Christians and Technology, Part 2: Misunderstanding Progress

00:00 - James Spencer (Host)
When we talk about imitating Christ, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, 1,. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ. And so what I think Paul is really saying there is that he's not saying hey, imitate me, look at me, do what I'm doing. What he's saying is imitate me in so much as I imitate Christ.

00:19 - Speaker 2 (None)
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00:52 - James Spencer (Host)
Hey everyone welcome to this episode of the PREPPED podcast. We're continuing on our series on technology in the Christian life. In the first episode, we discussed human capacity, how our ability to innovate and create must be guided by discernment and God's purposes, and today we're going to turn our attention to the idea of progress. We're going to discuss what we really mean by progress. Is it simply achieving efficiency or innovation? I think for Christians, progress has to have a deeper meaning. You know, as we read in the Westminster Catechism, that the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. And if our advancements aren't moving us closer to that goal, I'm not sure we can really call them progress. And so in this episode we're going to explore the nature of progress from a biblical and theological perspective and examine how imitation and discernment really shape our ability to evaluate what honors God. We're going to dive into Rene Girard's concept of mimetic desire and discuss how it connects to the Christian call to imitate Christ. If you've been enjoying this series, or just PREPPED in general, please consider sharing it with others or leaving a review. Your engagement helps us explore these vital topics together. Let's dive in and reflect on what true progress looks like through the lens of faith. So, from a Christian perspective, progress isn't about mere advancement in technology or societal achievements. Instead, it's about alignment with God's purposes. The chief end of man to glorify God and enjoy him forever provides this framework for everything that we do to evaluate whether we are progressing or not. If what we're pursuing doesn't move us closer to understanding, worshiping and enjoying God, it falls short of true progress.

02:37
Biblically, progress is often framed as spiritual growth. So Philippians 3, 13 through 14 speaks of pressing on toward the goal of knowing Christ, emphasizing transformation over achievement. Similarly, in Matthew 6, 33, this passage reminds us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, prioritizing eternal goals above all else and really, I think, nesting everything else within those goals. It isn't as if at one point, we can say well, now I've sought the kingdom of God and his righteousness, I've done that enough for the day, now I can set that aside and do something else. That's not really how it works, and so, by using the term prioritizing, that's not what I'm suggesting. What I'm suggesting is that these always are a priority, that everything else that we do is immersed within them, so that they shape and adjust and reorient all of our actions within our lives, and I think that when we think about progress from these perspectives, it begins to shift how we think about it. It shifts our focus from what we accomplish to how our accomplishments align with God's purposes. How is it that we, in our progress or in our actions, how is it that we ultimately point to and glorify the triune God?

04:00
Now, in the Old Testament, we also see a vision of progress in the formation of God's people. Israel's journey to the promised land was not merely about acquiring territory, but about becoming a people who reflected God's glory and God's justice. Likewise, the New Testament church was called to embody Christ's kingdom on earth, demonstrating his love and truth in every aspect of life. However, when progress becomes untethered from God's programs, from God's mission that he's given us, it risks becoming destructive. Technology, for example, can enhance our lives but also distract us from God, and I think innovations that prioritize convenience or efficiency may lead us away from the relational and communal aspects of life that God designed for our flourishing. So, without a clear understanding of what it means to glorify and enjoy God, our advancements can become hollow pursuits, leaving us spiritually impoverished despite material success.

05:00
I really like Augustine's concept of disordered loves, and I think it provides a valuable framework for understanding misguided progress as well. Disordered loves essentially occur when we prioritize lesser goods over God, or we try to make, let's say, you know, to go back to that concept of being immersed within. If you could imagine, you know, sort of being half in water and half in some other substance. It doesn't really work. What God is calling for is for our total devotion, and so the picture I like to use is a pie chart. If we were to look at a pie chart and we were to say, okay, divide this up into the different areas of your life, and I want you to give what you think God desires for us, I want you to draw that first. On the pie chart, is there really anything left for us to do anything else with?

05:52
And this idea of disordered loves is getting just to that point is that, if we were to do a pie chart with the various things that we're supposed to love and we start with God, there's no room left for anything else, because God isn't asking us to divide our time so that, with God, there's no room left for anything else, because God isn't asking us to divide our time so that he gets the lion's share. He's asking us to be fully and totally allegiant to him, fully loyal to him, and that full loyalty doesn't leave room for anything outside of that full loyalty. It is not saying that we can't love anything else outside of that full loyalty. It is not saying that we can't love anything else. It's saying that when we love other things, we do that on God's terms as opposed to our own. And so, when we think about this idea of misguided progress, part of the challenge that we're dealing with is that we are prioritizing or pulling in sharing time with God. These lesser goods. These lesser goods are sort of beginning to crowd out and take over some of what rightfully belongs to God, and so our affections start to become misaligned.

07:02
And in the context of technology, I think this can happen when our love for convenience or power or recognition takes precedence over our love for God and our neighbor. Social media is one of those prime examples. You know, social media is easy to pick on because it's been so publicized about the problems that it creates. But I, you know, I think we ought to be gracious to social media because it is designed to foster connection, which isn't a bad thing, but at the same time, it often creates envy and it often creates pride and division. And these platforms optimize for engagement, but the cost is pretty significant. There's fractured relationships, there's increased anxiety, there's diminished capacity for meaningful interaction. And this progress driven by disordered love, advancement without alignment to God's design for human flourishing becomes ultimately problematic for us.

08:00
I love Albert Borgman's distinction between things and devices. He says that things require skill and engagement. So he talks about a wood-burning stove. That demands tending and it invites community. If you think about the process of starting a fire, it requires someone to go out and cut the wood, it requires someone to stoke the fire. Actually, you know, put the wood into the fireplace and begin building that fire. And then, in a house with a wood-burning stove let's say it was the only thing that was going to heat the house you wouldn't only have that heat there, you'd have a family sort of nestled in around this fire spending time together, because that's where the warmth is. You may have cooked on that fireplace, and so it's providing you with more than just heat, it's also providing you with a means of feeding yourselves. And so these things in Borgman's language, they provide more than just one commodity, one thing it also draws people together. It gives them a place where their efforts can be combined and used together, and so this invitation to community is part of what it means to use things.

09:20
And his contrast is with devices, and he says that devices really do prioritize convenience and efficiency, but they do so at the expense of meaningful engagement, and so when we allow devices to dominate our lives, we risk losing the richness of relationship and experience that things provide. So if we contrast just that wood-burning stove with, let's say, an internet-enabled thermostat that many people have in their homes now and you can just turn the heat up with an app that does not provide that same sort of social, communal interaction, that a thing did, at most you're going to ask someone to turn the thermostat up, and once they do, it's sort of over. It's a one second problem, and also our centralized heating doesn't really provide us a place to cook. We have a separate oven or stove for that, and so the idea here isn't that devices are bad and things are good. That's not the idea.

10:23
The idea is that things provide something that devices don't, and that if we're going to call the progression or the movement from a thing to a device progress, we need to be really recognizing what we're giving away here. What we're losing in moving from a thing to a device and I think that's a really important way for us to think about this is that we tend to think that when we move to a device we're saving time. But in saving time it doesn't necessarily mean that we are spending more time on these social interactions that might actually matter to us. It may very well mean that we are saving time so that we can give ourselves away to endless productivity or something like that. So I think for Christians this distinction between things and devices, it really highlights the danger of pursuing progress that prioritizes convenience over connection to God, creation and community.

11:24
Reorning our loves is the antidote to that misalignment. Colossians 3.2 exhorts us to set our minds on the things above, not on earthly things. And that doesn't mean rejecting technology. I think what it means is critically evaluating its role in our lives. Are our advancements serving God's kingdom or are they reinforcing loves that pull us away from him, pull us away from others? By reflecting on our affections and aligning them with God's eternal purposes, we can ensure that progress fosters rather than hinders our spiritual growth.

12:00
Now, I think, another aspect of technology that we really ought to dive into is Rene Girard's concept of mimetic desire. And Girard really helps us understand the dynamics of imitation in shaping our desires and actions. So in his book Deceit, desire and the Novel, girard argues that desire is not purely individual but mediated, but mediated. He describes a triangular structure the subject, us, the object of desire, something out there that we want, whether that's money or a car or a house or whatever have you. It could be reputational, it could be a promotion. It didn't have to be a tangible good, but just something that we're aiming for. It can even be a virtue that we're aiming for, it can even be a virtue. And then the model or mediator whom we imitate, so someone else who embodies for us what we're looking for. And so he suggests that these three elements the subject, the object of desire and the model or mediator are all three in relation and our impulse toward the object of desire is ultimately an impulse really toward the one mediating that desire, or the mediator, the model.

13:12
So Girard illustrates this through Don Quixote. And Don Quixote was sort of a fictional knight. He was a little crazy. He's trying to go out and be a knight when he really wasn't a knight at all. But he's a fictional character. And Girard looks at this through the lens of the novel and he says okay, don Quixote is trying to imitate a gentleman called Amadis of Gaul, and Don Quixote wants to be as chivalrous as Amadis of Gaul. He believes that Amadis is the epitome of chivalry. And so Don Quixote's chivalry isn't self-generated, it's being modeled after his idealized version of Amadis. In other words, don Quixote is the subject, desires to be chivalrous and he sees Amadis as being the epitome of chivalry. And thus the model becomes the means by which Don Quixote evaluates whether or not he is sufficiently chivalrous or not. And, as Girard notes, the objects of Don Quixote's desire are determined by this model. So the dynamic reminds us that our desire and actions are often shaped by whom we choose to imitate.

14:24
It's a really interesting line in this in Rene Girard's work, where he talks about the disciple Don Quixote giving up his own desires. Setting aside his own desires. He no longer determines those for himself. They're all determined by Amadus. Because in adopting Amadis as the mediator or the model, don Quixote is now not choosing his own life. He is just now imitating Amadis. I think it's a really beautiful picture, but the idea is that the model or the mediator that we choose is crucial, because if we get that wrong, we may very well end up following after or pursuing objects of desire in ways that are inappropriate and elevating these good gifts that God has given us, perhaps to heights where they shouldn't be elevated. And I think this is where actually Pierre Bourdieu excuse me, his concept of habitus actually intersects with Gerard's insight. So habitus refers to this sort of set of dispositions that we develop based on competitive fields we inhabit.

15:37
For example, an aspiring athlete might emulate successful figures in their sport, adopting behaviors and strategies that align with the norms of that field. You often see this with. When I was growing up as a kid, michael Jordan right, you know there may have been kids practicing, you know, reverse layups and trick shots and, you know, try to do hang time in their backyards for a really long time before Michael Jordan. But after Michael Jordan, everybody was doing it. He, you know, imitating Michael Jordan became the name of the game and there was even a full campaign. I think it was Gatorade I want to be like Mike. And the idea was that people wanted to emulate what he had. They wanted to win like he won. They wanted to shoot like he shot. They wanted to play like he played, and so he became, for many people who are interested in basketball, this model that they wanted to imitate. They wanted to be like Michael Jordan, and so that's sort of the idea and these imitations, they shape their identity and their actions.

16:41
Because if you're looking at a game, if you look at a game like, uh, let's, let's switch a little bit we just I just finished watching the Superbowl, and so I I like to illustrate this oftentimes by contrasting what you might see in the ballet versus what you'd see on an NFL line, an offensive line. Nfl offensive linemen are quick, they're agile, they're strong, they have movement patterns that they have to be able to do. They have to work in coordination with one another and understand what the blocking schemes are. And if you think about that, just in the abstract, ballet dancers have the same thing they need to be agile, they need to have strength, they need to be extremely coordinated, not just within themselves but amongst themselves. So some of the things that they do, they have to coordinate with their partners and the other people on stage.

17:42
But if you look at a ballet dancer versus an NFL lineman, you likely notice some very real differences. Nfl linemen are massive. They just had a graphic on last night on the I think it was the Eagles defensive line actually where they were almost 100 pounds heavier somewhere in the 80 or 90 pounds heavier, I believe it was, than the defensive line in Super Bowl I, and probably three or four inches taller on average than the defensive line in Super Bowl I. And so these are large human beings, right, and you can't really be a defensive lineman unless you have that sort of size, that sort of strength, that sort of movement pattern.

18:29
And so if you want to be an NFL lineman right versus if you want to be a ballet person, you're going to do things that are a little different. Your training is going to be different. You're going to be in the gym doing, you know, big, heavy deadlifts, big, you know, big, heavy dead lifts, big heavy squats, big heavy power lifts, but you're probably not necessarily going to do that for ballet. For ballet, you're going to want a different sort of flexibility. You're going to focus on staying lean so you can be lifted, for instance, and do jumps without hurting your knees and those kind of things. Those, the sports, the activities themselves, begin to determine what activities you're going to participate in, they determine in some large, to some large extent what your habits need to be. You're going to eat differently if you want to be a professional ballet dancer than if you wanted to be a professional defensive lineman, if you want to be a professional ballet dancer than if you wanted to be a professional defensive lineman. Those things just happen because that's how you achieve in that competitive space.

19:31
And so Pierre Bourdieu sort of lays this out in a really complex theory, but the essence is just that is that if you think about all the things you would have to change if you wanted to be a ballet dancer versus if you wanted to be an NFL lineman, that's functionally what he's talking about with habitus. Habitus just refers to these dispositions, these actions, this way of living that are going to get you where you want to go within a given competitive space. And so if we think about these ideas, both Rene Girard and Pierre Bourdieu, in terms of Christian discipleship, what we realize is that when we talk about imitating Christ, imitation becomes pretty central, as I am of Christ, and so what I think Paul is really saying there is that he's not saying, hey, imitate me, look at me, do what I'm doing. What he's saying is imitate me in so much as I imitate Christ. In other words, keep the silver and lose the dross. And I think here Paul highlights the importance of modeling our lives after Christ, whose self-giving love transforms how we relate to others and the world and, unlike worldly models that may distort our desires, christ aligns our affections with God's purposes.

20:53
So, as Gerard warns, imitations can lead to rivalry and conflict when modeled after distorted images of success. And if you think about you know the way. If we chose any sort of other human that we're going to model our lives after, you can almost see that convergence. Now you know we both want the same things, we both want to be sort of at the top of the game, and so at some point the we, the subject seeks to overtake the model, because we're both aiming for the same objects of desire. But for Christians, the challenge to imitate Christ isn't something that we run into competition with, because God doesn't run out of resources, he is the object of desire. And so as we imitate Christ, we really don't have that sort of competitive edge to us.

21:44
When we imitate Christ, our desires are reoriented toward love and service and the building up of the body of Christ, and that reorientation does require discernment. So, as we must resist the pull of cultural norms that prioritize self-interest or material gain, we also have to embrace this idea of self-giving and self-love or selflessness, not self-love, self-giving and selflessness. You know, I think Paul's discussion of food sacrificed by idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10 really does offer a practical example of how imitation and discernment begin to intersect. While the idols are nothing and Paul advises against actions that you know he's anything to the food, there's nothing inherently wrong with the food after it's been sacrificed to an idol. He wants to make sure that eating this food doesn't cause other people to stumble. He's going to set aside his rights and urge others to do so as well, just to avoid causing others to stumble, and that is an imitation, really, of Christ's selfless love. We set aside these things. We don't view them as something to be used for our own advantage, but we recognize that if we set them aside in an effort to glorify God, to build up the body of Christ, to do these things we are supposed to do as Christian people, then this is an imitation of what Christ did in the incarnation and similarly, I would say, as we navigate technological advancements.

23:24
We really do need to ask whether our actions imitate Christ's self-giving or perpetuate disordered desires. Imitating Christ transform how we view and think about success and progress and instead of pursuing personal gain, we need to put God's kingdom and his righteousness in first place. We need to allow it, we need to immerse everything else that we're doing in it so that it shapes and transforms what it is that we're doing. And I think discipleship does call us to align our desires with the logic of resurrection and glorification, with the person of Jesus Christ, who is the only person in history who has been resurrected, ascended and glorified. And we need to trust that God's way leads us to true flourishing, even if it defies our worldly expectations. Flourishing even if it defies our worldly expectations. So how can Christians discern whether a pursuit of progress aligns with God's purposes? I don't know that I have this whole thing sort of mapped out. I don't think these suggestions are going to be complete, but here are a few guiding principles, some general ideas and patterns that we can implement in our own life.

24:35
I think we do need to examine our motivations. You know why. Are we pursuing this innovation or advancement? Are we seeking to glorify God or are we driven by self-interest, or fear, or pride? Those motivations are really crucial because they do tell us something about what we are allowing to drive the course of our lives. Is it a fear of man, right? We see this distinction in scripture often fear of man versus fear of God. Saul was not one who feared God, he tended to fear man, and so his kingship is ended. Well, if we're driven by a fear of man, if we're driven by this fear of being left behind, if we're driven by a fear of missing out you know the FOMO that we hear about often, or used to at least are we really then trying to glorify God, or are we just trying to build in the security that we feel we need? And so tapping into our motivations is actually really crucial.

25:34
We need to evaluate the impact of technology on our relationships. Does a certain form of progress enhance our love for God and our neighbor, or does it create division, isolation or harm? And I would add to this not just division, isolation and harm, but also distance. You know so much of what we end up doing with technology is distancing ourselves from one another, and we need to be careful about that. I think we need to consider the eternal perspective. How does this pursuit align with the kingdom of God? Will it draw us closer to him or distract us from his purposes? And then I think we also need to seek wisdom and community. We need to be engaging with others who share our faith to discern the implications of progress, and I think we have to be devoted to scripture and prayer and wise counsel to provide some essential checks on our decisions.

26:28
I think a fifth thing we need to practice that gratitude and contentment you know so much of what we count as progress is, I think, just a working out of our discontentment, a continual search for something better and different, that novelty impulse. And it's not true progress, because true progress should foster a spirit of gratitude for God's provision and a contentment rooted in his sufficiency. Rooted in his sufficiency. And if our advancements leave us restless or dissatisfied of constantly looking for it to be improved and move to the next level, it may be a sign that our loves are disordered. And then, finally, I think we can ask questions about stewardship. Are we using the resources wisely and sustainably? Does our progress really reflect a care for God's creation and his people? And I think, by applying some of these patterns and asking some of these questions. We can navigate the complexities of progress with humility and faith, ensuring that our pursuits reflect God's glory and serve his purposes.

27:36
Thanks for joining me on this second episode in which we discuss technology and the Christian faith.

27:39
Today, we explore the nature of progress from a biblical and theological perspective, highlighting the importance of aligning our advancements with God's eternal purposes and with our mission as God's people. We also examine the dangers of disordered loves, the insights for an Azure Arts of memetic desire and the call to imitate Christ as the ultimate model of love and obedience. And I think, as we move forward, we just need to strive to emulate every pursuit in light of God's kingdom. Progress is not about achieving worldly success, but about growing closer to God and participating in his redemptive plan. It's about following, not about leading, and on our next episode we'll delve into the practical aspects of living faithfully in a tech-saturated world. How can we cultivate habits that keep us grounded in God's presence while navigating the opportunities and challenges of modern technology? If this discussion resonated with you, please share it with a friend or leave a review. Your feedback helps us continue these important conversations. Until next time, take care and stay grounded in God's word See you next time, everybody.

28:41 - Speaker 2 (None)
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