God, Technology, and the Christian Life
Tony Reinke
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Whether you love God, hate God, or ignore God; and whether you seek to meet the needs of humanity in your work, or whether the only thing that gets you out of bed each morning is the promise that you're going to plunder this world of as much wealth as you can, with a sword or a startup, God wields you for his final purposes.”
“We should critique applied science with open Bibles...We aim for mutual respect. The Christian honors the scientist's discoveries. The scientist honors the Christian's ethical concerns.”
“On the production side of our economy, technologies are called on so that we can make stuff cheaper and faster. Consumerism drives economic growth, and acceleration culture reinforces itself. No on asks why. The question is ignored as long as speed and efficiency keep chugging ahead...The Gospel of Technology also preaches comfort. Do whatever it takes, adopt whatever is necessary to preserve your own security and comfort in this world...Self-preserve at any cost.”
“No technology is ambivalent; each one comes with certain biases and tendencies. The true challenge of ethics is not in determining which technologies should be made possible but in determining how those new possibilities are wielded. Thus, Scripture puts the emphasis not on the technology, but on how those innovations are used.”
“In the end, the Gospel of Technology is the survival of the fittest. It has winners and losers, the users and the used, the adept and the naïve, the programmers and the programmed. And while equality may be an ideal, inequality is inevitable.”
“In the church, fear is winning out over faith when it comes to technology. God feels distant from tech culture when the god in our heads seems outmatched by the power of man. We must stop living in this theological fiction. We must return to the God of Scripture so we can trust his providence over the material universe and over every turn in the history of human scientific and technological change.”
“If God did not want us to discover something--raw materials or natural laws or potential powers--he simply didn't code it into the pattern of his creation.”
“God continues to use human technologies both to judge and to bless humanity. Babel and Golgotha force us to see the complexity of God's sovereign relationship to human innovation. Every inventor, every invention, every use of every invention, and every outcome from every invention--they fall under the Creator's disposal.”
“Do we have eternal hope through the grave or by avoiding the grave?”
“Christians are thankful people, or at least we should be. We can resist the temptation to forget the Giver for the lure of more and more powerful gifts, to neglect the Creator for the control of our own little worlds. We show our gratitude to the Giver by refusing to become addicts to his gifts. Instead, we pray for the wisdom to use his gifts in a spirit of Godward gratitude and restraint as the precious things he has blessed us with--like the smartphone and the potent digital access we have to one another.”
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Book Keywords:
christian, technology, god, church, ethics, gospel-of-technology, christian-life, science
