the tindog coffeehouse

I’m currently blogging my way through From the Garden to the City: The Redeeming and Corrupting Power of Technology by John Dyer, and today’s chapter focuses heavily on the “corrupting” part.

In Chapter 4, Dyer established a working definition of technology as “the human activity of using tools to transform God’s creation for practical purposes.” In the Garden of Eden, those purposes were to till the garden and cultivate the land. But once sin enters the picture, everything changes.

Rebellion.

Dyer picks up where Chapter 3 left off, with Adam and Eve still in the Garden. Technology, he pointed out earlier, was introduced by God before the Fall when He instructed Adam to “tend and watch over it” (Genesis 2:15). But after the Fall, it takes on a very different role. The first thing Adam and Eve do after sinning against God is to make something: their first set of clothes, fashioned from fig leaves (Genesis 3:7). Were the clothes a tool created for a practical purpose? Of course. But was it what God originally intended? No.

Dyer explains:

Adam and Eve’s clothing, then, was not only designed to protect them from their environment; it also represents their attempt to hide their sinfulness from God. Moreover, they were trying to invent a means by which they could live without God and were therefore acting in rebellion against him. Instead of living every day in a loving, open relationship with him—depending on his power and grace for their existence and joy—they tried to construct a world that would allow them to exist apart from him. The clothing was their way of transforming their circumstances such that they would no longer rely on God for anything.

The clothing also represents a major shift in their relationship with God and one another. From this point forward, Adam and his offspring would no longer walk with God in the garden. Instead, they would always communicate with God through something else.

Dyer then moves on to Adam and Eve’s sons, Cain and Abel (Genesis 4). Both men make offerings to God. Abel offers his firstborn lambs while Cain offers some of his crops, yet only Abel’s offering is accepted by God. After Cain kills Abel, he’s cursed to be a “homeless wanderer on the earth” (4:12). Eventually, he settles in the land of Nod (4:16), which means “wandering”. As Dyer points out, in entering into a “state of wandering”, Cain was moving further away from God, both literally and figuratively.

Cain then builds the first city, called Enoch (4:17), and again we see how the use of technology has shifted away from how God first intended it:

[I]n building the first city, Cain was attempting to set up an alternative to the Garden of Eden. Instead of a place where humans lived in relationship with God, deeply connected to him and his creation, Cain built a place where people could live without God and disconnect from his creation. In building his city, Cain collected as many tools and resources as he could find and attempted to create a place of safety and comfort, a place where he could be protected from the natural world and insulated from his need for God.

As a result, Dyer says, the city became “humankind’s first idol, the first attempt to use our creative powers to dislodge God from his place of preeminence and his rightful status as the sustainer of life. We use our idols fundamentally as a way of meeting our needs apart from God, and this is our greatest temptation with technology—to use it as a substitute for God.”

How many of us would agree with that assessment, the idea that technology has become an idol for us, a substitute for God, a distraction from a life that should be lived in total dependence on Him? We fill our lives with stuff, with noise, with as much stimulation as we can in order to feed our ever-growing thirst for dopamine and adrenaline, believing that the next thing — whatever that thing is — will make us happy once and for all. I just spent $300 on a new iPhone, not because my old one was broken, but just because I wanted to. I’ve been scouring the Internet for possible Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals on an iPod Touch that I’m wanting to get my daughter for Christmas. Meanwhile, I’ll be heading across town this weekend to help a family that can’t even afford adequate housing for their five young children.

But technology isn’t the problem. Yes, it has the power to corrupt us, to stand in the place of God and remove us from our Creator. But it’s not technology that’s the problem, it’s sin. It’s the sinful nature within us and our tendency to pervert everything we come in contact with. Remember, technology wasn’t an after-effect of the Fall, it was there before it, given to us by God. And even after Adam and Eve’s disobedience, Dyer points out, God gave them more technology in the form of clothing made from animal skin, which Dyer humorously refers to as “the world’s first free technology upgrade.”

Thus, the answer to the problem of corruption through technology isn’t to get rid of it. We don’t need to tear down our cities and return to a literal garden. That does nothing to address the underlying problem, which is sin that keeps us separated from God in the spiritual sense. Rather, the answer is to eradicate the sin, and that can only come through the blood of Jesus.

Previously:
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 1: Perspective
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 2: Imagination
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 3: Reflection
From the Garden to the City, Ch. 4: Definition