"Technology was made to serve us; we weren't made to serve technology."
Jesus in Mark 2:27 (more or less)
For 18-30 year olds, technology and science are essentially coterminous. So many times I've work diligently to differentiate science and technology (for academic purists if for no other reason), but often that seems like a failed project. My experience with emerging adults is that the lines between the two have become blurred. Or maybe better formulated, the primary science that meets the faith of most 18-30 year olds is technology. To speak of religion and science implies addressing technology and spirituality.
I start my Chico State Science and Religion class by presenting key definitions, Ian Barbour's four-part typology, the history of science and religion (Copernicus, Newton, Galileo, Darwin et al.), move into about scientific and theological methods, how the Big Bang relates to the teaching about God's creating the world--you get the picture--and the class pleasantly engages with me. When I move to nanobots, Ray Kurzweil's Singularity, Ex Machina, The Matrix, the future of technology, and whether Skynet is possible, the students begin to sit up in their seats. They achieve the highest level of engagement for academic life in California: they "share." Why? Because they believe they have so much more to say. Tech fascinates in a way that pure science does not.
How do I account for this shift? For emerging adults, technology is ubiquitous. They are digital natives. And even though I grew up about 5 miles from where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs created the prototype of the Apple I on Sunday, June 29th, 1975, which would become the world's first consumer-oriented personal computer, I'm not a digital native. I even have a confession: the first time I typed on a computer was in graduate school. (When I tell my students that fact, the looks are priceless.) So, since technology has had an enduring presence in the lives of 18-30 year olds, it is reasonable to conclude that technology and social media have had a significant effect on their psychological development and human flourishing.
As I've noted, the purists want to distinguish science from technology. Here I'm sensitive to the differences, but I don't believe this strategy works. Simply put, 18-30 year olds have only known a technologically-saturated world, and this is probably the place to remind us that, yes, emerging adults are promoting technology as central to spirituality, and in fact, emerging adults are creating these technologies.
At this point, a bit of history is in order: technology and the church have also had a long, and often positive, history. The technological feat of roadways, which the Romans perfected, allowed for the Christian message to spread. To look at the sites of the Apostle Paul's letters is to do a 1st century Google map of Roman roads. Moreover, scholars of all stripes have noted that the early Christian church extended the use of the codex (what we generally know as a book) in contrast to the scroll. Try to find a particular chapter in the Bible on a scroll as opposed to looking at page 432, and you'll quickly see why this is significant. Without it, scholarship as we know would hardly exist.
And speaking of books, it was the famous Gutenberg Press, developed around 1440 that allowed Martin Luther (just under a century later) to print pamphlets and spread the Protestant Reformation. Not only that, but Luther and Calvin's emphasis on reading the Bible in the vernacular depended on the printing press. It's no wonder that the most famous book from Johannes Gutenberg's technological advance was the "Gutenberg Bible." Today, internet technology has promoted the expansion of the Bible. YouVersion Bible app anyone? Yes, about 200 million "anyones."
Above I paraphrased Jesus, "Technology was made to serve us; we weren't made to serve technology." Now this in context--and really, the actual biblical text--is about the Sabbath. But I'm not entirely joking when I quote it. The religious leaders of Jesus's day were fixated on how well first-century Jews abided by the rules of Sabbath. As several commentators have noted, taking one day off a week for worship and rest marked the Jews and provided them with a critical identity. But at some point--or perhaps, various points--this boundary marker of Jewish identity and devotion to God, which was good, became a set of meticulous rules that needed to be served scrupulously. Jesus's words are surprisingly simple and freeing--God actually set up the Sabbath for our lives to be better. Because worshiping God returns us who are created to be. Or as Irenaeus commented,
"The glory of God is in a human being fully alive."
Irenaeus, 2nd century Christian thinker
This represents an excellent rubric for finding our truest and deepest happiness in the Sabbath rest.
Can we apply this to our use of technology, which has always been a gift from God, all the way back to the technology Adam needed to "till his field" in Genesis 2? This means the purpose of technology is to serve us, to improve our lives, not to enslave them, whether it's the codex, the Roman road, Gutenberg's Bible, or even the YouVersion app.
Let's use technology with utter sagacity. (Or at least something close...) The game has changed, and tech is here to stay. So let's be "as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves" (Matthew 10:16). There I go again, quoting Jesus out of context. But by now, I hope you know what I mean...