How Should Christians Use Technology Without Losing Their Neighbor?

When we limit our understanding of progress to that which makes life easier or allows us to avoid suffering of various sorts, we too often neglect the personal and collective solidarity and growth forged from struggling together. Perhaps more importantly, as we embrace a vision for the future rooted in human effort, we risk forgetting God (Deuteronomy 8:11–20). In Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life, philosopher Albert Borgmann distinguishes between devices and things. A “thing…is inseparable from its context, namely, its world, and from our commerce with the thing and its world, namely, engagement.” In contrast, a device makes goods “technologically available…without imposing burdens on us.” Borgmann illustrates this distinction by contrasting a wood-burning stove with a central heating system. Whereas a central heating system provides heat without any particular effort, a stove “provided for the entire family a regular and bodily engagement with the rhythm of the seasons that was woven together of the threat of cold and the solace of warmth, the smell of wood smoke, the exertion of sawing and of carrying, the teaching of skills, and the fidelity to daily tasks.” Devices unburden us and, in the process, make room for us to depend more on anonymous individuals who create and support those devices and less on those we see every day.

The parable of the Good Samaritan illustrates the embodied character of love for neighbor. The Samaritan recognizes the injured man's need and arranges assistance at his own expense. He draws near, changes his own plans, handles the man's wounds, and pays for his care. The effort required is not replaceable. We can't outsource it without losing something essential. It is necessary for us to imitate our Savior who “emptied himself, by taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Phil 2:7). Jesus's incarnation points the way to an embodied love that isn't mediated by a screen but is made known in flesh. To insist on embodiment is not to reject technology, but to remember God's prior acts of creating and blessing. God did not hand Adam and Eve A.I.-enabled smartphones. He created them naked.

In a digital world, we run the risk of becoming detached, semi-anonymous actors whose contact with others is increasingly mediated by digital devices and platforms. As Christians, we don't need to purge every technology from our lives; however, we do need to be intentional about resisting the ways technology distances us from one another. The witness of the church can surely be extended through technology, yet it cannot be reduced to technology. The church is not like a cloud-based software system with multiple unique nodes, but a body — the body of Christ. To be human in a digital world, then, is not to reject technology, but to refuse to let it redefine faithfulness, presence, and love.