God, Technology, and the Christian Life Quotes

“God’s sovereignty is most commonly demonstrated, not in contradicting human free will, but in working through human free will.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“As a tech optimist, I know that this book would market better as an alarmist, doomsday warning about how Satan hijacked the electrical grid, controls us through our smartphones, and wants to implant us with the digital mark of the beast. I would sell you a vast conspiracy coupled with a theology of a powerless god who doesn’t know what to do… Fear sells books, but my theology— what I know about the gloriously sovereign Creator and his incredible creation—forbids me from stoking more fear. So I’m optimistic— not optimistic in man, but in the God who governs every square inch of Silicon Valley.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“We are not called to find our comfort in controlling this world. Life isn’t about embracing every comfort and controlling every variable. If personal comfort is the driving motivation in your adoption of technology, it’s a worship-killing trap. But”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“Christ's supremacy over all things means that Christians flourishing does not hinge on my adoption or rejection of certain technologies. It hinges on my heart's focus on the Savior...Whether we buy a seat on a spaceship rendezvous to the moon or stay within the confines of an Amish-like commune, we will find no hope apart from our union to Christ...He frees us from slavery to the technological desires of self-creation and self-determining individualism...Our gadgets and techno-possibilities no longer define us; Christ does. He defines our calling. If we follow his word, we will be protected from being used by our tools.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“In the church, fear is winning out over faith when it comes to technology. God feels distant from tech culture when the god in our heads seems outmatched by the power of man. We must stop living in this theological fiction. We must return to the God of Scripture so we can trust his providence over the material universe and over every turn in the history of human scientific and technological change.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“We should critique applied science with open Bibles...We aim for mutual respect. The Christian honors the scientist's discoveries. The scientist honors the Christian's ethical concerns.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“Do we have eternal hope through the grave or by avoiding the grave?”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“In the end, the Gospel of Technology is the survival of the fittest. It has winners and losers, the users and the used, the adept and the naïve, the programmers and the programmed. And while equality may be an ideal, inequality is inevitable.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“On the production side of our economy, technologies are called on so that we can make stuff cheaper and faster. Consumerism drives economic growth, and acceleration culture reinforces itself. No on asks why. The question is ignored as long as speed and efficiency keep chugging ahead...The Gospel of Technology also preaches comfort. Do whatever it takes, adopt whatever is necessary to preserve your own security and comfort in this world...Self-preserve at any cost.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“Christians are thankful people, or at least we should be. We can resist the temptation to forget the Giver for the lure of more and more powerful gifts, to neglect the Creator for the control of our own little worlds. We show our gratitude to the Giver by refusing to become addicts to his gifts. Instead, we pray for the wisdom to use his gifts in a spirit of Godward gratitude and restraint as the precious things he has blessed us with--like the smartphone and the potent digital access we have to one another.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“Christ, the Creator, restores meaning and purpose to the material universe in three important ways. By incarnation Christ entered into his material creation to confirm its values and meaning. By crucifixion Christ put an end to the tyranny of sin and vanity over his creation. By resurrection Christ inaugurated the new creation, restoring the destiny of his material creation, of our bodies and the cosmos itself.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“If God did not want us to discover something--raw materials or natural laws or potential powers--he simply didn't code it into the pattern of his creation.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“No technology is ambivalent; each one comes with certain biases and tendencies. The true challenge of ethics is not in determining which technologies should be made possible but in determining how those new possibilities are wielded. Thus, Scripture puts the emphasis not on the technology, but on how those innovations are used.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“Whether you love God, hate God, or ignore God; and whether you seek to meet the needs of humanity in your work, or whether the only thing that gets you out of bed each morning is the promise that you're going to plunder this world of as much wealth as you can, with a sword or a startup, God wields you for his final purposes.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life

“God continues to use human technologies both to judge and to bless humanity. Babel and Golgotha force us to see the complexity of God's sovereign relationship to human innovation. Every inventor, every invention, every use of every invention, and every outcome from every invention--they fall under the Creator's disposal.”
― Tony Reinke, God, Technology, and the Christian Life