Questions
Why Do We Default to Technological Solutions Despite the Risks?
Summary: We default to technological solutions because the myth of progress has been so deeply embedded in modern culture that pragmatism feels like common sense—and because we have largely lost the theological imagination to ask what flourishing requires beyond efficiency.
Two overlapping forces drive the default. First, the cultural inheritance: progress has been the dominant narrative of Western modernity for several centuries, and it has trained us to assume that newer is better, faster is better, and “more capable” tools indicate genuine human advance. Second, the loss of a robust account of human flourishing: when we no longer have shared answers to questions about what humans are for, efficiency becomes a default proxy for value. If we cannot say what life is for, we settle for making it more efficient.
The Enhanced Games—a sporting movement designed to allow performance-enhancing substances—illustrate the dynamic clearly. Their stated philosophy is that “scientific and technological advancements can be safely applied to sport. Their use should be embraced and celebrated.” This is not framed as cheating but as progress, because the underlying anthropology assumes that human limits are problems to be overcome rather than features of finite creatures made by God. Christians who simply absorb the cultural default will treat each new technology as an obvious upgrade rather than as a claim about human flourishing that deserves theological scrutiny.
Key Takeaways: Progress as the Modern Default
- Core Concept: Progress is the inherited narrative; efficiency the inherited proxy for value.
- Case Study: The Enhanced Games and the soft transhumanism behind them.
- Scholar: Iain McGilchrist (The Matter with Things) on conflating manipulation with understanding.
- The “So What”: Christians need a theological account of flourishing robust enough to evaluate technology beyond “does it work?”
About the Author — James Spencer, PhD, is a theologian, author, and host of the Thinking Christian podcast, where he writes and speaks on Christian formation, political theology, and technology. He holds a PhD in Theological Studies from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and an MA in Biblical Exegesis from Wheaton College. He serves as president of the D. L. Moody Center in Northfield, Massachusetts, as an Associate Research Fellow at the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology, and as adjunct faculty in Wheaton College’s MA in Leadership program. His forthcoming book is Digital Discernment (InterVarsity Press). Learn more at thinkingchristian.org.