I had a conversation with a young man not long ago about tech and the Gospel in which he smirked and said, “Why do you talk about those together? They’re not even related.” It’s an understandable reaction in our current culture. Even believers separate the idea of God and technology, and not just with our tech. We:

• give God Sundays but ask him to stay out of our “free” time.
• tithe but don’t want him to tell us how to spend the rest of “our” money.
• enjoy our amusement tech and tell him to back off trying to control our fun.

We don’t see that the Gospel and our tech are intricately related because we fail to see our value in God’s eyes. This impacts every aspect of our lives. 

Late one night I found myself watching one of those antique appraisal shows. As tends to happen, a man came in with a painting he’d received from his grandparents just to save it from the dump. The rest of the family, his parents, aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings, had all passed on it. He had positive memories of his grandparents and he kept it for them. It turns out his nostalgia came with a payday. 

See his grandparents had taken a trip to Mexico in 1904. While shopping at a local market they saw a young man selling portraits and thought they’d get one for their home. They loved the painting, but as the years passed it moved from the living room hall, to a bedroom, and eventually to a wall behind a door. To these people the painting had value, they still recalled their trip to Mexico with fondness, but the painting had lost priority. When they died, that little bit of nostalgic value was gone. The family parceled out the desirable objects, left the rest to be tossed out or donated, and that was how it came to the grandson. He loved it but eventually there came a day when he decided it was time to move on. He wanted to sell it but wasn’t sure how much to ask. On a lark he took it to an appraiser and learned life-changing truth: This wasn’t just any painting and that young boy in Mexico wasn’t just any painter. His grandparents had bought an original piece from Diego Rivera, one of the most prominent painters in Mexican history. They’d effectively purchased a Pablo Picasso with their lunch money. The painting was assessed with a sale value of nearly $1 million. 

Let that sink in. This man walked in with a picture that seemed nearly worthless. Don’t you want to know where he’d been keeping it in his house, or how he’d stored it in his car for the trip to appraisal? But what changed? It was the same painting. He put it back in the same vehicle he’d placed it in that morning, although probably with a bit more care. But the painting hadn’t changed. It was the same after the appraisal as it was before only now the man knew what it was worth.

Understanding the true value of the painting changed this man’s entire life.

This is what the Gospel does in our lives. 

As Tim Keller puts it, all of our rebellion against God can be traced back to one root: We don’t truly believe the Gospel. We don’t truly understand what God has done for us. If we did, it would change everything.

In the same way, when we truly understood what God has done for us in Christ, our lives drastically change. The Gospel changes:

• where we go online
• when we turn to tech
• why we use tech
• what we watch and listen to
• who we engage with online
• what we say and how we treat people online

This is why the Gospel and tech are so tightly related.

What we believe about God will determine what we believe about ourselves, and drives our actions. If we believe we’re used junk, waiting to get thrown away, we will act like it. If we believe we’re redeemed royalty who have new life, we will act quite differently. 

The Gospel is not a call to go out and “do better”. It’s a loving reminder that we have incredible value even in our brokenness. In Romans, Paul reminds us that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And he doesn’t leave us in our sin. In fact, he makes us new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), the old is gone, the new is come. My old desires, old joys, and old habits are dead. If they show up, it’s because I need to repent and turn again to God, to worship, filling up my mind, heart, and spirit with his promises. You and I can love others because Christ first loved us. It’s that love that motivates us to change, and it’s that change we want to see acted out in all areas of our lives, including our tech.

pc: Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash