are going to have an effect on the world, so we have to think these things through.
37:43
Number two does this technology encourage meaningful engagement or passive consumption? You know, evaluate whether it deepens your connections with others and with God. Are these the sort of interactions you want to have? I'm very seldom inclined to look at the comments that I see on websites. If I write a web article, the comments can range from really affirming which is great, and I love those to uber critical, which is a little harder to read, to completely off base and having nothing to do with what I just wrote, and so I tend not to read a lot of the comments. If I'm going to interact with people, I like to interact with people who I know and I like to get their feedback on my work. I like them to critically engage with me, and so that's one of those things where, you know, does this deepen our connection with others? I'm not sure reading someone's online content actually does that, and I think in most cases it can create more separation between us and others. So that's just one of those things that, as an example, I try to avoid.
38:49
Number three, I think we need to ask yourself how does this technology shape my values and habits? You know? Reflect on whether it fosters gratitude and patience and love and kindness. Does it help keep you calm, you know, or does it cultivate distraction and patience and self-centeredness? I mean, I gesture toward James calm, you know or does it cultivate distraction and patience and self-centeredness? I mean, I gesture toward James too. You know this idea of being slow to quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger, but I think most of the time, social media is pushing us to do the opposite.
39:17
This technology is forcing us into something different. We could look at all of the efficiency technologies, our referenced email. Are these things really helping us to slow the cadence of our life down such that we have sufficient attention for God and for others, or is this technology driving our attention toward it so that we become less presence in other people's lives? Number four am I using this technology to glorify God? Ultimately, our use of technology should reflect our commitment to God's purposes and our love for him and others. Now we can think through some really pernicious uses of technology, like pornography use and those kind of things, and obviously those aren't in keeping with glorifying God. But I think we also need to think through some of the more what might be construed, as you know, amoral, you know sort of not really good or bad uses of technology.
40:10
And I go back to the story of Martha and Mary. In Martha, martha is distracted by serving. Serving is not inherently evil activity. I mean, she's not in the other room offering sacrifices to idols or something. She's just trying to provide some hospitality, as would have been keeping with the times, and so this distracts her, however, from the good portion, from sitting at Jesus's feet. And so these technologies don't have to be. It doesn't have to be something evil we're doing with them. It can just be that it's taking our attention from being centered right on Christ to being centered on something else.
40:48
How am I modeling? Why is technology used for others? This is number five Whether in our families, our workplace, our communities. Our approach to technology can serve as an example of thoughtful and faithful living. So, end of the day, human capacity is a gift, but it's a gift that must be stewarded wisely, and by approaching technology with discernment, humility and a commitment to God's will, we can ensure that our innovations serve his purposes rather than serving our own. So thanks for joining me for this first episode in our series on technology in the Christian life. Today we've explored the idea of human capacity, the importance of asking not just can we, but should we, and in our next episode we'll dive a little deeper into how technology influences our relationships and spiritual practices. If you found this discussion helpful, please share it with your friends, leave a review, subscribe to the show. Your feedback's invaluable as we continue exploring these important topics. And until next time, take care, stay grounded in God's word and we'll see you on the next episode of PREPPED.
41:46 - Speaker 2 (None)
Thanks for tuning into PREPPED. If today's episode helped you view the world through a God-centered lens, be sure to hit subscribe so you're always prepared for what comes next. Don't forget to rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more believers eager to live out God's story. Share this episode with a friend, family member or loved one, and together let's keep challenging the world's narratives. Until next time, stay grounded, stay inspired and continue living out God's plan. See you soon on our next episode of PREPPED.
So discernment requires reflection on how each act shapes our relationship with God. Are we moving toward Him or drifting away? Discernment also is going to require accountability, and I think sharing our struggles and decisions with trusted friends or mentors can help us stay on track and together we can encourage one another to use technology in ways that glorify God and His kingdom.
00:19 - Speaker 2 (None)
Welcome to PREPPED, the podcast that equips you to live out God's story, not the world's story. Hosted by James Spencer, phd, each episode bridges the gap between academic insights and everyday life, preparing you to understand the Word of God and put it into practice. Whether you're diving into biblical studies, looking for ministry guidance or aiming to deepen your faith, PREPPED empowers you to think biblically and theologically in a world that encourages you not to Ready to get PREPPED. Subscribe now and transform the way you bring God's story into the world.
00:54 - James Spencer (Host)
Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of PREPPED. I'm Dr James Spencer. This is where we're going to explore biblical and theological topics, in a way to speak directly to the challenges and opportunities of today, and in this episode we're actually not going to be talking about Genesis 14. I said at the end of last episode that we're moving into Genesis 14. I misspoke there. I had forgotten that there were a few episodes that we were going to do before Genesis 14. And so today what we're going to do is sort of piggyback off of the Tower and Babel narrative, where we talked a little bit about the unrestrained and unguided development and use of human capacity, and so we're going to be talking about technology and the Christian life for a couple of episodes.
01:33
And I think this is important because there's very few times in the Bible where we can actually jump in and look at something that is technological. There are obviously, you know, the development of different sorts of weaponry and there's, you know the development of different sorts of weaponry. There's the you know, different ages, where we have the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, and so there are technologies developed from a warfare perspective, but there isn't a lot of philosophical conversation around technology and I think the Tower of Babel narrative is probably one of those that gets the closest to talking philosophically and theologically about how we should think about technology, how we should think about human capacity and how we should think about exercising it. So, as Christians, we're called to discern and to live wisely in a rapidly advancing world, and technology often enhances our lives. Obviously, I'm not shy about technology. I'm putting a video out, I'm doing a podcast. You know I use technology an awful lot, I use artificial intelligence an awful lot, and so I am not opposed to technology. But I do think that one of the crucial aspects we need to understand is how are we thinking about technology, about technology? Because the way we're thinking about technology is ultimately going to involve or shift the way that we think about technology, the way we discern how to use that technology in our lives.
02:53
So I want to just frame this discussion and I want to draw on several paradigms. The first is Nassim Taleb's concept of iantrogenics, this sort of idea of when an intervention actually has detrimental effects and he uses it in terms of it actually came out of. I believe its origins were found in medicine, when people were trying to treat various diseases or disease states, and in doing so they actually ended up harming people more than helping people. So that's the first sort of paradigm. The second one is Albert Borgman's distinction between things and devices. He does this in his book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life Contemporary Culture, I believe.
03:35
And then finally, marshall McLuhan's Four Laws of Media, and these are really interesting. I think they offer some really clear questions. I actually talk about them with another guest on the Thinking Christian podcast, which I will include in the show notes after that launches. Each of those offers a unique lens, I think, through which we can evaluate how to engage with technology, and it just gives us a nice framework. So in the Tower of Babel narrative you recall from the last episode all I was saying was that the Tower of Babel narrative involves this idea of ignorance. The people were ignorant of who God was, what God wanted, how they were to relate to him, and that ignorance then allowed them to see their human capacities as something that would allow them to be independent of God as opposed to dependent on God. It cultivated self-reliance as opposed to dependence, and so these paradigms are intended to sort of help us understand how we might think through that. How do you? You know it's nice to say, okay, you're supposed to be dependent on God, not independent from God, but then there's the practical aspect. Okay, james, great, you're saying that, but what does it actually mean? And so that's where we're going to kind of go a little bit today. If you're enjoying these discussions, please I would just suggest that you share the podcast, share the videos, leave a review. Your support helps spread these conversations and equips others to think critically about their faith in the modern world.
05:03
So let's dive in and explore how human capacity, when misaligned with God's purposes, can lead us away from true flourishing. So the first one I want to talk about is just the gift and challenge of human capacity. Human capacity is one of God's greatest gifts. From the beginning, we see humans created in the image of God, tasked with cultivating and stewarding creation and our ability to create, innovate, problem solve. I think these are reflective of our creative nature, the way that God created us. But this capacity also comes with responsibility, and it's supposed to be exercised within relationship, and so the Tower of Babel narrative really draws us back there. What's our responsibility? Well, our responsibility is primarily to be enhancing and extending the glory of God. It's to be working with God's creation in such a way that God's glory is extended throughout that creation.
05:57
I'll be doing some more episodes on this later and maybe even doing some writing on it, but for right now what I would say is that the and if you go back and listen to some of the other PREPPED episodes, you'll find this as well but the idea is that the garden was only a small part of the world, and so what God is asking the human couple to do initially, in multiplying, filling the world and subduing it, is he's asking them to extend the precincts of the garden. And as they extend the precincts of the garden, as they have children, as those children then follow God and experience life in God's presence, then that glorification of God extends all over the world. And so what we're supposed to be, that's what we're supposed to be doing, that's the responsibility we're always supposed to be pointing to and glorifying God. But I would also say that it comes in relationship. So we're incapable of really doing that, of pointing to and glorifying God, if we're not in a right relationship with him.
06:53
And I know we talk a lot about personal relationship in evangelicalism. When I was saved, it was all about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I don't deny that. I think that's very true, but that's not what I'm talking about exactly. So we are situated or positioned in a way we have a posture toward God that is appropriate to us being dependent on him and us actually reflecting out that glory from him. So I'm not talking about that personal relationship necessarily, but maybe the nature of that relationship, the way that we act out that relationship, is more what I have in mind here. So the Tower of Babel narrative again just to sort of revisit last time is this great story where we see human efforts that are unguided and unrestrained and they lead the people away from God rather than toward him.
07:44
And I think that tension between the potential for good and the risk of harm is really evident in the realm of technology. When we are exercising our human capacity in the area of technology, we are putting ourselves to some degree at risk. Nick Bostroms, who is a philosophically, he is a transhumanist, which transhumanism is a really sort of odd and interesting paradigm for thinking through what we can and should be able to do with our bodies. It's not something that I agree with and so, again, I've done other writing and different episodes on that and I'll link those in the show description. But I bring Nick Bostrom up not because I agree with his philosophy but because he wrote a paper called the Vulnerable World Hypothesis. And the Vulnerable World Hypothesis just suggests that we've not experienced a culture killing or a civilization ending sort of technology, not because we're so careful and discerning in the sort of technologies that we build. His analysis is that we've just gotten lucky, and so his paper is really compelling.
08:52
Actually, and I think it's a really important piece to remind us that many times when we're messing around with technology, we don't really understand what we're messing with. We know how to manipulate the world, put the pieces together, build this or that, but we don't always understand how the world is going to, let's say, respond once those pieces are built. We don't understand how those things fit together, and it's because we aren't starting from an understanding of the world. We're starting from a position of how do we manipulate this or that within the world. We're starting from a position of how do we manipulate this or that within the world. If we start with an understanding of the world, an understanding of the world has to involve our relationship with God. It has to entail a right relationship with the triune God.
09:35
Now we have a different basis from which we can understand and implement technology and we're going to see a little bit better, I think, the dangers that some certain technologies pose. And the way I usually think about it is we'll be able to reap the benefits of those technologies while mitigating against their downsides. About technology, I don't know it's exactly the right way, but I think it's really helped me not to fall into a totally positive or totally negative approach. I think that what we're always trying to do is we're trying to say, okay, this technology is going to bring a certain set of benefits and we would like to have those benefits, but the reality is that it also could have some really significant downsides. I think part of our problem has been in implementing social media and implementing even AI, even things like mass transportation. We've seen the benefits, we've recognized what we want to do, but we haven't really thought about what these things are going to push out of our lives, not eliminate totally. It's not as if we couldn't make those choices. The exact same choices we were making prior to a technology, we could make after a technology, but we don't reckon with the way that it tends to get us to eliminate those practices that were really meaningful to us prior to the onset of that technology. And so that's what I mean when I say that we want to reap the benefits while mitigating the downside. So something to think about.
11:15
I'll just give an example. You know, if we think about the difference, I always go back to the show Little House on the Prairie right, because Little House on the Prairie, the church and the schoolhouse are the same place. You have a fairly isolated town where people are neighborly to one another. Everybody kind of knows one another. Yes, they have their problems, but ultimately there's a social network there, and I use that phrase intentionally. There's a social network that's created within that community where people are held responsible for what they're doing. They're expected to do certain things. When someone departs from a norm, that's recognized as a problem. And it's very difficult to escape that community, and it's because it's localized.
11:58
Travel was just much more difficult. And you see the various episodes. If you ever watch Little House on the Prairie, they tend to go to a city every once in a while. I think it was Mankato, but I won't, I wouldn't swear to that. But they go to the city and the expectations are completely different. These people are completely fish out of water and as the community, you know, in those cities grew, there were more and more problems and very different sorts of problems. You know, you have brawls at the bar, you have, you know, all of the sort of trappings of life that come along with being in the city. And so if we think about just that idea of not really, you know, travel being difficult, travel being expensive, hard to get from one place to another, yes, that creates real hardships, you know. I can remember watching episodes of that show where you know the snow is so high they have to, you know, tie a rope from the door of the house to the door of the barn to go care for the animals and those kind of things. Those are areas where you kind of sit back and you go, wow, technology could really have helped. You know episodes where people get sick and then the medicine just isn't there to help them get better. Again, that's a great place where technology can kind of plug in and help.
13:12
But if you think about the onset of something like mass transit, where it's easy for us to travel, and you think about that, the accountability and the responsibility that was cultivated within a community that really couldn't escape one another easily, you start to recognize, maybe, something that we're losing. So as we think about you know, I think about going to my church. I'm about five minutes away from my church building. But let's say I'm going to church and they decide that something I've said on the podcast, something I've said I've written in public, or something like that, they just disagree with it. And so they want to have a conversation with me about that. They want to talk about my responsibility to the congregation. They want to talk to me about what sort of accountability I need to have to the congregation of which I'm a part. And let's say I don't want to have that conversation. Let's say I just want to say listen, I do what I do, it's my job, it's my life, it's my thoughts. I don't need any of this oversight. This is ridiculous.
14:12
And so my family and I decide to go 20 minutes in the other direction to a different church, where they don't know me of mass transportation and it's created these different dynamics where there's a whole host of different reasons that we don't have the same sort of community that you see pictured in the little house on the prairie right. You just don't see it because we can all go different directions. Even the people at my church right now, there are some that are 20 minutes in the opposite direction from me, and so we don't live next to each other, and I think that these are things that we've with technology, with technology expansion. It's not that I'm saying mass transit is bad I don't want to go back to riding horses but what I would like to highlight is that we've got an accountability problem, we've got a responsibility problem, we've got a community problem, and we didn't really think through how mass transit was going to change that. And because we didn't think about that, we are struggling, I think, to reproduce that in an era where people can drive 20, 30, 40 minutes, go to church and not necessarily necessarily be near anyone within their sort of ecosystem, and so there's a way for us to think about technology where we're reaping all these benefits, and then there's a way for us to think about technology where we want to avoid the downsides of that technology. So, as we go through these paradigms, as we try to think these paradigms through Taleb Borgman and then Marshall McLuhan, I just want you to keep that in mind. That's sort of the framework.
15:52
I'm approaching this from Not trying to be a Luddite, not trying to say you know, all technology should go away and we should go back to the dark ages or whatever. That's not it. I don't really think that's realistic, nor do I think it's what we should be assuming the Bible teaches. I don't think that's quite it. And so what always we need to do is root ourselves back in that dependence of God, root ourselves back in that mission of extending God's glory around the world, and then, from that position, asking ourselves how does technology fit into this? So let me start by just outlining a little bit about what Nassim Taleb says about these issues, and then we'll go from there.
16:37
So, nassim Taleb, he introduces this concept of antigenics in his work on risk and uncertainty. I'm more familiar with it from his book Anti-Fragile, but I think he addresses it in other works as well. The term comes from medicine and it refers to harm caused by the healer, for instance when a treatment unintentionally worsens a patient's condition. So Taleb extends this idea to other areas of life and he highlights how interventions actually intended to help can sometimes cause harm. And, in the context of technology, androgenics reminds us to approach innovation with caution.
17:12
Many technologies are created with good intentions, but we have unintended consequences around them. Social media, for instance, was designed to connect people, yet it's also contributed to mental health struggles, polarization, misinformation. I've talked about this on my other podcast, thinking Christian, and there's actually a Surgeon General's warning. He put out a parental advisory on social media, and so I'll link that episode in this episode description. But I'd encourage you to take a look at that.
17:42
It's a really interesting phenomenon because we've jumped into social media and it does do good things, but the reality is that we're all living with this downside as well, and so you know we've got these different problems that these technologies have created that we didn't foresee and that we're not really going to. You know, step away from the technology in order to solve. We're going to try to solve them alongside the technology. So I think the rise of artificial intelligence has sort of improved efficiency in countless industries, but it's also raising ethical concerns about privacy and bias and job displacement, and so, as we've jumped into artificial intelligence, as good and as helpful as it can be, I would also say that we're not paying enough attention to some of the potential negative consequences that we are probably going to suffer from the iantrogenics of the situation or, as another person has taught us, called the revenge effects of these technologies.
18:41
Now, the reason I like Taleb's framework is that it does encourage us to weigh the risks and benefits of technological advancements, and it asks us whether these solutions will create maybe inadvertently worse problems than they aim to solve. And I think, for Christians, the principle is really something that calls us back to humility and it challenges us to recognize the limits of human knowledge and depend on God's wisdom as we navigate complex decisions. Now, the way I would really want to phrase this and I want to get this as precise as possible is just this Christians, if we are really supposed to point to and glorify God in everything that we do and we're always doing that, we're always trying to extend God's glory we have to start there. We can't start by asking ourselves whether a technology has some sort of pragmatic benefit. We have to ask ourselves does this technology allow us to, or push us to become less dependent on God and thus to shift our position from glorifying God in all that we do to stepping away from him and maybe not glorifying him in the way that we should? And so that idea of being rooted in that pointing to and glorifying God is actually, I think, a really crucial idea. So that's where I would sort of begin thinking that this principle of the antregetics really does challenge us to consider how our use of technology might inadvertently harm ourselves or others, and it invites us to pause and reflect on the potential consequences of our actions, ensuring that our choices are guided by wisdom and a commitment to love God and love our neighbor. So discernment and foresight rooted in prayer, biblical reflection, are essential to navigating these challenges faithfully. I would also just say that you know, I really love Romans 14 and 15, where Paul is talking about the relationship between the weak and the strong, and so we have to take care and really recognize that sometimes, when we're using these technologies, we are inadvertently harming others within the community, we're hindering someone from moving forward in their faith in Christ, and so we can think through that grid as well.
20:57
Now let's talk a little bit about Albert Borgman's distinction between things and devices. So this distinction is actually really interesting and I think it offers a valuable perspective. Again, it comes from his book Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, and Borgman argues that things are these tangible objects that require engagement and skill. The example he uses in the book is like a wood-burning fireplace it provides warmth and it also demands effort to maintain, and so you have to go out and cut the wood. Maybe it's a father and a son or a father and a daughter who go out and they're going to cut this wood, and the father's going to show the child how to do this. It's going to help the child carry this wood back, and when they get back, he's going to show the. You know he's going to show the child how to light the fire. There's a social aspect to things that require not only effort, but allow for social interaction, and so that's what a thing is for Borgman.
21:56
Devices, on the other hand, are technologies designed to deliver the outcomes with more of a minimal effort. It isn't hard to show someone how to use a central heating and cooling system that provides warmth at the push of a button. So I have an app for that. Now you can. You know I could turn my heat up. My wife usually does this. She turns the heat up and eventually I'll notice that it's hot, but it's not something we do together. It's not like she's asking me to put wood on the fire. She's just going in and changing the app and nobody would necessarily know until it got hot enough in the house for us to be uncomfortable.
22:32
Now, while devices do make life easier, borgman is really warning us that they can also distance us from meaningful engagement with the world and with each other. A device paradigm, as he calls it, prioritizes convenience over connection and efficiency over experience. So consider how smartphones, for instance, have replaced face-to-face conversations with text messages or social media interactions. I would say even how smartphones have displaced phone interactions with text messages and social media interactions. Those tools are convenient, but they can also erode sort of a richness of human relationships. No-transcript like we have to answer all these emails. We feel like we have to answer all these texts, and so what we're doing in making things more efficient is we're also putting it back on us to respond to a much broader array of things, and everything seems to become more and more urgent.
23:48
Now, say, for Christians. Borgman's framework really does challenge us to evaluate how technology shapes our daily lives. Are we using these tools in ways that deepen our relationships, foster gratitude, connect us to God and his creation, or are we allowing the devices to diminish our capacity for meaningful engagement with God and others, and I think by recovering sort of an art of presence, being fully engaged with people and tasks, we align more closely with God's intent for human flourishing. So the distinction also applies in our spiritual practices. Digital Bibles, devotional apps, are helpful, but they can sometimes reduce our engagement with scripture to sort of passive consumption. You know the verse of the day that pulls up a Bible verse for you, the small, you know, pithy devotional that we're using. These don't necessarily guide us into God's word. Sometimes these sort of keep us out of God's word.
24:42
And so I'm not saying to give those things up necessarily. I'm suggesting that you recognize that these can be. They are like devices, they're convenient, they're easy, and I'm wondering, I guess what I would push you to is how much effort do you really need to put into your spiritual life? So that would be my sort of take on Borgman's insights, and I just encourage us to consider how to think about the convenience that a device brings versus the effort. That can be very formative for us. And again, I've talked about this in various other places. But what I would say is you know, as a personal trainer, when I was a personal trainer, I worked people out.
25:27
When I was a personal trainer, I'd work people out. I never brought a client in and said, okay, today what you're going to do is sit in the corner and watch me work out and think that that was going to have an impact on their fitness. It wasn't. If they wanted to get stronger, if they wanted to get bigger, if they wanted to lose weight, if they wanted, you know, whatever their fitness goals were, they couldn't just sit back and watch me passively. There had to be effort. Now, when you think about from an efficiency perspective and they're watching me move weights around it's very efficient for them. I'm doing all the work and they're watching me do it.
26:00
But when you think about it, the effort is actually part of the equation. The effort disburdening ourselves, as Borgman talks about it. It also involves this effort, and that effort is really crucial, I think, for us, as we're thinking about discipleship, as we're thinking about growing in our faith, but also just as we're thinking about taking care of our bodies and being in the world in general. We're not just supposed to be here to watch a series of automated processes do their thing. We have an effort, we have a task and we should be about that effort, and so that's my challenge is not to get rid of all the conveniences. I don't plan on getting rid of email, I don't plan on stopping using AI, for you know, for certain things. But I will say I do tend to curtail those practices. I stop myself, I try to restrain the practice and what I use these various technologies for. So I'm still putting forth an effort that is beneficial to me. It works back on me. What I give out, I get back in some interesting way.
27:06
So let's talk about the third paradigm Marshall McLuhan's Four Laws of Media. Mcluhan has these laws that he provided as part of his work and his understanding of the impact of technology, and so McLuhan suggests that every technology has these four effects. Number one enhancement. What does the technology amplify or improve? Notice that that doesn't necessarily have to be something good. It could be something bad. Necessarily have to be something good. It could be something bad. Amplification, and especially amplification, is not necessarily good. Improvement, we might argue, is necessarily good. But I would also say that improvement is value neutral. In other words, I can improve the ease which which we could shop online. Well, that has a certain ring of positivity to it, but the reality is that it can also go overboard, and so this amplification, I actually think, is more what he's trying to get at.
28:04
What does the technology amplify? How does it amplify, let's say, from a theological perspective, our tendencies toward greed and covetousness? How would it amplify our tendencies to get by with things in a more anonymous fashion? How would it amplify things to, instead of being quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger? How would it amplify our tendency to be slow to listen, quick to speak and slow to anger? How would it amplify our tendency to be slow to listen, quick to speak and quick to anger? So that's enhancement Obsolescence.
28:40
What does the technology render unnecessary? And I think this goes back to that sort of device paradigm that Borgman's talking about a little bit Because as we decide to automate certain things and we create these commodities, these efficiencies that are easy, we are essentially eliminating other things. We don't need them anymore. I think this is the tension that many content creators, many scholars, many folks in what we might usually call knowledge industries are feeling about artificial intelligence is that artificial intelligence, at least at some point in the future, will have the effect of rendering many of those knowledge workers unnecessary? We see the same thing with robotics and artificial intelligence and factory workers and those kind of things. At what point will they be rendered unnecessary? And so this idea of obsolescence is that technology does tend to render things unnecessary.
29:41
Retrieval what older practice or value does the technology bring back? So this one's kind of interesting. So what older practice or value does the technology bring back? So the idea here is that there's really nothing new underneath the sun, right, if you think about social media. What is social media? Social media is a large gathering where people are having a discussion. Well, those have been around, and so social media makes those more frequent, it amplifies it. But it's really just a reiteration of this process, and we could say that for a whole host of other technologies. They're constantly bringing something back. They're trying to make it better, but they're bringing something back that used to be there anyway.
30:30
Reversal what intended negative effects emerge when the technology is overused and I think that's really crucial and a great question from McLuhan when it's overused, when it's used beyond the boundaries that are helpful, used when it's used beyond the boundaries that are helpful, when this technology begins to overtake as opposed to simply assist, and that's a real crucial question. So, again, when we look at something like the difference between MySpace and Facebook right, if any of you are old enough to remember, myspace never really took off. It was an interesting little web platform, it was kind of cool, but it really never reached the zenith that Facebook has. And I think that these are things that we have to sort of step back from and take a look and ask what are the unintended negative effects? Here, social media is the easiest one to pick on because you have the data to demonstrate that there are actual negative effects that have come across. Those are, I think, largely unintended negative effects, but the fact that they're unintended doesn't make them any less negative. So let's apply all these laws to an example like streaming services.
31:43
Streaming enhances our access to entertainment. It gives us 24-7 sort of access to anything we want to see. We no longer have to be there synchronously or in time. When I was a kid, if I wanted to watch a show and it came on at five o'clock, I needed to be there at five o'clock. I needed to be in front of a television at five o'clock because there's nowhere to record it. Now we don't have that. You can watch a show at any point in time across 24, seven. I mean it doesn't really matter, you can download it and have access to it whenever you'd like it. It obsolesces traditional media forms like DVDs. I think it retrieves the concept of on demand content from earlier technologies like TiVo, but it can also reverse into overconsumption or isolation when binge watching replaces real world interactions.
32:32
So McLuhan's framework really does invite us to think critically about how technology shapes our habits and values, and I think for Christians it's a tool for discernment, helping us ask whether our use of technology aligns with our call to love God and love others. Are we mindful of how technology enhances or detracts from our spiritual lives? Are we aware of what it replaces or distorts? And this framework can also help us reflect on our broader cultural engagement. How do we witness to Christ in a world shaped by ever-evolving media landscapes? Mcluhan's four laws remind us that, while technologies may change, our call to love and truth remains constant.
33:13
So let's talk about discernment and technology a little bit, building on the ideas we've discussed in previous episodes, but also as we've been looking through Genesis and particularly the Tower of Babel incident. I would say discernment is essential when engaging with technology and as Christians, our goal is to live in God's presence and grow closer to him, to glorify him in all that we're doing. Yet technology can either hinder or help that pursuit, depending on how we use it. And so my tendency is to see technology not as neutral in the sense that it has no effects, but as neutral in the sense that it isn't particularly moral in and of itself. It does require us to use it. But I think anytime we introduce a technology into our world, that technology has effects and in that sense it is not neutral. For example, prayer and meditation require stillness and focus, yet the constant notifications of our devices can pull us away from that sacred time with God. Similarly, while social media can connect us to others, it can also foster envy or distraction, which erodes our ability to love God and our neighbors fully.
34:21
I always go back to. Silence of the Lambs came out when I was in high school and I remember watching it If you've ever seen the show. There's an FBI agent named Clarice and she's interviewing this serial killer who's been captured and he's trying to help her find this other serial killer who is out, and they're trying to catch. What's driving this serial killer? How can she figure out who he is what's his motivation? And Hannibal Lecter, who is the serial killer who's locked up, says what do we covet? We covet first what we see every day, and that then leads this FBI agent, clarice, to his childhood home. She starts looking back into older murders and she eventually finds it.
35:04
But the idea of coveting what we see every day is really interesting when we think about something like Instagram or TikTok or Facebook, where we're actually able now not just appear into our neighbor's yard and look at their driveway and see the new car. We're not looking across the street or going to the gym and maybe seeing somebody who's really in shape. Now we're bringing this into our lives in a much more frequent, much more persistent, much more constant way because of the technology that we're using. So this is another one of those areas where I just don't know that we've really thought it all the way through what it is that we're doing to ourselves, but we've essentially opened ourselves up to a sense in which we could easily cultivate discontentment with what God has given us and begin to question how God allocates what he gives to others. In other words, god's given X to this person when he should have given it to me, so that's a component of what I think technology does to it.
36:11
Now I do think that technology technology can support our spiritual growth. I am not one that believes that we should just the christian community can stay away from technology. I think technology will be crucial in accomplishing our mission as Christians, and so I think there's apps that provide the daily scripture readings, there are reminders to pray, there's tools for journaling, there's podcasting, there's artificial intelligence. There's all of these different things. I just think we need to ask ourselves is this tool helping me to attend to God's presence, or am I paying more attention to the tool than I am to God? Am I enamored with the technology? Is it drawing me away from looking at the Lord, or am I actually growing closer to God through it? So discernment requires reflection on how each act shapes our relationship with God. Are we moving toward him or drifting away? So discernment also is going to require accountability, and I think sharing our struggles and decisions with trusted friends or mentors can help us stay on track, and together we can encourage one another to use technology in ways that glorify God and his kingdom.
37:15
So, as we wrap up, let's just consider some practical implications and questions to guide our engagement with technology? Say number one what are the potential unintended consequences of a given technology? I'd say number one what are the potential unintended consequences of a given technology, whether it's a new app or a major innovation? Take time to consider how it might impact your life, the lives of others, how we see the world, where God fits in. These things are not neutral. As I said, when they're put into the world, they are going to have an effect on the world, so we have to think these things through.
37:43
Number two does this technology encourage meaningful engagement or passive consumption? You know, evaluate whether it deepens your connections with others and with God. Are these the sort of interactions you want to have? I'm very seldom inclined to look at the comments that I see on websites. If I write a web article, the comments can range from really affirming which is great, and I love those to uber critical, which is a little harder to read, to completely off base and having nothing to do with what I just wrote, and so I tend not to read a lot of the comments. If I'm going to interact with people, I like to interact with people who I know and I like to get their feedback on my work. I like them to critically engage with me, and so that's one of those things where, you know, does this deepen our connection with others? I'm not sure reading someone's online content actually does that, and I think in most cases it can create more separation between us and others. So that's just one of those things that, as an example, I try to avoid.
38:49
Number three, I think we need to ask yourself how does this technology shape my values and habits? You know? Reflect on whether it fosters gratitude and patience and love and kindness. Does it help keep you calm, you know, or does it cultivate distraction and patience and self-centeredness? I mean, I gesture toward James calm, you know or does it cultivate distraction and patience and self-centeredness? I mean, I gesture toward James too. You know this idea of being slow to quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to anger, but I think most of the time, social media is pushing us to do the opposite.
39:17
This technology is forcing us into something different. We could look at all of the efficiency technologies, our referenced email. Are these things really helping us to slow the cadence of our life down such that we have sufficient attention for God and for others, or is this technology driving our attention toward it so that we become less presence in other people's lives? Number four am I using this technology to glorify God? Ultimately, our use of technology should reflect our commitment to God's purposes and our love for him and others. Now we can think through some really pernicious uses of technology, like pornography use and those kind of things, and obviously those aren't in keeping with glorifying God. But I think we also need to think through some of the more what might be construed, as you know, amoral, you know sort of not really good or bad uses of technology.
40:10
And I go back to the story of Martha and Mary. In Martha, martha is distracted by serving. Serving is not inherently evil activity. I mean, she's not in the other room offering sacrifices to idols or something. She's just trying to provide some hospitality, as would have been keeping with the times, and so this distracts her, however, from the good portion, from sitting at Jesus's feet. And so these technologies don't have to be. It doesn't have to be something evil we're doing with them. It can just be that it's taking our attention from being centered right on Christ to being centered on something else.
40:48
How am I modeling? Why is technology used for others? This is number five Whether in our families, our workplace, our communities. Our approach to technology can serve as an example of thoughtful and faithful living. So, end of the day, human capacity is a gift, but it's a gift that must be stewarded wisely, and by approaching technology with discernment, humility and a commitment to God's will, we can ensure that our innovations serve his purposes rather than serving our own. So thanks for joining me for this first episode in our series on technology in the Christian life. Today we've explored the idea of human capacity, the importance of asking not just can we, but should we, and in our next episode we'll dive a little deeper into how technology influences our relationships and spiritual practices. If you found this discussion helpful, please share it with your friends, leave a review, subscribe to the show. Your feedback's invaluable as we continue exploring these important topics. And until next time, take care, stay grounded in God's word and we'll see you on the next episode of PREPPED.
41:46 - Speaker 2 (None)
Thanks for tuning into PREPPED. If today's episode helped you view the world through a God-centered lens, be sure to hit subscribe so you're always prepared for what comes next. Don't forget to rate and review us on your preferred podcast platform. Your feedback helps us reach more believers eager to live out God's story. Share this episode with a friend, family member or loved one, and together let's keep challenging the world's narratives. Until next time, stay grounded, stay inspired and continue living out God's plan. See you soon on our next episode of PREPPED.
