Sophia is a humanoid robot that was been created by a Hong Kong-based company known as Hanson Robotics. She was fully activated in 2016 and since then has made quite an impact on pop culture. The Internet is replete with videos of Sophia being interviewed and on display. She has been on 60 Minutes, The Tonight Show, and a handful of other notable shows, and has been profiled in Forbes and the Wall Street Journal. What makes Sophia unique is her advanced artificial intelligence. She uses facial recognition and data processing to interact and imitate those with whom she interacts. In so doing, she is able to perform with eerily human-like interaction with those to whom she talks.
While you may think on-lookers are amazed by her advanced technology[1] (which they certainly are), most of them are often left more concerned. While the technology on display is innovative and amazing, the first-blush perception is more (most?) characterized by unease. The robot’s ability to perceive the world around it comes off as concerning and makes one wonder what may be next in the queue of innovation.
Of course, we can easily speak hyperbolically about innovation and technology and its influence on culture. We are, on the one hand,obsessive about new technologies (see any Apple event) while on the other, we are still collectively anxious about the powers of technology. We love new trinkets and gizmos that make life supposedly easier: We download new apps, buy roaming robots to vacuum our house, and look for new “wearable tech.”
Yet we also become quickly concerned. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix, or even Wall-E perfectly illustrate the communal concern our culture has for what technology could have the potential to do. In this digital age, we feel like we’re on a balancing beam.
Fortunately, our theology and Christian worldview are not silent on this subject. Because technology has an inherent posture towards innovation, it cultivates certain ideologies within us, whether for good or for ill. As Christians we need to have a particular posture toward how we might engage with various technological tools, as well as the innovation of future technologies. I’ll argue that biblical eschatology rightly orients our thoughts and practices concerning technology and innovation.
Technology and Future Progress
Since at least the Industrial Revolution technological development has been uniquely linked to the ideology of progress. With the rise of new tools and technologies, we are easily fascinated by what new things might come next. With each passing day seem to come new promises of technological sophistication and innovation. How much longer do we need to wait for flying cars and hover-boards?
This ideology is only further exasperated as we think about our roles as consumers, especially as those living within a consumer culture. Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew note, “A consumer culture is one in which increasingly the core values derive from consumption rather than the other way around.”[2] When bigger, better, and more efficient tools and technologies tempt us all the time, they shape our values, hopes and habits. As Christians, we must resolve to interact carefully with the ideologies of consumerism and technological progress. “A consumer culture is,” continue Goheen and Bartholomew, “one in which freedom is equated with individual choice and private life.”[3] As you can see, consumerism and expressive individualism easily walk hand-in-hand.
Technology and innovation are inherently future-oriented. While they may appropriately borrow from the past, their posture is forward-looking, towards what can be done next. Technologists, engineers, and inventors want to build something newer, something more innovative, something pushing us harder toward progress. While innovation for the sake of progress is not a bad practice per se, we cautiously may repeat the words of Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”[4]
An Orientated Posture
We need to think about how we might orient ourselves to this ever-changing world. We have to develop a faithful posture. Since technology and innovation are already future looking, we should look beyond our culture’s immediate future to the culmination of all future events in the end of time. As we think about technology, we should engage in our practices in view of the eschaton. Geoffrey W. Bromiley writes,
The Christian hope of Christ’s return . . . has direct cultural pertinence. Societies and cultures run up against the problem of destiny that is also the problem of destination. What is the goal of humanity, or of our specific portion of it? Where are we finally heading even here on earth? Does the race have a goal? . . . But cultures also take into account the larger question of orientation, direction, and purpose to which Christianity supplies the answer of the coming of the kingdom.[5]
As Christians, we can capture a long-term view of our inventions and creations. Our eschatology challenges our thoughts, attitudes, and habits. Again, Bromiley writes, “Either explicitly or implicitly, eschatology confronts every culture with new thinking, and the culture responds either by resisting the thinking, by developing its own variations upon it, or by offering alternatives.”[6] Orienting ourselves in light of our eschatology helps Christians not to fall prey to immediate convenience without considering long-term effects, which may not be so convenient.
As we create, invent, practice, or consume technologies, we should ask: How does this bring God glory? How might what is intended for good be abused by man for bad? Does this technology have transcendent, lasting value? Will this technology bring about common good for man? Does this technology have redemptive qualities? How does my eschatology affect the way I use this technology?
Technological Artifacts and Restoration
The eschaton does not end culture but rather fulfills it. Remember, history began with a garden, which God called man to cultivate. God made it of raw materials: seeds, dirt, rock. And He instructed Adam to cultivate or to steward it. When we get to the end of history, we don’t find a garden alone but rather a city. A city is the culmination of cultural work: buildings, ornaments, streets, lamps, and more. It is the product of sub-creation, the work that mankind does due to their image-bearing identity. Of course, we know that God will refine all cultural products we make at the end of time. All things, including our cultural artifacts, will undergo a deep restoration. Yet significantly not all things will be destroyed.
Andy Crouch writes, “So it’s a fascinating exercise to ask about any cultural artifact: can we imagine this making it into the new Jerusalem?”[7] Are any of the artifacts that we use, or that we have a hand in creating, transcendent enough to occupy a place in the end of time? Of course, as Crouch himself says, nothing will make it to the new heavens and the new Earth without “being suitably purified and redeemed”[8] Yet these question provide a wonderfully helpful rubric by which to test our technological pursuits. Crouch notes, “This is, it seems to me, a standard for cultural responsibility that is both more demanding and more liberating than the ways Christians often gauge our work’s significance.”[9] I think this perspective will challenge our technological practice in our roles as both sub-creators and cultivators.
Conclusion
Christian cultural engagement can be an incredibly difficult task for believers. It can seem especially difficult in our technological age. As Christians, we stand on the gospel truth that we have received from the past, just as we have a resurrection hope for the future. In doing so, we stand as a counter-cultural community. As Bromiley noted, “Our eschatology, too, must be in the world, expressed in its terms, exerting its own influence upon it. Yet it must be careful not to be of the world . . . allowing itself to be submerged in worldly cultures.”[10] Our view of the eschaton challenges us to live radical lives for the Kingdom today. Let this be true not only for our use of technology but also for all areas of life.
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[1]I appreciate Jackson Watts’s definition of technology: “technology is a manmade tool, composed of both manmade and natural materials, designed for the purpose of supporting, sustaining, or extending some aspect of human culture.” W. Jackson Watts, “Is Technology Neutral?” Helwys Society Forum, October 10, 2011; http://www.helwyssocietyforum.com/is-technology-neutral/; accessed January 6, 2019; Internet. This definition expands the category appropriately. Under this definition, chairs, cups, glasses, and hymnbooks are all “technologies.” It is important for us to remember this as we move forward. Technology is not just electrical innovations.
[2]Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), 115.
[3]Ibid., 115.
[4]Jurassic Park, dir. Steven Spielberg (Universal City, California: Universal, 1993), VHS.
[5]Geoffrey W. Bromiley, “Eschatology: The Meaning of the End,” in God and Culture: Essays in Honor of Carl F. H. Henry, ed. D. A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 67.
[6]Ibid., 69.
[7]Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IVP, 2008), 170.
[8]Ibid.
[9]Ibid., 171.
[10]Bromiley, 84.
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