Introduction

Summary notes

• The episode starts by pointing out a tension in how we can tend view technology– either technology as our saviour (such as solar panels giving us green energy – good), or something to be fearful of (eg smartphones creating addictive experiences – bad).
• The term technology as a ‘slippery word’ because it is all encompassing – technology is both the wheel, the printing press, and the smart phone in your pocket. Therefor when we try and paint everything with the same binary brush, technology either as good or bad, we’re going to get into a muddle because it’s not that simple!
• The issues we have the smart phone isn’t that it provides so many capabilities - we like having a camera and GPS. It is that it was been “weaponised to become a tool of addiction”. So the issue becomes what happens when you give this addictive device to a teenager.
• There is something deeply wrong with how these devices and the software on them has been designed to captivate our time and attention, “hacking our limbic centers in order to sell us stuff”.
• We should be thinking more carefully about who is in control, and where the power is – when you use an app or service; who is in control there and what are they trying to get you to do?
  • John talks about a parent who is trying to teach children to be aware of these things while engaging with technology.
• Pulling on the “it’s not simple”; Tim challenges this further by saying that while we like green electricity from ever cheaper solar panels– but this energy is then being used to power more smart phone creation, more servers to run generative AI, etc. The more we create the more we use. Can we “really call this God’s blessing”?
• John counters by saying that human nature is to take good things given by God and turn them into something evil. The energy created can be used to weapons of massive destruction, or it could be used to bring light to dark villages, or powering hospitals!
• John argues that God’s power for blessing far outweighs the power of evil, Christians should take the blessing that is there and use it in a godly way. It’s not an accident that we can use the sun and the wind to generate electricity. God gives humanity the ability to develop and use the good things he has created.
• The default position shouldn’t be fear, but instead if these things can be used to good then we should do that; while being aware to the possibility of evil.
• One of the ways that we fulfil the creation mandate is through science and technology; it’s an extension of cultivating the Garden of Eden.
• There is a secular idea that we create our future; and if we make bad choices we’ll end up destroying the world. But the biblical picture sets the future as an “extraordinary river of God’s providence”– and humans have a limited autonomy around how that future is going to unfold as God’s plans and purposes are reveal, even as God turns human evil into his salvation narrative.

Commentary

Do not fear

John’s words here come as such a comfort to me as I listen to this conversation; his perspective is that we have a sovereign God who is in control of the situation.

The Christian perspective says that the forces of good, God’s power, God’s beneficence far outweighs what the evil one can do, far outweighs the evil potential…

There are plenty of times when I don’t find it easy to hold on to that perspective– both when looking back historically (watching Oppenheimer and thinking about the technical feat to create nuclear weapons), but also looking at the current or future-gazing and wonder what really is going on with autonomous warfare, cyber crime attacking hospitals, or the quest for artificial general intelligence (AGI).

There is an acknowledgement that there is evil in this world, that sin has corrupted, and that humans build, shape, and use technology in horrific ways… and yet God’s hand is stronger. You see this picture really clearly at the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) where as the people grow in number they build against God’s will and God restricts the building project. The people of Shinar had the latest and greatest technology, but it didn’t compare to the sovereignty of God.

This is a helpful reminder not to fear, even if it looks bleak.

Cultivate the garden

This conversation was a reminder to me that God give Christians a role of continuing to represent him in all that we do; to continue to work and display his character. Whether that is the language of image bearing (Gen 1:27), cultivating and expanding the garden (Gen 1:28), or being a blessing to the nations (Gen 12:1–4) this applies no-less as we work in the world of technology, and that’s a theme that John Wyatt encourages all the more here.

A robust creation theology says… let’s take the abundance that is there and let’s use it in a Godly way.

John sees the abundance of materials within creation, and pairs that with the responsibility to use it in a Godly way, a way that cares for creation, and a way that reflects God’s desires and plans for creation–

We have been placed on this planet, and in this creation with that most extraordinary potential. And we have been called to draw out that potential. The picture of the gardener who is taking the raw material that God has provided but is then, out of their own creativity, generating the most extraordinary beauty and order and wonder, which was always there.

Some areas of technology building are working with raw physical materials– whether that is designing and constructing wind turbines, others are less about physical manipulation, but writing code or nudging pixels… Either way though; there is a challenge here for us– In the garden that God has created there is abundance, in the garden there is huge potential, and we have been placed in it to work. In our area of technology how might we continue to be aware of that?

I love that John talks about God as creating in a way that has beauty and order and wonder. Eden was a place of safety and provision, it was also full of beauty. As someone working in software engineering I think I often lean towards order, but do I staying mindful of making something beautiful and wonderful too? Before embarking on a project, a feature, or even a bug fix, I need to be thinking about how these lines of code will shape creation to display God more.

God called Abraham and said that he was going to build his family into a nation that would go on to be a blessing to the nations. It seems to me that as we build technology, it can be absolutely be built to be part of that blessing to the world. This conversation reminded me and reaffirmed that.

Further reading

• The Creation Mandate is mentioned several times by John in the podcast episode. The Gospel Coalition have a short essay introducing the topic.
• In the second half of the episode there is conversation about pre and post-millennial theology. Ligonier have a five minute podcast episode in their ‘Simply Put’ series which gives a primer on this.