Questions
Why Is Technology Best Understood as a Response to a Broken World?
Summary: Technology is not neutral progress but a response to diminished human capacity in a fallen world. From the fig leaves of Genesis 3:7 forward, human beings have used tools to navigate a creation fractured by sin—making technology a sign of our need for redemption rather than the means of it.
Genesis presents the pattern. Before the fall, the human pair stood naked and unashamed (Gen 2:25), participating in unmediated communion with God, one another, and creation. After the fall, they reach for fig leaves (3:7), and God provides skins (3:21). Technology enters the biblical narrative as a coping mechanism for a world no longer ordered as it should be. This is not a condemnation of tool-making—God himself provides the skins—but it does locate technology within the story of brokenness rather than the story of triumph.
This framing matters because the cultural narrative around technology routinely presents it as progress toward some future flourishing. The Christian narrative locates technology earlier and more soberly: as a response to loss. Technologies may help us survive, manage, or even partially repair the world, but they cannot fix it. Treating technology as redemption misreads both the source of the world’s brokenness and the nature of its repair.
Key Takeaways: Technology as Response, Not Salvation
- Core Concept: Technology is post-fall—a sign of need, not the source of flourishing.
- Scripture: Genesis 2:25; 3:7, 21.
- Cultural Misreading: Treating technology as progress toward utopia rather than as response to brokenness.
- The “So What”: Christians who recognize technology’s place in the story of the fall will use it without expecting from it what only God can give.
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.